Mashable Top Apps for 2011

Mashable features the top 10 apps to watch for 2011. While some don’t seem to be too interesting for me and some to be just „me too“ apps that need to proove that they offer never seen additional value, one looked rather interesting to me: GetGlue

It let’s you checkin into Movies, Books, Shows, etc.

Somehow people got used to „checking in“ to things. And they also got used to sharing experiences. Weird concept though, that you check into a book. But the social aspect is great, because (as with foursquare) you can leave tips, comments, see who also checked in to that particular medium, etc. Does this need to be a „mobile“ app? Think not, as there does not seem to be any location aspect to it.

It also seems to be a cool recommendation engine. I wonder what else people will get the chance to check into? Meals, drinks? And who has the time to constantly update their checkin status for every single detail of life? I already keep forgetting to check in with foursquare all the time.

Location based apps developments.

Foursquare and Gowalla are continously improving and updating their services. Latest news:

Foursquare is cracking down on cheaters. If your phone’s GPS determines that you’re not close to where you want to check in, you are not rewarded any points or mayorships.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work with my iPhone, it won’t let me check into my Office, even though I am sitting in it. Looking at Google Maps, though, it seems that my GPS does indeed place me correctly.

This is a good move nevertheless. In the last month during my trip to Thailand I could well check into locations here in Hamburg whenever I wanted, enabling me to keep up the battle for the mayorship of your office here…

Gowalla in the meantime adds realtime feeds and activity streams based on the PubSubHubbub protocoll. This should enbale much more interesting mashup opportunities (since it is apparently faster than the user-specific RSS feeds that Foursquare uses). If this is the case it could yield an important differentiator for Gowalla, which to me seems to desparatly need something to effectively compete with the larger competitor Foursquare.