Location-based mobile gaming and social check-in platform SCVNGR has been busy this Summer. The Boston-based startup launched a sophisticated SCVNGR Rewards program with shoe retailer Journeys and is partnering with rail ticketing startup Quno in Britain. ‘We went well beyond where Foursquare is,’ says John Valentine, SCVNGR’s business development executive.

The Hotlist is a ‘geo-social aggregator’ that tells you ‘what is happening around you at any given point in time’. The service pulls in data from sources including Facebook, Twitter and Yelp. ‘A unified geo-database would simplify things,’ co-founder Chris Mirabile said a day before the launch of Facebook Places.

New York-based personalized recommendation engine SpotOn plans to release its iPhone app next month. SpotOn wants to be for new places to go “what Last.fm and Pandora is for music” according to co-founder Gauri Manglik.

Interactive agency Deep Focus recently launched GEOfocus, a marketing practice built around location-aware platforms. “Foursquare has trouble handling demand from advertisers, because advertisers treat them as a publication,” CEO Ian Schafer says.

Interactive agency Deep Focus recently launched GEOfocus, a marketing practice built around location-aware platforms. “Foursquare has trouble handling demand from advertisers, because advertisers treat them as a publication,” CEO Ian Schafer says.