Have more fun doing everyday things! GreenGoose is a place where you can download and play real-world apps.

Feel closer to those important to you. Examples: has your dog been walked or fed? Are the kids home from school? Has your grandma taken her medicine?

Make playtime more about playing together. Sensors on toys make it fun to share and make new friends.

With more than 100 sensors in development, we have a lot more fun on its way. Keep an eye out for new sensors to add to your base-station. For developers, we have a developer’s page so you dig into our API and get information about upcoming sensors!

More info at http://www.greengoose.com

IBM “Master Inventor” Michael Paolini believes being rewarded in real time for improving one’s habits is exactly what will affect human behavior and help people become healthier. One of the inventors of a new IBM patent “Providing consumers with incentives for healthy eating habits”, Paolini says the “method, system, and program” was created so that it can be implemented in a variety of ways to accommodate groups with very different needs – be it your health insurance company, your gluten-free diet group, or your employer. But in order for the program to work, use of the system must be voluntary and trust has to first be established.

You can read the whole article at http://www.foodandtechconnect.com/site/2012/01/23/new-ibm-patent-allows-licensees-to-incentivize-good-eating-habits/

You can find all the information at http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2012/01/18/visual-studio-achievements-program-brings-gamification-to-development.aspx

Achivy provides you to see your and your friends’:

• Achievement “badges”
• Achievement levels and scores
• Top and recent users for all applications
• Progress bars and analytics to see how close you are to complete your tasks that encourages you to earn new badges
• Challenge with your friends
• You can even have some gifts and join loyalty programmes.

They will be releasing their API (http://achivy.com/c/api) soon

Kris Duggan, CEO of Badgeville, said that with Social Fabric, social sharing goes up 100 percent, and user generated content increases by 50 percent. Page views also go up 20-30 percent. Websites can start to enjoy some of the engagement that has made Facebook so sticky.

You can read the whole article at http://gigaom.com/2011/09/12/badgeville-turns-any-website-into-a-social-network/

While this feature could encourage users to visit Google News more often, the main purpose is to find people that know a lot of things about certain topics. “Your badges are private by default, but if you want, you can share your badges with your friends. Tell them about your news interests, display your expertise, start a conversation or just plain brag about how well-read you are,” suggests Google.

Instead of manually adding your favorite topics to your profile, you could add Google News badges. It’s one way to show your expertise and it could be useful if Google plans to integrate Aardvark with Google+ and launch a social Q&A service.

You can read the whole blog entry at http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/07/google-news-badges.html

In addition the system collects data about the activity of users contributing to an article. Based on this data the system weekly calculates the most important user. User can level up and compete with each other through ranking mechanisms.

For more details see:

http://www.fit.fraunhofer.de/presse/11-06-10.html

(German only)

With OpenFeint’s SDK you can let your players:

• Earn Rewards – Unlock achievements by playing games.
• Play with Friends – Invite friends from Facebook, Twitter, and your address book.
• Challenge the Leader – Beat the highest scorers at their own game.
• Build your Profile – Define your gamer identity

OpenFeint supports the iOS and Android mobile platforms.

You can fin all the information at http://openfeint.com

You can find the article here: http://mashable.com/2011/05/04/social-location-apps-study/

published an article and an infographic about why people do check-in

All the information at http://www.projectsparadise.com/reward-recognition-strategies/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+projectsparadise+%28Projectsparadise.com+-+Projects%2C+Dissertation%2C+Thesis%2C+Working+Papers%29#

The Internet is a vast landscape and your audience spends their time in many different places. CrowdTwist’s activity engine intelligently tracks consumer interactions with your brand both on and off your website (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, iTunes, Ticketmaster, Amazon, etc.) like consuming, creating & sharing content, commenting, playing games, purchasing, etc. This system encourages increased engagement while driving rich data into their Control Center.

Proprietary CrowdTwist software and algorithms manage activity priority and point values to keep users coming back again and again to earn points. User levels and badges are awarded based on their number of points and evolving engagement activities. These points can then be used for real world rewards and discounts, not just a virtual good.

