This morning while "on assignment" for a client in the Land of Food Blogs I happened across a new application called DontEat.at. This clever little application cross references your Foursquare check-ins at New York City eating establishments with their corresponding inspection scores from the NYC Dept. of Health. If you should happen to check-in at a restaurant with an inspection score of "C" or worse you will receive a notification. Asks the website, "Do you really want to eat at a place like that?"

DontEat.at was coded by Max Stoller as part of the NYC BigApps competition. Max says he plans to expand the service beyond NYC in the future.

I really like the layer of utility DontEat.at adds to Foursquare. In addition to more adding more cities, I'd love to see the ability to connect DontEat.at with both Gowalla and SCVNGR so as to make the service available to people regardless of their location-based app affiliation. Or, Max could just sell his app to Foursquare and pay off his student loans. Either way it's a win for Max, so I say well done, sir!

As marketers, we often think about social media in terms of its usefulness in promoting the brands we represent and its ability to connect them with fans on a more personal, interactive level. As consumers, we often think of social media as a way to stay abreast of new offerings from the brands we like. As friends and family members, we often think of social media as a way to stay in touch with our loved ones. As members of a culture with an increasingly shortening attention span, we think of social media as a way to pass the time on the train or a filler for the time it takes the hostess to tell us our table is ready.

Social media is indeed all of these things and many more, but I wonder how many of us have considered what an important role social media and the Internet (these terms are quickly converging) is playing in changing the world. Yes, that's right; social media and the Internet are helping change the world.

Social media has and is playing an empowering role in a number of international events, from last year's Iranian election protests and Haiti earthquake relief efforts to recent protests in Egypt (see video above). Clearly not everyone in the world is using Facebook to play Farmville; not everyone on Twitter is just talking about what they had for lunch.

The big takeaway is that social media is not a fluke, fad or passing trend. In fact, the only thing new about social media is the term social media, as the Internet has been "social" (i.e. fostering and facilitating connections between people) almost since its inception. Remember...

Sports have always been an excellent outlet to utilize social media. Much of the appeal that lies within sports is centered around conversation. We don't just watch sports, we talk about them. We analyze every piece of information that can possibly be analyzed. We debate things that aren't even worth being debated for the sake of argument. Sports are largely conversational.

Social media is also inherently conversational, so the two make for a perfect pair. The NFL and Visa realize this and have partnered to form a Super Bowl Twitter aggregator.

The site pulls mentions related to the big game into a cool looking interface. The home screen displays three tabs: one for NFL player's tweets, one for NFL media, and another for NFL personnel.

A secondary tab pulls you into the 'Steelers vs Packers' window where you can see day-by-day results of which team is receiving the most mentions on Twitter. Right underneath you are able to select specific players on each of the Super Bowl bound teams to tweet at through the site's interface. Below that is a live stream of mentions for each team.

A third 'Map' tab has a visual of the US along with who each state appears to be rooting for based on Twitter mentions and trending topics.

I love this use of Twitter for the Super Bowl and will honestly...

BFG is super excited to announce a partnership with one of our favorite up-and-coming technologies, the location-based game SCVNGR.

If you're not yet hip to SCVNGR, you soon will be. SCVNGR is a game all about going places, doing challenges and earning points. As SCVNGR's first certified partner, BFG will be bringing SCVNGR's game layer to the food service industry.

BFG and SCVNGR have already been working together in the food service category, having launched a campaign earlier this month in Buffalo Wild Wings locations across the country. That campaign centers around basketball and gets restaurant-goers taking part in challenges on their smartphones, and winning instant prizes and rewards that are redeemable on the spot (not to mention qualifying for a grand prize trip to the NBA finals with Scottie Pippen).

By putting SCVNGR's API into play in an interactive leaderboard, players can also get a look at where they stand versus their friends or how well their favorite Buffalo Wild Wings location is doing versus others.

The campaign has out-performed all goals from the very beginning. Within the first two weeks of the campaign, over 33,000 people played SCVNGR at Buffalo Wild Wings locations and one in three players have come back to play again.

Its success speaks to SCVNGR's potential and one of the reasons for the partnership. "SCVNGR goes way beyond the location-based check-in, allowing for deeper interaction and social engagement with brands," said Kevin Meany, CEO of BFG.

Rejoice! All of you lazy forgetful gift shoppers now have another option in the e-gifting market. Today, Starbucks launched the option of sending a e-gift card to friends via their site or through Facebook. This announcement comes not long after they made pay by mobile phone available in all of their company owned locations.

With some 19 million+ Facebook fans I expect this to be a successful venture for Starbucks though I did see a small flaw in the process. The user experience is different when using the Starbucks website vs. their Facebook app.

Sending a gift card through their site is pretty easy. If you've connected with Facebook it'll pull up your friends and allow you to pick from the list (or email if you'd prefer). To accomplish the same task through the Facebook app, your friends have to have already accepted app. If they haven't, there is only an option to invite them to use it so that you could send a gift once they do. When on their site you can filter your Facebook friends by birthday and schedule gifts to be sent on a future date; set it & forget it! I couldn't tell if this is the same through Facebook since none of my friends have installed the app.

On the receiving end, if you decide to send via Facebook, the recipient receives a notification and a post on their wall that alerts them to the gift. Once they click on...