Dropping foursquare use, at least for now

Much to my wife’s displeasure I’ve done a lot of foursquare check ins over the last months.  The whole notion of it always seemed to be an invasion of my personal privacy, but hey, this mobile thing is really the next wave (I *still* know that in my bones) and somehow foursquare had some buzz, seemed relevant.   There’s a lot of possibility in it:  a way to tell a location that you are there, and if you are a valued customer maybe they reward you.  It’s a way to crowd source what’s cool and hot (though I’m past that part of my life, I guess).  It’s a way to signal to friends where you are, so they can join you for a beverage (or whatever).  The promise was worth dorking around with it.

But this past few weeks I have struggled.  I try to check in on my Nexus One and I get server time outs.  And then again.  And then again.  I’d try a few times and give up.  Then it would not use my current location but would recall where I was last, it seemed (maybe a bug in the android client?) and give me a list of venues that were totally WRONG and force me to do a refresh.  And then the server would time out.  AGAIN.

After months of using it, I still have no reward for doing so.  No promise of it either.  So it’s become a frustrating experience of revealing my private location information.  Uhm, why?

So, at least for awhile, no more.  I’ll recover those moments of my life and see what service comes along to replace foursquare.  Surely someone will.