{"id":6726,"date":"2012-01-22T00:04:01","date_gmt":"2012-01-22T08:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nearfuturelaboratory.com\/?p=6726"},"modified":"2017-08-18T17:58:24","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T17:58:24","slug":"privatesquare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nearfuturelaboratory.com\/2012\/01\/22\/privatesquare\/","title":{"rendered":"privatesquare"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been working on, and testing out, a new thing for the last couple of weeks. It is called privatesquare<\/strong>. It is a pretty simple web application that manages a private database of foursquare check-ins. It uses foursquare itself as a login service and also queries foursquare for nearby locations. The application uses the built-in geolocation hooks in the web browser to figure out what “nearby” means (which sometimes brings the weird but we’ll get to that later). On some levels it’s nothing more than a glorified check-in application. Except for two things:<\/p>\n

First, when you do check in the data is stored in a local database you control. Check-ins can be sent on to foursquare (and again re-broadcast to Twitter, etc. or to your followers or just “off the grid”) but the important part is: They don’t have to be<\/em>. As much as this screenshot of my activity on foursquare cracks me up it’s not actually representative of my life and suggests a particular kind of self-censorship. I don’t tell foursquare about a lot of stuff simply because I’m not comfortable putting that data in to their sandbox. So as much as anything privatesquare is about making a place to file those things away safely for future consideration. A kind of personal zone of safekeeping<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Second, privatesquare has its own internal taxonomy<\/a> of event-iness. It is:<\/p>\n