Mark Briggeman reviewed Touchality WinMoSquare client for Windows Phone a little while ago, which at that point was the only available Foursquare client for Windows Mobile.

“Foursquare on your phone gives you & your friends new ways of exploring your city. Earn points & unlock badges for discovering new things.”

Foursquare is a location based service co-founded by Dennis Crowley. I would like to recommend the article of expert Andrew Grill, digital strategist & evangelist and experienced Telecoms Senior Executive, on the London Calling website “Foursquare and the opportunity for location based social media“. Furthermore the YouTube video “How to unlock your world with Foursquare” provides an ideo how to operationlize Foursquare and use it in everyday life.

mySquare first launch – A build in tutorial !

You can download the mySquare cab-installer from the Rising Mobility website and install it on your Windows Phone. In the left screenshot above you can see the mySquare icon in the Windows Mobile 6.5 start menu of the HTC HD2.

When you first run mySquare you will be provided with a kind of mini-tutorial that provides you with an overview of the application. The tutorial consists of three steps, that are “activated” by a simple tap on the screen:

1. To start, first tap here to set your foursquare account;
2. Here you will see nearby places to chack details and check in;
3. And here you will see your friends. Enjoy;

In the screenshots above you can see the different steps of the mySquare mini-tutorial, wth each step pointing to the specific part of the graphical user interface (GUI).

Personally I think this is a really nice feature, since it helps non-tech-savvy people to quickly setup and use the mySqaure application. I would love to see such functionality on more applications for Windows Phone, but I do understand the possible correlation between the complexity plus number of features of the application and the extinsiveness of the tutorial.

mySquare step-by-step application overview

In this section I will provide a step-bystep overview of mySquare. I will use the structure provided by the outlined tutorial above to have a look at the different features of the mySquare client.

About

In the top of the screen you can see the main navigation bar of mySquare that allows you to easily switch between the different features. The navigation bar consists of four buttons: (1) places, (2) friends, (3) settings, and (4) about.

Furthermore you can see a black banner with a blue hyperlink at the bottom of the screen. I must admit that the advertising in this public beta release isn’t annoying at all.

These items are components of the graphical user interface that will return through out mySquare application. The right screenshot above provides an overview of the about screen, in which you can see the version number, development credits, license terms and a link to the Rising Mobility website.

Settings

In the left screenshot above you can see the settings tab of the mySquare client. You need to enter the credentials of your Foursquare account, however that is more or less self explanatory.

Remarkable however is the heading premium options, where you can uncheck the show ads checkbox. In the screenshots above you can see a small banner at the bottom of the screen, just above the softkeys of your Windows Phone. This clearly shows that the developer has been thinking about multiple revenue models for the monetization of mySquare.

Places

One of the core components of the Foursquare location-based service business model are locations. When you tap on the places button of the mySquare navigation bar you will get a list of near-by locations, as you can see in the left screenshot above.

When you tap on a specific near-by loacation, for example “Kerkrade”, you will get a new screen with the specific details of the location.

Place Details

The place details screen consists of four tabs: (1) Check in, (2) Info, (3) Map, and (4) Tips.

In the right screenshot above you can see the check in tab, which consists of a text bubble to add a personal note (e.g. why you are on that location), and the different checkboxes that allow you to select to social networks on which you want to share your location status.

Furthermore you can see that I added the personal note “hometown of Tourclub Kerkrade” and to check in you simply use the left softkey at the bottom of the screen.

The second tab of the place details screen is the info-tab, that gives you some additional information about the location like status, number of check-ins, the current mayor, etc. The left screenshot above

In the right screenshot above you can see the message that I got when I tapped on the maps-tab of the place details screen. Since this build of mySquare is the public beta release, I do think that this feature will be part of the final build. Since the maps part is based on the free Google Maps- or Bing Maps services I would be surprised to see the maps info as a premium feature.

