Woah - it's been more than a while since I last blogged. I've been a busy boy. Over the last two weeks I have won tickets for the Gala Premiere of Salt in Leicester Square, attended the Gala Premiere of Salt in Leicester Square and worked what seems like every hour of the day - apart from when I went to London for the Gala Premiere of Salt. If you haven't already guessed, I was quite happy about these tickets. But, enough about that. I've also moved from tumblr to posterous. Woo!

In other news, there has also been a lot of movement in the foursquare camp with regards to badges, partnerships and rewards. It's been an exciting two weeks for them too. We've seen foursquare have launched five university-specific badges in the States, a 'Great Outdoors' badge for those who've been taking long walks in the park, and revived the SXSW 2010 'Swimmies' badge for the rest of the community to unlock. MTV have also unveiled two badges - the 'Moonman' badge and the 'GYT' badge. I promise to blog about all of these individually - hopefully I will do in the next few days.

In my defence, I've been busy speaking with the foursquare TLC (Discovery Channel) representative about registering more venues in the UK so that users here can unlock their 'Cupcake Connoisseur' and 'BBQ Pitmaster' badges, as well as working with Intertain (the brand that owns Walkabout, Bar Risa, Highlight, among a number of other venues) to help them integrate foursquare in their marketing mix and offer specials in each of their venues. I hope you'll forgive me. *weeps*

It’s been over thirty years since cinemagoers the world over first glimpsed those enigmatic crawling titles from a long time ago in a world far away, but now audiences can experience the epic space opera in stunning HD when the series forces it’s way onto Blu-ray next year.

George Lucas, the creator of the epic science fiction franchise, announced that all six Star Wars films will make their HD home theatre debut on Blu-ray in Autumn next year to mark the 35th anniversary of the release of Episode IV: A New Hope. The announcement was made earlier on today (well, yesterday for our American counterparts) at Star Wars Celebration V, the official convention for the movies and their collective properties. The discs will include documentaries, interviews, outtakes, deleted scenes and other footage unique to the new set, as well as the Special Edition remastered versions for the original trilogy.

This release could signify a major shift in the adoption of Blu-ray and could encourage movie buffs who’ve stuck with standard definition DVDs to finally buck up their ideas and begin purchasing clarity, over quantity. While advocates of the Blu-ray revolution, of which I am one, will be thrilled that the series is finally arriving, some Star Wars fanatics may be less than pleased that the remastered versions of the original canon will be the only versions available for purchase with this release.

I’m not sure about you, but I can’t wait for the series to be released on Blu-ray. I’m not overly sure whether I’ll actually bothered to buy the second (well, technically first) trilogy, as I’m more of a fan of the original. Will you be buying Star Wars on Blu-ray, or settling for the outdated standard definition versions?

Yes, you read it right. I spoke to a representative from TLC a few months ago and sorted out a number of venues that UK users would be able to unlock after expressing my distaste about Foursquare’s US-centricity. As the number   of foursquare users in the UK was relatively small at the time, I didn’t feel it was necessary for me to tell anyone about this. However, recently I have seen a number of regional foursquare twitter accounts and appreciation groups emerging from UK based users and thought I’d share the good news.

For those of you who are aware of TLC, it is a cable network in the States who partnered with foursquare a few months ago to promote new shows and premieres over the Summer. While all of the venues in the States have tips that celebrate summer like zoos, museums, outdoor cafes, none of the venues in the UK have tips - which I feel adds to the mystique of this badge.

I know I shouldn’t do this, but here’s the list of approved venues in the UK:

• Buckingham Palace
• Trafalgar Square
• London Eye
• The Houses of Parliament
• Madame Thussaud’s
• Tate Modern
• Emirates Stadium
• Hamleys
• Harrods
• Shakespeare’s Birthplace (in Stratford-upon-Avon)
• Silverstone Circuit (in Northampshire - it must be this venue)
• Alton Towers (in Staffordshire)

Just to prove it - here’s a link to my foursquare account to show you the TLC Summer badge which I unlocked after visiting Silverstone Race Circuit.

Keep your eyes peeled for more updates regarding TLC Summer's Cupcake Connoisseur and BBQ Pitmaster badges too.

Clockwise from Top Left -

Liar, Liar: You big, fat cheater. This is you’re 10th check-in at a venue you’re more than 1,500 meters away from. Is your life really that empty?

Overworked: More than 50% of your check-ins are at your place of work. You need a raise. Or a life. You decide.

Why Spy?: 9 out of 10 check-ins are “off-the-grid”. OK, Jason Bourne. We get it. You’re secretive. Here’s a suggestion: if you don’t want people to know where you are, stop using a social network whose key function is to tell people where you are.

Working Lunch: This is the 100th restaurant check-in that you’ve also broadcasted to your LinkedIn status. Unless you work for Zagat, maybe you should rethink telling your professional network every time you eat at McDonald’s.

Home, Sweet Huh?: Congratulations! You’re mayor…of your house. Along with being king of your bird feeder and magistrate of your tool shed, you’ve really accomplished something. Celebrate by deleting your Foursquare account. (I’m guilty of this one, but I’m not going to delete my account - just think about the Mayor offers I can get from it….Hmmm)

Bo-Ring!: More than 75% of your check-ins are at venues with little or no relevance to your network - or anyone else. Tip: No one needs to know every time you get petrol at a BP garage or pull into every train stop between Birmingham and London.

