Foursquare for Outlanders

Don’t live in a big city? Want to live the highlife of Foursquare anyway? Here’s what I’ve done in my little outlander location of #BTV aka Burlington, Vermont.

Please note, the following info is not officially sanctioned in any way. So be kind to the devs, please.

1. Register in a city you like. In my case, I chose NYC because it’s close to Burlington, VT.
2. When adding locations, note that the state is locked to whatever your city is (in my case, that’s New York).
3. Then notice that the zip code, however, is not locked. Use the actual zip code.

As far as city-wide points go, you’ll be competing with your big city. So good luck with that. In my case, I don’t really care that much about winning points etc so it’s no biggie. Your mileage might vary.

You’ll also notice that you’ll end up with true abominations of location: Burlington, NY in my case. Them’s the breaks until they get around to adding your outlander location.

Some things to keep in mind:

The Foursquare development team is small. They have chosen to limit their locations probably due in part to the resources they have available. If you’re an outlander, please play nice and be encouraging for the developers.

I put “BTV” at the end of some of my locations early on. This was a mistake, don’t do this. The reason it’s a mistake is that it will have to be edited out when they finally get around to adding Vermont to their play locations.

Recently I was given some permissions to help keep the data clean. If you notice things/locations in Vermont that have incorrect data (address or whatever) let me know and I’ll try to get it cleaned up.

If you’re psyched about playing this unofficial Foursquare and somehow think I’m responsible for it, consider sponsoring me in a 5k that happens Sunday Aug 30th, 2009 to benefit families who want to make their home wheelchair accessible for their kids. Every donation counts. If it’s after Sunday Aug 30th, you can always get me a coffee at The Sapa sometime.

Update: I can edit the state field now. Not sure if it’s because of my permissions or not. If you come across BTV locations that still are in “Burlington, NY” let me know and I’ll fix ’em.

Some other cool Burlington-related stuff via Zemanta:

• Is There a Lake Champlain Monster? (abcnews.go.com)
• Budget summer travel from New York: Burlington, Vermont (gadling.com)
• Vermont Taxi Driver Lets Passengers Name Their Fare (takepart.com)