The tips-tab is the last and fourth tab of the location details screen. As you can see there are no specific tips added to the location “Kerkrade” which might be a nice opportunity for the mayor to add. This can easily be done by adding a comment via the text bubble and the comment action triggered via the left softkey.

Finally you can see a screenshot of the check in message on the right.

Create a new place

You can also create a new place in mySquare for Windows Phone.

When you scroll down the list of near-by locations, you will find the option ”create  a new place” at the very end. While you can argue about the position of this option, I think it is a logical position (you can create your location, when it is not present in the list with current nearby locations).

You simply tap on the “create new place” option from the list, and in a new screen you can add all the details of the the place you want to create (name, address, cross street, city, state, zip, phone and maps) !

Friends

The friends button in the mySquare navigation bar, provides information about your friends that reflects the social part of the Foursquare location-based service. When you tap on the friends-tab of the mySquare navigation bar you will get a list with friends (requests), divided over three headings:

1. Other friends;
2. Pending requests;
3. Check-ins;

In the left screenshot above you can see an overview of the check-ins of mySquare, including my own check-in in Kerkrade as part of this review. When you tap on one of the check-ins you will get specific information about the user who checked in.

For example John Starkweather checked in @ Pinecreast Lake (2nd option), and when I click on this iten I wil get an overview of John Starkweather’s details as shown in the right screenshot above. The first info-tab shows the following user-information: (1) E-mail address, (2) Twitter account, (3) Facebook acount, (4) Last seen location, and (5) Badges earned ! Remark that the Twitter account and Last see locations are hyperlinks that can be clicked; the default browser on your Windows Phone will open the specific hyperlink.

The second tab of John Starkweather’s details is called “Friends” and provides a list with friends. For example you can see in the left screenshot below fellow international friends Andrew Shuttleworth, Arne Hess and Beth Goza.

Friends requests

The second heading in the friends list that I introduced above are the friends requests. This is a feature that is unique to mySquare for Windows Phone, and not present in Touchality WinMoSquare. It simply allows you to accept or request a friend request via the left softkey “actions”.

In the right screenshot above you get an idea how the process works, and I’m really happy that I don’t need to launch Foursquare via my preferred webbrowser on the laptop to manage the friends requests.

The first heading in the friends list “other friends” doesn’t reall make sense to me, probably because it is just one contact in my case. I will do some more research to put my finger behind the reasoning for this part of the Friends button of the mySquare navigation bar.

Concluding thoughts and wrap-up

At first I’m really happy to see some competition on the field of Foursquare clients for Windows Phone.

Despite that this is just the public beta release of mySquare I’m really pleased with what I see in terms of performance, stability, user interface and richness of features. The application-navigation is simple, and first run mini-tutorial makes it easy to use for almost everyone.

I expect the maps-feature in the place details screen to be simply part of the non-premium version of mySquare, since the maps are an essential part of the Foursquare experience. Furthermore I’m curious to find out if the developer will choose Google Maps or Bing Maps to power this part of mySquare.

Als it is really interesting to see that if additional features will be added in the near future, and how the different versions (premium and non-premium) and their according models for monetization will evolve overtime.

While mySquare installs on the HTC Snap (Windows Mobile Standard) the non-touch navigation simply isn’t supported.

Mini comparison mySquare vs. WinMoSquare

Compared to Touchality WinMoSquare I prefer the presentation of the Foursquare information within Rising Mobile mySquare. In other words the GUI is in my opinion better looking and with the use of tabs all features can be accessed easily.

Furthermore I sometimes had stability issues with WinMoSquare on the HTC HD2, which I haven’t encountered with mySquare. Also there is a significant measurable difference in speed and “snappyness”. mySquare is very (far more) responsive and also wins on this point.

Finally it is possible to manage your friends request from mySquare, a feature that isn’t build in WinMoSquare.

Wrap-up

mySquare is my preferred Foursquare application for Windows Phone, due to some unique features, the great GUI and navigation flow, stability and responsiveness.

Download the cab-installer from the Rising Mobility website and let me know what you like or dislike about mySquare !?