New Heat Tracker app turns up the heat at local sites

If you’re eager to know if a restaurant, bar or nightclub is crowded and who’s there, you’re likely using any number of check-in, location-based social networking apps.

Now, you also can use Heat Tracker (www.heattrackerapp.com), an app that launched at the App Store this week from Chicago-based Draftfcb. It aggregates those features through Foursquare along with Yelp reviews. It also integrates with your Facebook and Twitter profiles, showing friends where you are.

It rates the level of “hotness” with categories called Cold, Warm, Warming Up, Smoking Hot or On Fire.

Heat Tracker also has customizable filters that allow you to search by gender, distance and type of location, such as a restaurant, grocery store or other public place. You can pinpoint something in the suburbs, or anywhere in the world, said Patrick Moorhead, Draftfcb director of mobile platforms and a co-creator of the app. His app partner is Kevin Drew Davis, the firm’s digital creative director.

“With all the data that’s out there on where people are, we thought it would be kind of cool to get our arms around it all,” said Moorhead.

While most location-based services have different access and availability standards, Foursquare agreed to power the new app, he said.

“You can download this, open it up and look at the map on your interface,” said Moorhead. “You’ll see any number of people who have checked in at various venues, whether it’s a nightclub or bar.”

The data reflects activity within the last 10 minutes, he said.

While the app is free and targeted for the social networking types, it also could be used for marketing. It can enable a firm to determine behavioral data about users’ check-in and venue preferences, he said.

“That would be used in aggregate and help us understand where people go,” he said.

Surfing: Northfield-based Kraft Foods Inc.’s Oreo cookie is attempting to break the Guinness World Records for most “likes” on Facebook posted within 24 hours. It starts Tuesday, Feb. 15, at 8 a.m. when the 16 million fans of Oreo on Facebook can starting clicking.

ŸAnd speaking of setting records, Chicago-based Groupon (www.groupon.com) set a new Guinness World Record for speed dating on Feb. 8 when 414 daters participated in its Largest Speed Dating Event at the Paris Club in Chicago.

ŸCheck White Castle’s Facebook and Twitter sites for updates on its Valentine’s Day dinner, the annual event that started as a joke and turned into a success.

ŸAT&T, which has its Midwest headquarters in Hoffman Estates, is offering unlimited mobile calling to any mobile number nationwide, with unlimited messaging plan and other qualifying voice plan. See www.att.com/anymobile.

ŸChicago-based Navteq, a provider of maps and other navigation services, now offers TrafficT in the United Arab Emirates.

ŸFollow Anna Marie Kukec on LinkedIn and Facebook and as AMKukec on Twitter.