Everyone keeps telling me how they find all these great bargains and deals by using the location features in their iPhones, but I have an iPhone too and I have no idea how to find any of this stuff. It's a phone. What am I missing?

I'd like to let my friends check in to my house on Foursquare when they get to my place for a party, but I really don't want to have my address be out there for the public at large. Is there some sort of solution where I can retain my privacy but still be a Foursquare venue?

I've seen some people on Google Plus checking in at specific Google Places venues but I don't see how they're doing that. Google Local is shut down and I can't figure out how, using the iPhone mobile interface, they're doing it. Help!

I've created a Facebook Places venue for my cafe and am pleased with the results (and the tracking analytics, very cool!) What I'd like to do is offer some sort of coupon incentive to help people spread the word about my place. Can you step me through how to set up a Facebook Deal for my venue and best practices both?

My friends are claiming that they signed up for Foursquare before I did, and I say Feh! How can I quickly figure out my Foursquare account number so I can prove to them I was there first?

A colleague of mine had a very weird thing happen yesterday: he checked in to a restaurant just before a lunch meeting, and some random person called the restaurand and asked to be connected to him. He had no idea who it was and it's set off quite a firestorm in the office about whether anyone in the company should use geolocation checkin games. I think it's a bit overblown, but want to know, how can I see who are my Foursquare friends and remove those I don't know?

I'm baffled! I want to start using Facebook Places when I'm in public venues (having read your article yesterday about Facebook Places and Privacy, thanks for that!) but it can't ever find my location. Is there some secret to getting it to work on my iPhone 4?

I'm a big fan of geolocation apps and have been using Foursquare almost since it first arrived on the scene. I like knowing where my friends are and having accidental, synergistic meetings with new friends based on my willingness to share my location information. Facebook, however, is a world where I share my status updates with over 1,300 people and I don't really want all of them to know where I am most of the time. If I did, I'd include it in a status update!

That's why when Facebook introduced Facebook Places, I was a bit leery. Worse, not only do they now have check-ins, but they'll show people who are checked in to your current venue even if you're not friends, and will let other people check you in if they're in the same place.

Disaster. But fixable...

I've got a real problem, Dave. My college-age son had a party in my house while my younger children and I were on a trip and now I find that my house is a venue in Foursquare called "Party House". I don't want that. At all! How can I delete my house as a Foursquare venue??

Based on your enthusiasm for Foursquare, I have been getting more into it and am connecting with a variety of different people in my community. Generally it's good fun and since I only check in when I am in a public setting, I have no worries about privacy with people I don't know. Except there's this one guy who uses his checkins to advertise his workshops incessantly and it's annoying to get those alerts. I want to unfriend him. But how can I do that in Foursquare?

I went to check in to a local bar in Foursquare and was rather surprised to find that it existed twice in their database as a venue. That can't be good. Is there some way to clean that up or otherwise fix things so that there's one venue?

When I go to the local gym and want to check in on Foursquare, I always have to search for the venue rather than having the app just show me it as an option for my current location. What's up with that?

My son and his friends are really into a iPhone program called Foursquare, and whenever they go somewhere, they "check in" so that they can find each other. Neat idea. Is there some way that I can add my own restaurant to the list of places where people can check in so that they'll see we're popular and perhaps check us out?

My friends are all into playing the game "FourSquare" and when I checked it out, it looks like it's only for smartphones like the iPhone. Kinda stinks because I don't have a "smart" phone, just a regular cellphone. Am I stuck in the cold, or is there some way to play FourSquare from my Mac laptop?