First look: Loopt provides more incentives to try location-based services with Loopt Star

Loopt's CEO, Sam Altman, visited me in one of my favorite restaurants (Tres Amigos in Half Moon Bay) to show me his new iPhone app that brings incentives from major brands to use it to check into your favorite businesses. This signals yet another shift in location-based services: one where businesses are willing to give you something to get you to demonstrate your loyalty.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• loopt
• sam altman
• mobile
• location
• check in
• business
• iphone

[junkbop]

Hey Robert! Love your stuff -- and the fact that you get away with doing this for a living :)

More to the point: I recently bought the new Canon T2i, partly b/c I want to use it for this kind of interview footage. What hardware are you using aside from the camera/lens combo? What about audio capture and storage? Do you ever use any auxiliary lighting? Do you convert from .mov to other formats, and if so what do you use for converting? What do you use for editing?

Thanks and keep it up!

[Scobleizer]

@junkbop I don't use lighting. At least I haven't until now. I just am building a studio for home, so if you see videos filmed inside my house those are probably done with lights. I just use iMovie to convert from the MOV format to one that is smaller for upload and not quite as high a resolution (YouTube doesn't like letting me upload files that are bigger than 1gb -- my Canon usually shoots 14 minutes which turns into a 4GB file, so they need to be crunched down.

[Scobleizer]

@junkbop I don't use other hardware other than usually a Bogen monopod and a Rode Stereo Microphone.

[jorincowley]

Great review Robert! What kind of camera and lens did you use?

[Scobleizer]

@jorincowley I use a Canon 5D MK II and a 17-40 mm F4.0 Canon L Series lens.

[dwarfer777]

what's with dumb camera angles

[Wilsonllkerr]

Wow, a lot here...thanks!

[lanerapp]

Loyalty and Referrals. Retailers want to reward me for bringing in my friends! That beats building entertaining writing cred on Yelp.

[supermaucat]

Loopt just plain sucks :(

[ronenm82]

It's really great to hear you ask for support to these services to Israel. I know that foursquare works in Israel, but if it shows me on the map that my gym is actually inside a big forest, I don't think it's working very well. maybe needs some tweaking, since Google maps really work well in Israel.

[Spodie001]

Too bad you have to log in using Facebook.

I love Loopt Pulse, but I won't be using this app until I can use it with Buzz or Twitter.