(via @agencyconfesses). 

Users of Foursquare are set to take part in the first UK-based foursquare foxhunt in Cheltenham on Saturday, August 21 as part Foursquarestival. The goal of the event is to enhance perceptions of Cheltenham as a destination for creatives and help support independent traders by increasing footfall to their businesses.

According to the Foursquarestival website, 

Players will compete in a foxhunt that will lead them around points of artistic and cultural significance in the town, visiting independent traders along the way and finally finishing at a secret party location.

The Foursquarestival team will prepare for the event by adding a series of tips and clues to a pre-determined set of locations. This will also involve liaising with local businesses to secure their involvement and make them aware of the promotional opportunities that can come from Foursquarestival and from Foursquare itself.

On the event day participants (the ‘hounds’) will have to locate a series of ‘foxes – each one will provide a clue as to the location of the next. Each fox will stay at their location for a certain amount of time before moving on. If the hounds turn up and the fox isn’t there, the manager/owner will hand over a clue or there will be a notification on the door that the fox has moved to a new location.

It’s great to see how towns and cities are embracing emerging social engagement platforms and testing the potential of foursquare as a platform for events management - especially when considering Microsoft’s new location-centric application, SCVNGR, that would be perfect for such challenges and scavenger-esque activities. Nonetheless, all foursquare users will stand to benefit from events of this nature as businesses will evidently become more aware of the opportunities presented to them by these markets.

Foursquare and GoGo have announced that users of the popular location-based social networking platform will be able to earn the Mile High badge when they check in from a GoGo Wifi equipped plane. For those of you haven’t heard of GoGo, they provide wireless internet services on nearly 1000 planes across nine airlines.

To earn the badge, users will need to connect to the GoGo WiFi service and check in from a plane on their foursquare mobile app or laptop computer.

The unlock text reads:

Congrats you’ve just unlocked the Mile High badge! 500 miles per hour @ 30,000 feet and you’re still connected with Gogo. Happy travels!

Prices for the service vary from $4.95 (£3.26) for a single domestic flights in the US to $39.95 (£26.11) for unlimited 30-day access. Unfortunately, GoGo Inflight Internet is not available on any airlines in the UK, so domestic users will have to go to the US and then catch a domestic flight to unlock this badge. Good luck with that.

Source: AboutFoursquare

For the past few months, even years, I have contemplated starting a blog that I would contribute to on a regular basis, but for some reason unbeknownst to me I have felt it unnecessary until now. But, why now? Perhaps it is because I feel that my interest in online social engagement is at it’s peak, or at least at it’s peak in terms of previous interest - I’m sure that I haven’t peaked just yet. Maybe it’s because I’m about to embark on the single most important and mountainous task of my life - the postgraduate dissertation.

Regardless of the reason, I feel that it is necessary for each of us to supplant our mark online - whether it’s updating Facebook, tweeting on Twitter, networking on Linkedin or produsing (No, it’s not a typo - it’s a concept developed by Axel Bruns (2008: 2) whereby productive users are active in their own right in content creation as well as consumption, replacing producers and/or consumers altogether or at least working with them on an equal basis) on image (Flickr) and video-sharing (YouTube) sites. What is also apparent is that our contemporary lifestyles are dominated by the pervasiveness of these technologies. The worldwide proliferation of smart mobile phones and the growth of always-on broadband in the developed world, for example, continue to make technological networks are more accessible, more ubiquitous, and means that we are not necessarily alone even if we are not interacting with those in close physical proximity to us.

But, what does this mean for our “digital footprint/identity”? What about those Myspace pages, sub-amateur websites created on free web hosting services or even the profiles that we used on a regular basis. I’m sure not about what you’ve done about yours, but I’m currently deleting and/or updating mine.

In the same sense that we have a carbon footprint that shows our impact on the atmosphere, we each have a digital footprint that represents the extent of our online and new media presence. Unlike a carbon footprint, a large digital footprint is not necessarily bad; it is often a sign of popularity, prestige and influence - take Stephen Fry’s extensive collection of tweets, blogposts and comments which have helped to supplant his digital footprint as the Mecca of digital spaces.

However, disused websites, neglected flickr accounts, inactive blogs and the like are simply refuse from our lives as internet nomads. My old sites contained photos, personal information and conversations with users that I no longer monitored, but were still available for everyone to access. If I hadn’t decided to delete this site then it would have stayed forever and continued to tarnish my search results (well, scratch that… I can’t imagine any one wanting to Google me. It’s just my vanity Googling).

As such, I tried to search for data on the percentage of internet sites and social networking accounts that are inactive. How many of Facebook’s 500 Million users actually frequently check their account? How many users on Twitter have actually contributed to the 20 Billion tweets published? And, how many Foursquare users have downloaded the app, signed up and not checked into even one location?

With this considered, make a list of all the sites that you have or have had an account with - including social networking websites, photo/video sharing sites, shopping logins, blogs, and so on - and delete the ones you haven’t used within the last three months. Then visit the remaining sites on your list, examine the personal information made available and edit them until it is in line with your current digital image. In doing so, you’ll have one clear, consistent digital/footprint identity across all of channels that you choose to engage on.