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As Foursquare's 10 million members check into locations in cities around the world, much of that location data can be accessed in unique and fascinating ways, thanks to the service's ever-improving API.
Here we've collected six of our favorite Foursquare applications. Each stays true to Foursquare's original mission by encouraging us to get out and experience the world around us in rich new ways, all the while making our place and checkin data come alive.
With Foursquare's growing popularity, there are almost too many interesting and handy applications to count, so make sure to share your personal favorites in the comments.
Scoville
How well do you know your city, and are you willing to share your prized city secrets with your friends and neighbors? Scoville, a private beta site for Foursquare superusers, makes the clever assumption that those active on Foursquare are likely to have an intimate knowledge of the best coffee shops, bars, restaurants and venues in their home towns.
Scoville's rich integration with Foursquare makes it easy to pluck the best places you visit each week and place them on a weekly #toptuesday list that you can distribute to friends on the site or out to Facebook and Twitter.
Even better than #toptuesday is Scoville's latest addition -- the Likebox. Create Likeboxes for timeless lists that include your picks for the best vegan eateries, mexican restaurants, grocery stores, fast food joints, coffee shops and so forth in your 'hood. It's a simple, fun and easy way to curate your Foursquare checkins and create city recommendations.
Sonar
Sonar, an application for iPhone, uses Foursquare checkin data and your Facebook and Twitter social graphs to help you determine if you have things in common with others checked in at the same venue.
Fire up the app, connect with Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter and watch as Sonar identifies Facebook and/or Twitter friends you have in common with other patrons. You can then tweet at or follow people from inside the app.
Ideally, Sonar will encourage you to make contact with new people.
Localmind
Localmind adds a question-and-answer layer on top of your Foursquare (Gowalla and Facebook) checkins.
Sign up to use the web app or iPhone app and you're essentially opting in to receiving questions from other app users curious about the venue that you're checked in to.
"The power of Localmind is you can get remote omniscience. You can see what's happening anywhere in the world through other people's eyes," co-founder Lenny Rachitsky tells Mashable.
The next time you have a time-sensitive question about a nearby or faraway place, why not message someone who's actually there?
When Should I Visit?
Traveling to London this summer? You might want to pay a visit to When Should I Visit? first.
The site, built in 24 hours at the Culture Hackday event in January, gathers data from Foursquare to calculate the least (and most) busy times at London's galleries, museums and theaters. It's a simple tool to discover when best to visit London attractions.
4squareand7yearsago
What were you doing a year ago today? Foursquare users can turn to 4squareand7yearsago for a trip down memory lane.
This simple application hooks into your Foursquare account to send you a daily email reminder of what you did on the same day last year.
4squareand7yearsago, built at Foursquare's hack day 2011, amplifies nostalgia for a digital generation of social media socialites who often lose themselves in the here today/gone tomorrow nature of checkins and status updates.
Image courtesy of Flickr, dpstyles
WeePlaces
WeePlaces aims to make your Foursquare checkins useful. Use it to create an embeddable geoprofile of your experiences, activities and the places you've been, as sourced from your past checkins.
Plus, it's entertaining to watch as WeePlaces plots your checkins on a map, and you can zoom in or out of the interactive map for a narrower or wider perspective. We also give the application bonus points for letting you compare your checkins against friends' checkins to see where your activities overlap.
Just make sure to lock down your WeePlaces profile -- use the lock icon at the top -- if you don't want your geoprofile to be public.
WeePlaces also makes a sister map-based application called Ratio Finder. You can use the tool to find places in San Francisco or New York where there's a higher than average ratio of men to women or vice versa.
WeePlaces comes from Movity.com, a geo-focused startup that came out of Y Combinator's accelerator program.
Image courtesy of Flickr, poperotico
More About: 4squareand7yearsago, foursquare, foursquare apps, Localmind, Scoville, Sonar.me, trending, WeePlaces, When Should I Visit?
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