I was quite enthusiastic about check-ins when the good old Plazes service was launched back in 2004. One of the great things about that service was that originally check-ins were based on the WiFi access point you were connected to. This made them effectively automatic.
Unfortunately they had a very problematic rewrite from PHP to Rails that lost them quite a bit of their user base, and later Nokia bought the company.
Here are some notes from the one and only PlazeCamp they held just before the acquisition:
The key points with Plazes were: automatic check-ins (it only asked you for information when nobody had connected to that network before), nice statistics (how much you travel per day, who spends time in the same place as you), and also some fun stuff like racing to see who registers most new plazes.
Unfortunately they had a very problematic rewrite from PHP to Rails that lost them quite a bit of their user base, and later Nokia bought the company.
Here are some notes from the one and only PlazeCamp they held just before the acquisition:
http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/plazecamp/ http://fourstarters.com/2008/01/17/plazecamp-wrapup/
The key points with Plazes were: automatic check-ins (it only asked you for information when nobody had connected to that network before), nice statistics (how much you travel per day, who spends time in the same place as you), and also some fun stuff like racing to see who registers most new plazes.