You can find all the information at http://www.crowdtwist.com/

You can watch the video at http://www.ted.com/talks/dave_meslin_the_antidote_to_apathy.html

Read more: http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/engage-calibreapps-com-set-goals-for-your-team

You can find all the information at http://www.getupp.com/

Yes, beginning today when the integration goes fully live, you’ll be able to earn reward points at venues around the world simply by taking a picture and sharing it on Instagram. This may mean hotel points, air miles, or other benefits at the over 10,000 places Topguest currently works with. All you have to do is link up Topguest to your Instagram account (via their new API) and make sure your picture is geotagged at the venue.

You can read the whole blog entry at http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/27/topguest-instagram/

You start by defining a goal, picking a deadline (all good, measurable goals have deadlines), and inviting some of your Facebook friends to verify whether or not you accomplish your goal. Then you make a financial contribution to Goalfinch. This money is “on the line” until you either reach or fail to reach the goal. It’s an additional incentive to motivate you to go out and get it done.

When you reach your goal, your friends should sign in to Goalfinch and confirm that you have succeeded. By default, Goalfinch won’t count your goal as successful until all the friends you invited come to the site and do this. If you succeed before the deadline, congratulations! Goalfinch will send your contribution back to you. If you fail, however, Goalfinch will donate the money to a charitable or non-profit organization (you can select one while defining your goal).

You also have the option to distribute your contribution proportionally: For each friend that confirms you’ve completed your goal, we’ll return a portion of your money to you, up to the full amount. For example, if you invite three friends to verify your goal but only two of them confirm that you complete it, you’ll get two thirds of your money back. The rest will be donated.

You can find all the information at http://goalfinch.com

You can get the paper at http://research.yahoo.com/node/3469

Guest Editors:
Jim Ang and Ania Bobrowicz, School of Engineering and Digital Arts,
University of Kent
Panayotis Zaphiris, Department of Multimedia and Graphic Arts, Cyprus
University of Technology
Ben Schneiderman, Human Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland

Call Description:
Recently we have witnessed an increasing proliferation of new digital
technologies such as online social networking sites, micro-blogging
and virtual worlds which has changed the way we communicate and
interact with each other. Studies are being conducted in order to
investigate these interesting socio-technological phenomena.

To date, little research has been published on inclusive design in the
context of social networking and emerging technologies. These
technologies have the potential to impact positively on the lives of a
wide range of people including older people, disabled people, and
people from different social and cultural backgrounds. For example, it
is claimed that the fastest growing demographic of the social
networking sites is women over 55 years old (Facebook Global Monitor,
2009).

With this special issue, we aim to analyse existing and novel ways in
which these audiences use social networks and emerging technologies.
We ask questions such as: How can these technologies be designed to be
more inclusive? What motivates people to engage with these new
technologies? What are the effects on people’s behaviour, attitudes
and social interactions? What methods can be used to analyse these
interactions?

This special issue of Interacting with Computers invites contributions
from the academic community, industry and design practitioners. We
welcome research papers that trigger discussions based on
investigations, case studies and overviews in this area.

Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):
• Inclusive design issues related to social media and emerging technologies
• Concepts, methods and frameworks aimed at motivating people to participate
• Case studies of various social and cultural contexts
• The impact of participation on society and culture
• Different user groups’ engagement with social media
• New technologies such as virtual worlds and augmented humans
• The application of these technologies in a variety of settings
(e-democracy, communities, sustainability and environment, etc.)

Submission Details:
Please submit a 300-500 word abstract to Dr Jim Ang
(c.s.ang@kent.ac.uk) no later than 28th January 2011. Please include
full contact information and a biographical note (up to 75 words) on
each of the authors.

Important Dates:
28th January 2011: Deadline for abstract submission
25th February 2011: Announcement of results and full paper invitations
29th April 2011: Submission of full papers
24th June 2011: Response to authors
2nd September 2011: Final submission

When you start doing things in Jume, you will quickly notice:

• Motivation: How your friends and social circle motivate you to get things done faster.
• Participation: How your friends participate in real-life to help you complete your tasks.
• Learning: How you can gain more local knowledge to get things done.
• Socializing: How you’ll find new people with similar interests around you.
• Saving: How you can save with cool offers and discounts offered to applicable tasks.

In fact, this is how jume.in works:

You can find all the information at http://jume.in