A little something fun for you Foursquare / Swarm fanatics (like me). The foursquare checkin service makes available data feeds which can be handy for mashing up or sharing. Foursquare also notes that The iCal (ICS) and Google Calendar formats are especially nice for importing and displaying your entire Foursquare check-in history in your Calendar on your computer. Feeds are made available in RSS, KML, ICS, and GCAL formats. To access from a web browser simply login to your account and jump to https://foursquare.com/feeds/
The map above shows a glimpse of my foursquare checkin history, retrieved via KML feed and connected to CartoDB for display – pretty simple!
Of interest, about a year ago (or more) I setup an automatic push of my Swarm checkin data (recall foursquare spun off their checkin service into the Swarm app) to a Google spreadsheet. This wasn’t something provided via Foursquare/Swarm settings, however, it was possible to do using IFTTT. Creating a recipe was simple, I cooked up a setting that would detect a Foursquare checkin and then push the data to a Google spreadsheet. The result is a detailed history in XLS format of all my checkin data – ideal for use in a mashup at some later time!