I got the email telling me FourSquare 1.4 is out.  I ran outside (because my iphone does not work in my office) updated the app, played with it, took a few screen shots, and then sat down to write about it. And then I took a quick look at the email again and techcrunch did a really nice (pre) review.. So much so, that I can only comment.

First, a link to the TC review..

So instead of going through everything, I’ll point out the a few things I really like..

Know who is here: BIG win!  I like the idea of checking in somewhere only to find out that friends are at the same place. Sweet.  Kind of the promise of foursquare in a way. You can also see other ‘foursqure’ people at the same place that you do not know already.. Not sure if you want to know them?  If they connected their twitter or facebook account to foursqure, you can read their steam.  Now we are talking social media.

Privacy settings: Not sure you want non-friends knowing you are somewhere?  They got it covered. I tend to be on the under-share side, not sure why, so this is a very important feature for me.  Notice that you can get to your setting by going to foursquare.com.  Yup, someone got their funding.

Much Better Map: ..you can now click on the map in a venue’s “Details” section, and it will load a larger Google Map which you can manipulate just as you would the regular iPhone Maps application. However, you still cannot get directions to a venue from your current location within the app (but you can do this by clicking through and going to the Maps application on the iPhone).. MG goes on to question why he cannot see his friends on the map.  Yea, that would be nice, but not a big deal to me.

Tweets Near Me: This is a kinda of ‘neat’ trick feature because you cannot set the range.  If they could curtail it to 500′ or something, then that would be more interesting.

Foursquare is pretty cool if you have not played with it yet.  Its free, so why not?