2024 was the year that FourSquare stopped having a separate product and they open-sourced their location database.  Swarm remains their check-in social network, which I and a few contacts still use.  The verb "to swarm" was something that was popular back in the FourSquare days, but I doubt anyone is swarming these days. I still call the app/service foursquare, and wish they'd change swarm

I don't drink as much beer as I used to, but I still check into Untappd periodically to mark which beers I have consumed and rate them, so I don't fall into the trap of ordering a beer that I have tried in the past and disliked. Untappd had both a billboard style Year In Beer, and a more animated version.  Only the billboard was downloadable, so I used SnagIt to do a screen capture of the video.I

 One last Year in Review came in, this one from Swarm, formerly known as FourSquare.I don't know who is still using Location-Based check-ins these days. I do get a kick from seeing the random "this is a place you visited 10 years ago" pop-ups every so often.  I am surprised that even though I didn't travel any great distance, I still managed to find over 60 new places to visit locally.

 Yes, I still use swarm (although I still prefer the old name: Foursquare). 2021, unsurprisingly, was another year of staying local.  The most frequented places of the year is all the dog park visits that I had for Fred 😂, and the places I went walking to be away from humans yet still stretch my legs a bit.

While most 2020 travel was from home to the supermarket and back, there was a brief period before the lockdown where we could move around.  Here's my New England roaming last year 😜

Every year some social sites tend to a year in review with data from your activity on the networks.  This year is no different.  I thought I'd post some of the data that came my way.   Today I have some data from Swarm (what used to be foursquare).  Location check-ins don't seem to be as big of a deal these days (with most competitors having gone the way of the dodo),

Swarm really hammers in the point that I basically spend a lot of time at work and traveling to work haha.  In 2017 I spent most of my places at train-stations and universities. Although it did surprise me that I checked in to 85 new places. Wonder what 2018 will bring? (other than a mostly done dissertation...I hope :p )

Well, 2016 is done,  and one more social media app sent me my comings and going from last year.  This time around it was the Swarm app - formerly known as foursquare before the rebranding. It's not surprising that my most checked-in places are train stations (spent quite a lot of time in them last year, not just going to and from work, but also on our trip to Spain in October). 

As is customary for me, when I travel abroad for an extended period of time I tend to get a local SIM card to put into my phone, so I can have a local number, some local SMS, and more importantly data!  It makes it easier to communicate with the locals and verify AirBnB information.  Luckily, in recent years, T-Mobile allows for free 2G (GPRS) data roaming, which made things a little

It's been a week or so since we came back from our vacation. Now that the jetlag has subsided and I am back to normal, I thought it would be good to have a concise overview of the highlights and lowlights of the trip.  I guess I will be starting with the Netherlands since it was both the beginning and the end of the trip. I wasn't quite sure what I was getting into when I decided to stay in