LiveHoods: Using Social Media and Machine-Learning to Study Cities [via mefi projects] [more inside]
posted by Potomac Avenue on Apr 20, 2012 - 6 comments

A column by John Brownlee over at Cult of Mac yesterday highlighted his privacy concerns about the app Girls Around Me -- which used a mashup of FourSquare check-ins, Google Maps and Facebook public profile information to show the user women who were nearby. In response to the story, Foursquare cut off the app's API access to their data, effectively knocking it out of commission. CNET: How to prevent friends checking you into locations at Facebook Places. [more inside]
posted by zarq on Mar 31, 2012 - 99 comments

Vacations, diversions and roadtrips: On The Way suggests attractions and reststops for any route. The Weekend Map shows events and activities for 27 American cities for the coming weekend. Nerdy Day Trips (previously) suggests trips for geeks of all kinds, while Trazzler suggests daytrips for where you live. Don't have a car? Mapnificent (previously) shows you where you can get to from any point in a given time using public transit. EveryTrail suggests walks, rambles, strolls and hikes. Google's new HotelFinder service locates places to stay in a sketched area on a map, with a range of options. via
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul on Dec 14, 2011 - 7 comments

Monopoly City Streets was a fun global game of Monopoly played with real streets that only lasted a few months, under heavy demand. Two years later a possible successor has appeared on the horizon. Foursquaropoly. [more inside]
posted by cashman on Sep 11, 2011 - 13 comments

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Amazon.com's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) crashed yesterday, taking with it popular sites like Reddit, Quora, Foursquare, Hootsuite, Act.ly, and about 70 other sites. Amazon.com was affected, as was some functionality of the New York Times. Amazon Web Service's Health Dashboard indicates that there are still major operating disturbances. [more inside]
posted by 2bucksplus on Apr 22, 2011 - 135 comments

What do you do when you're supposed to come up with 50 separate webpages on a poorly defined topic? You come up with a mix of dangerous products (most of which were successful before their dangers were known), second-best technologies, just plain silly ideas, cool things that never caught on, uncool things that DID catch on and modern annoyances (including one that your website uses) to make "Time Magazine's 50 Worst Inventions" (link points to FULL LIST, or just refer to all the tags).
(I know, not the BEST of the web; just the MOST of the web)
posted by oneswellfoop on May 30, 2010 - 43 comments

BRIDGTON, Maine, February 27 (ESPN) -- It takes a certain kind of confidence for an athlete to wear a cape. You can't just be good. You have to be amazing, as in world champion-caliber amazing. Otherwise, you run the risk of looking ridiculous. Luckily, Christian Housh, better known as Tiger Claw, proved himself worthy of a world title. "I can't say I ever had any dreams of being a four square champion until I found out about the world championships of four square," Housh said. "Then the dream came alive."

Bonus: incomplete list of cool rules. Previously on MetaFilter. Previously at a MetaFilter meetup. Get well soon, klangklangston!
posted by not_on_display on Mar 10, 2010 - 14 comments

PleaseRobMe.com tells you when people on Twitter are advertising that they are not at home. [more inside]
posted by ThePinkSuperhero on Feb 17, 2010 - 84 comments

Babies, Footsies, Holdies. Carry, Foul, Slam. Tea Parties, Fairbacks, Cherry Bombs. Double Taps, Underhand, Blackjack. Bitch Serving, Jedi, Extreme. Chicken Drops, Peppermint Sticks, Kamikazes. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. Land Mines, Demons, Black Magic.
posted by bardic on Feb 20, 2006 - 18 comments