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iPad App Review: DashFour Foursquare Client

Posted by Sue Spaight in Social Marketing on June 13, 2010 | 8 responses

I came across the DashFour app (version 1.3) from Project Zebra while searching the app store for Foursquare for iPad, which unbeknownst to me at the time does not yet exist. I was immediately excited by the promise: “A map-based, bigscreen foursquare client. Get the most out of foursquare and see your friends in a whole new way. Easily view what’s around you, see your badges, your mayorships and your friends.” Being a highly visual person, and one that has become rather bored with Foursquare, I thought being able to visualize the goings-on might make it more interesting and fun. Unfortunately, the app just has too many bugs and missed opportunities for useful features to be something that I would recommend to you. The Project Zebra developers have said on Twitter that they are open to input, so I’m holding out hope that they might make it better.

Here’s what the basic mapping functionality looks like (you can also choose satellite maps or a hybrid.)

Overall I think GPS is very poorly integrated into the app. It automatically maps you to your last check in instead of your current iPad location, which is a drawback particularly for use while traveling. If you want to see what foursquare venues are around you, and select “show me my current iPad location”, nine times out of ten, it will be wrong in my experience. The above screen shot is actually my trying to map to my home, which is several miles from this location. Obviously, if the maps are inaccurate, the app is pretty much useless.

In addition, with so many venues around a given location, it’s often difficult to impossible to sort through all the little pins to get to what you are looking for. It would be great if instead of just pins they were the little icons that indicate what type of venue, and if there was a filter for what type of venue you are looking for. Say I am traveling, and looking for a “foursquare popular” restaurant; right now, I am not going to find it with this app, and that could be one of it’s biggest utilities IMHO.

DashFour does live up to its promise to easily view your badges, mayorships and friends. In fact, the “show me my friends checkins” feature is probably the best right now (you can zoom in and out to visualize where all of your friends are checked in):

I could see this being a useful feature for the Foursquare-active business owner. In fact, once they get the “consumer” UI/functionality fixed, another big opportunity would be to consider features from business owners’ point of view and integrate the type of business dashboard that is relatively new to Foursquare itself. More information on that here, from Mashable.

I really do think this app it built on a great concept, but the execution needs some serious help. Please add your two cents here – what features would you like to see in a product like this?

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  • http://twitterworks.tv Joe Sorge

    Sue, thanks for sharing this review/input about Dash Four, I’m pretty much in total agreement.

    I rushed to use it the 1st day that we picked up our iPad, little did I know we’d be the 1st checkin on ANY iPad using FourSquare. Sadly though, the app doesn’t appear to have changed much since iPadurday and I just can’t get over how broken the mapping via GPS function is. It can’t seem to forget your last location. I’m also very eager to say if the guys from Project Zebra chime in here, there seems to be SO much potential.

  • admin

    Thanks for adding your two cents, Joe, always valued. There is a ton of potential here so hopefully the guys at Project Zebra will listen/weigh in. They did reply to my inquiry on Twitter that yes, they want our input. We shall see.

    Sue

  • http://whowritesforyou.com Randy Murray

    Good review – saved me an app download!

    I’m really on the fence about the whole foursquare thing. I see the potential, but like you, I grow bored with the current implementation (iPhone app/web site). I think the iPad offers some interesting potential, but I guess we’ll have to wait for this team to step up, or someone else.

  • admin

    Randy,

    Thanks for reading/commenting!!! This is my first app review and I feel I’ve now achieved a new level of geekdom : ) I’m so glad it was helpful. I totally agree, Foursquare on iPad could be really interesting. So far, no comment from Project Zebra, the DashFour developers, unfortunately. Not sure if they are going to step it up/if they still care about this app. Will ping them again.

    Sue

  • http://projectzebra.com Barry

    Hi Sue,

    Thanks for your feedback and for your app review, you make some fair points and some points that I would have a different point of view on but thats exactly as it should be :-) I’ll address some specifics for you:

    - The app starting up with your last checkin. I assume you have a 3G iPad so you would naturally be looking to use the GPS functionality, but a lot of iPads are WiFi only and can’t get an accurate location most of the time; plus this is a foursquare app, not a GPS app, so where you are checked in you could argue is the most relevant place to show. When the app was initially released it did use GPS and it was a terrible experience for non-3G users so on balance showing your checkin was the only sensible thing to do – given that the extra step of finding your current location is not too hard (when it works, see next point). I’m thinking I might add a Settings option to let you decide where to start though.

    - Showing the current iPad location. Sorry you are having trouble with that, I have good news. Cast your mind back to when the iPad came out, seems a long time :-) To get an app out for launch day required testing without a device, which for GPS and things like that is basically impossible. That coupled with the fact that I am a lone developer in Dublin (Ireland) and we don’t get iPads until the end of July. So I had to go to the UK to buy an iPad two weeks ago to see my app ‘in the flesh’ for the first time. A strange situation, the upshot of which was testing was not as good as it could have been. However now that I have had access to a device I have been working away on changes to this specifically. The next version will have the ability for you to define how accurate you want the GPS to be from 20m out to 500m (remembering the non-3G people) so the GPS should be vastly improved.

    - Icons for types of venues and to filter based on type. This is something that is on the longer term to-do list but is trickier than you would think as the types of places would have to be syncronised with foursquare (there is no method for that currently) and also not that many venues have this kind of data associated with them so a lot of places could get missed. Different icons would again have the same problem with not having category data which could lead to this being messy. That said it would be a really useful feature so I’ll elevate it up the list and have a good loook at it!

    So for Version 1.4:
    - GPS improvements and ability to set accuracy.
    - You can now do shouts, and there is no default shout any more.
    - Bug fixes on screen rotation.
    - New logo (people really hated the dashboard idea!)

    This version should be out within a couple of weeks – I can’t get the update submitted to Apple at the moment due to a paperwork issue but when thats sorted it will be out. (all devs had to sign new contracts to deal with iAds and mine has been lost or something so I’m in dev-limbo)

    Oh, this seems to have turned in to a huge response, apologies if I rambled but I hope that is of some use.
    And I hope you and your readers have the confidence that things are moving on with the app while bearing in mind that us indie developers don’t have the resources that foursquare etc have so things might move a little slower than would be ideal :-)

    Cheers
    Barry (from Project Zebra)

  • admin

    Hey Barry, thanks much for the detailed response, I really appreciate that you care enough to do that. It’s easy for me to sit here and say “it should do X” when you’re the one who has to develop that. I am most definitely not a developer. It’s too bad you have to develop for the “lowest common denominator” of the non-3G iPad, but I get that. Giving us the option of where to start would be a great solution, and I’m really excited to hear the GPS issues are being worked out. On a less technical note, personally I loved the dashboard idea – that’s exactly what it should be. If you want any input on what to change it to, I know where you can get a few opinions : ) Thanks so much for taking the time to give us all the deets – we’re looking forward to the update.

    Sue

  • http://www.sksdesigns.com Shannon – SKS Designs

    Hey Sue! I don’t have an iPad yet but love to read the app reviews to see what’s out there. Never heard of DashFour but will definitely check it out!

  • http://www.spaighttalk.com Sue Spaight

    Shannon, Thanks for stopping by and commenting. I really enjoyed writing the review – my first – and think I will be writing more of them.

    Have a great vacation (almost here). And thanks for your help with my gravatar. : )

    Sue

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