You probably hear about Foursquare all the time, we certainly write about it a lot here on ReadWriteWeb, but did you know that there are many other things going on in the world of location and mapping? It's a red-hot sector, producing innovative new technologies and use-cases every day.

Where can you learn about all this geo-creativity? Here at ReadWriteWeb, we've come up with a system for efficiently discovering a large number of the top blogs on any subject - and we track the top stories in Geolocation closely. We've decided to open up a little bit of our research and share with you our list of the Top Blogs in Geolocation This Week. Read on to find out which top 10 blogs are writing the hottest stuff now and see all 300 of the blogs we're tracking.

How is the hotness measured? With help from one of our favorite services online: Postrank. Postrank measures the social media buzz around every post on any blog you plug into its service: it counts the number of comments readers post, the number of inbound links from other blogs, mentions on Twitter, bookmarks in Delicious, votes on Digg and Reddit, and much more.

Here are the top 10 blogs about geolocation this week, in terms of how much buzz their articles got with readers around the web. To see the full list of 300 we're tracking (and to let us know if your geoblog isn't on the list!) please visit this page on Postrank. Big thanks to Justin Houk for helping run the machine that unearthed these blogs. Please do help us build the list out even more.

The Top Ten Geo Blogs for September 27- October 1, 2010

1. The Foursquare Blog Up from #12 last week

   The company blog of hot location based social network Foursquare made a big splash this week with posts about the new push notifications for Blackberry users and a new partnership with CNN to incentivize healthy eating through patronage of farmers' markets around the country.

   I don't know what I think of the whole CNN/Farmers' Market thing specifically, but it does feel like we're getting somewhere, doesn't it?

2. Google Maps Mania
   #2, just like last week

   This incredibly prolific blog that highlights cool uses of Google Maps products is unaffiliated with the company, but really shows what Google location technology can do. This week's big hit was a post about making animated driving directions.

   Really, go check out this blog - the amount of cool stuff it finds is amazing.

3. Google LatLong
   Down from #1 last week

   The official Google Maps and Earth team blog made a big announcement about the spread of Street View onto every continent on the planet - but it also posted news about a revamped "photos" layer on Google Maps.

   There are cooler things going on around location than Google Maps, but everyone knows about it and the product changes frequently compared to other major tools from the giant company.

4. Planet OSGeo
   Was #3 last week

   This geo community posted big hits all week long last week, but the biggest was in-depth coverage of the Free and Open Source Software for Geomatics Conference (FOSS4G) in Barcelona.

   That's some detailed, wonky stuff - but the wonks were buzzing!



5. Ogle Earth
   Boom! Was #285 last week!

   Ogle Earth spent most of this month in hiatus, but came back with a big story about the new iPhone 4 in China being shipped with censored maps onboard! See also subsequent coverage on ReadWriteWeb.

   Censored maps! Who thinks they can still get away with that these days? Not so cool that Apple went a long with it.

6. Google Earth Blog
   Last week #4

   The independent blog Google Earth: Amazing Things About Google Earth wrote two big posts this week: a report on the first episode of a new short video series about geospatial technology (see below) and a short review of a new game authoring platform for Google Earth.

7. All Points Blog Up from #21

   All Points is a must-read site and publishes a great podcast, but this week the site's biggest hit was a short post about a 2 day, multi-organization experiment in the use of social media in disaster response.

   Disaster response is one of the big areas of focus in geo - because when things turn real bad, you want to know exactly where everything is!

8. Slashgeo
   Was #7 last week

   SlashGeo is like Slashdot for all things Geo. The biggest hit this week was a news item about DataPlace.org's big database of housing and demographic data made available under an Open Source license. Hello, mashups!

9. The AnyGeo Blog - Anything Geospatial
   Holding steady at #9

   The AnyGeo aggregator's community was most responsive this week to its post about the new Sony Ericcson LiveView: a cool little device that looks like an iPod nano but is actually a rich interface for reading and writing data to and from almost any Android phone in your pocket. It's pretty awesome.
   

10. GISUser.com - The complete GIS, LBS, and Geospatial Technology Resource
    #10

    GIS newswire GISUser.com published videos of the 5 minute Ignite-style Lightning Talks from this year's user conference of ESRI, a massive geo services company. Historical GIS, augmented reality, and many other subjects are discussed in a high-energy format. I haven't watched these videos yet but I've got them all queued up on my iPhone and look forward to it.

Those were just a few of the biggest hits from the very most-buzzed-about geo blogs this week. There was so much more reported on that was super interesting. Check out this page for the full list of nearly 300 geo blogs we're tracking and their top posts this week. If you write an exciting geo blog that's not on that list, let us know!

Onward, in an era when location is an unprecedented platform for world-changing technology innovation!