The Orange Champion badge can be unlocked beginning May 26 by liking Orange and checking in at events like the French Open (which begins Sunday), the Tour de France, as well as the soccer and rugby championships. Fans will gain additional levels for checking in to more events.

Users will be able to connect their Foursquare accounts to Orange (using a link revealed in the unlock text) to be eligible for exclusive prizes.

This is the second badge from Orange France. Last June they sponsored a badge for the Tour de France.

What do you think of the new badge?

Today they’ve announced a partnership with Gnip that will open the full firehose of check-in data — anonymized, of course — for research purposes. Retailers will be able to study the success of advertising campaigns; city planners will be better able to study the dynamics of their cities; and academics will be able to compare the location patterns of people all around the world.

For each check-in, Foursquare is making just the basic location information, time and date and gender of the user available through Gnip. This keeps the data anonymous and ensure no one will have access to a particular user’s location or be able to track them across multiple check-ins. That data is, of course, essential to Foursquare’s Explore algorithms, so they’re hanging on to it for their own purposes.

Gnip powers similar firehose data products for Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress and Disqus, so researchers are familiar with their offerings. The data will be available in two packages: the full firehose and a filtered version via Gnip’s PowerTrack service.

What kinds of research would you like to see derived from Foursquare’s data?

The filters — accessed by tapping the “filter” button at the upper right when starting an Explore search — allow you to show places:

• You have or haven’t been to before
• Your friends have been
• Offering Foursquare specials
• That are open
• That are on your to-do list
• In a particular price range

Like the desktop version, the filters can be combined in all sorts of ways to, for instance, find the cheap brunch places your friends have been but you haven’t or places on your to-do list that are offering a special. They make Explore even more useful as a search engine for finding places to go right now.

The update is now available on the iTunes store and Google Play.

What do you think of the new filters?

/Updated (11:41 am) to reflect launch of Android version.

Our memory of each day is made up of little snippets, which come together to form a complete memory of the day. With Days, you can assemble those snippets together using photos and animated GIFs to form a complete “day” that can be shared with friends in a sort of “visual diary.”

The photos and animated GIFs are easy to take right within the app. Tap the shutter button once for a photo or multiple times in a row to create an animation. Each moment can be tagged with a location from Foursquare to give it a little more context.

Your days can’t be posted until the day is done, so you won’t be tempted to post a day that’s only part-way through. They can be automatically be shared with your friends on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr, or emailed to contacts from your address book.

After seeing a few posts from friends, I finally get it. Days isn’t something you’ll use for your mundane, everyday routines, but it’s a fun way to share the days that are a little bit different.

Days is free in the iTunes app store. Give it a try and let us know what you think in the comments.

The new feature allows users to copy and paste hours from the venue’s website, which are then automatically parsed by Foursquare to match their format. It’s a huge improvement over the old method of adding hours, which required entering each different time period manually.

Over the weekend, I tried to stump the system and only found one out of 20 that Foursquare wasn’t able to parse correctly, and even then it was very easy to see what went wrong and correct the problem so Foursquare could understand it. Foursquare even threw an error when the hours were far outside those where people normally check in.

Any user can suggest hours for a venue by visiting the venue page and clicking the “show more” link and then “add hours.” Edits from higher level superusers are added immediately, while those added by lower level users must be approved by a superuser (in the address changes queue).

By making it very easy for users to add the hours for venues, it’s clear Foursquare wants more data on the hours venues are actually open. They are already able to provide pretty good guesses based on check-in patterns at each venue, but this gives them concrete data that helps to make Explore results even more accurate.

Have you tried adding hours for a venue? What do you think of this new system?

/Thanks to Ryan Wallace for the tip!

Earlier this week, however, Foursquare quietly pushed an update that lets you see more of those places with a link at the bottom of each section. The links point to an Explore search with special filters just for the places people go next or similar places.

These new searches make it easier to find several places to go on a night out or to find more places similar to ones you like already.

Now that Facebook has completed the rollout of their new Timeline design to all users, it’s time to take a look at Foursquare’s new section that appears on your Timeline (it first launched a few months ago, when Facebook began the rollout). It highlights all your activity on Foursquare that’s been shared to Facebook.

The box features five tabs:

• Recent Check-ins: shows the most recent check-ins you’ve shared to Facebook. Like all the tabs, it’s highly visual, so you’ll see either a picture you added at the location or one from another user.
• Top Places: shows the top places where you’ve shared check-ins to Facebook.
• Map: a map of all your Foursquare check-ins (that have been shared to Facebook)
• Badges unlocked: shows the most recent badges you unlocked before Foursquare stopped sharing them to Facebook. It appears this section is no longer being updated.
• Recently saved: this shows any tips or lists you’ve saved on Foursquare.

This full box appears on your About page, while a smaller version appears on the right side of the Timeline itself. The small box shows just your recent check-ins.

Your friends can choose the “show all” button at any point to be taken to a page dedicated to the Foursquare app that shows more check-ins, saves, etc.

Like other application boxes, the Foursquare box can be hidden or moved to a different position on the page by clicking the pencil icon in the upper right corner and choosing “Edit Sections.” Uncheck Foursquare to hide it completely or drag it up and down to move it on the page. It can be placed anywhere below the About, Photos and Friends boxes.

To delete any of the items that appear in the Foursquare section, click the pencil icon and choose Activity Log. From there you can delete them, hide them from your profile or change their visibility (friends, public, etc.).

Despite the lack of updated badge activity, Foursquare’s new box is a great way to show off your Foursquare activity on your Facebook profile.

What do you think of the new box?

Menus entered or updated by business managers on Locu will be published to Foursquare in real time. They’ll also be passing along updates to hours, phone numbers and addresses as owners make them in an effort to keep Foursquare’s venue data more up-to-date.

Locu also has support for price lists for places like dry cleaners and hair salons. Those aren’t currently supported by Foursquare, but they’re working to make them available soon.

The new menus join those already contributed by SinglePlatform.

Adding more menus can only help Foursquare in their efforts to unseat Yelp in local search. They’re a perfect way to quickly compare a few places to see what they offer without having to visit — and navigate — each website individually.

Strangely, Foursquare’s Explore searches still don’t include menu information when searching for a specific item. That could make it even more useful when searching for a specific item that may not appear in the tips at a venue.

What do you think of the addition?

To celebrate the launch of their new Key Lime Doughnut, Krispy Kreme is offering a Foursquare special at participating stores on May 15 and 22. When users check in with a friend on either of those days, both will get their choice of a free Key Lime Cheesecake Doughnut or a Key Lime Cake Doughnut.

To find your nearest Krispy Kreme, visit their Foursquare page.

Foursquare has added a series of advanced filtering options to the desktop version of Explore to make it easy to narrow your results down to exactly the right place.

Using buttons at the top of the screen, you can now filter by:

• Whether or not you’ve been to the place before
• Whether the place is currently open or not
• The price range
• Places your friends have been
• Places with specials

These are more in-depth than the filters previously available and can be combined in a wide variety of ways. Foursquare says they’re working to add more filters and bring them to the mobile apps soon.

What do you think of the new filters? What else would you like to be able to filter on?