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It was just over a year ago I started using Four Square, the location based App “game” where you get points by check into locations your at.

A guy in the tech world who turned me on to Four Square told me it was going to be the next HOT social networking deal and I had to get on it.

So I did.

At the time I really didn’t get the concept of Four Square and a year later I still really don’t.

You check in at restaurants, hotels, airline terminals, pretty much everywhere you go in a day and if you check into a place a lot you may get to become Mayor of the place. (assuming no on else is already).

Some places treat their Mayor’s pretty well offering them free drinks to free food to discounts.

I get that I might be cool to be the Mayor of say the Four Seasons Hotel in New York or the city of Miami Beach or the Empire State Building.

However after one year It seems just about every place I check into already has a Mayor and that Mayor isn’t me.

Sure there are some “places” that still come up on Four Square that still have no Mayor, like the “Dumpster behind the 7-11″ which popped up on my screen the other day but somehow that doesn’t have the same wow factor as being Mayor of the Four Seasons.

Maybe its just me.

Users of Four Square also get “Badges” based on their check-in’s so if your a frequent flier you might get the “Jetsetter” badge or if your a boater you might get “I’m on a boat” Badge.

There are a lot of Badges.

Of course the Badges are virtual and there doesn’t appear to be any prize money involved.

Or any other benefit other than i guess telling your friends you basically have no life but a have been awarded a bunch of worthless Badges. (14 as of time of publication)

My tech friend was right about one thing, a year later Four Square is huge.

I got an email from Four Square a couple of days ago and the numbers are pretty amazing:

In 2010:

“We grew from 175,000 to over 6,000,000 users”

“You guys checked in 381,576,305 times in 2010″

6 Million Users and almost a half of billion check-in’s

Wow that was some year.

How many of you are on Four Square?

If you haven’t heard about Facetime its part of the new iPhone and allow you to see the other party your talking to, kind of like Skype does with a computer but unlike Skype you won’t have to accept a permanent invitation from someone that lets them see when your always online.

Since Facetime uses Wi-Fi rather than 3G quality is likely to be excellent and of course the screen itself it top rate.

As you also may know, Apple has been very anti-adult, not allowing any sort of adult apps in its store.

As soon as FaceTime was announced my first thought was this would make a great platform for adult “chat” and cam sites.

Now an ad has been spotted in the New York Craigs List:

“”Starting an online interactive pornography firm where woman will use the iphone 4 to video chat with potential customers on a pay as you go basis.
Hours are flexible, pay will increase as the business builds.

“”Woman will receive a free iphone 4 to use as personal time when not working. Woman will talk to potential clients and chat with them and perform various acts as desired by clients. All information will be confidential.”"

“”Payment will be based on percentage of sales volume and performance. Potential launch date of the company is 9/1/2010 or based on feedback received.”"

“”Woman will receive, as before mentioned, a free cell phone and a very competitive salary.”"

Please send information and pictures – we would like to launch sooner than 9/1/2010.

* Location: NYC/LI
* Telecommuting is ok.
* This is a part-time job.
* This is a contract job.
* This is at a non-profit organization.
* This is an internship job
* OK for recruiters to contact this job poster.
* Phone calls about this job are ok.
* Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

So here are the questions that I have?

Now what will or can Apple do to stop the use of its product for what maybe the biggest explosion (pun intended) in adult entertainment in years?

Will Facetime, further erode the internet adult entertainment industry or somehow help to revive it?

Will a great domain be of any use in the new age of Facetime or will it be irrelevant?

Have no interest in adult, remember that adult is always the first, not the last to use technology in new ways.

If a Facetime adult industry develops, main street will closely follow.

Network Solutions announced today that its launched a its free whois app for the iphone.

First the official announcement then my comments and comparison other free whois apps currently available

“”"The app developed by Network Solutions allows iPhone users to use the company’s WHOIS database search tool from anywhere their iPhones receive service. The application will be particularly useful to Web designers, developers, and network engineers on the go.

“”"Available now at the iTunes® store online, the WHOIS allows users to easily look up information on the domain or IP of their choice, finding all relevant information, including the WHOIS business listing.”"”

“”"”Network Solutions has been working with the WHOIS database since its inception,” said Kamalesh Dwivedi, Network Solutions CIO. “The addition of this mobile capability follows the release of the WHOIS lookup mobile application for Google’s Android operating system earlier this year. Extending this capability to the iPhone platform will benefit users in a major way.”"”

Ok so much for the official announcement.

Now for the reality check.

NSI application doesn’t hold a candle to two other free whois apps, already available on the Apple App store.

For one the NSI app doesn’t make available the soft key .com button on the iphone, so for every domain you check on the NSI app you have to type in the domain, change from the letter screen to the symbol screen to get the “.” then switch back to the letter screen to type in the “com”.

Both, The Easydns app available for free from the Apple App store and the “Free Whois” app make use of the .com button.

The NSI App uses black and white fonts, nothing special there.

Finally the NSI APP doesn’t seem to work.

On 5 trys I only got whois results  back 1 of the  5 domains that are clearly registered.

Freewhois App returns results in colors, much easier on the eyes and even better the domain name, and the servers in the whois record are both clickable so if you want to check out what is on the domain you just looked up, you just click on the link and it takes you there.

The only draw back to the FreeWhois App is that the font is pretty small on the imput side.

EasyDNS App is better than NSI, it uses the “.com” button nicely and results are returned quickly, but once again in black and white and without links.

So I declare the FreeWhois App the winner.

The question I have Is how could a company the size of NSI come out with an App inferior to existing products.

When you see what other companies have produced,  how  can you put out a product which not only fails to improve on what’s already out, but fails to even match existing products, it just blows my mind.