If you’re like many of us, you’re home for the holidays. Rather than complaining about the springs in the pullout couch or watching endless television reruns, consider rediscovering your hometown. Featured on today’s Flickr blog, Noticings is a location-based game similar to Foursquare that forces you to discover new gems in your old haunts.

Each day Flickr users upload three geotagged photographs with the tag “noticings”. From here they receive points for game-related activities including finding misspelled signs, being the first to tag a photo in a particular neighborhood, or for noticing something everyday for a week. Users upload photos via the $3 Noticings iPhone application or through Flickr’s regular desktop, web and iPhone tools.

Just imagine the possibilities of capturing your hometown. Document the visual parfait of the abandoned fish cannery, drink in the chaos of the strip mall parking lot, and of course, don’t forget to snap the fine public art displayed in your local pub latrine. This service is a great way to keep you sane in your hometown while literally putting it on the map for its unique features.
ReadWriteStart’s Chris Cameron recently profiled Stalqer – a service that maps your friends based on their geotagged Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare status updates. In a similar vein, Noticings leverages an existing service to create a completely new experience. Coupled with augmented reality mobile applications, location-based services like Noticings and Stalqer have done much to get geeks out of their homes into the real world. To join Noticings, check out the game rules at http://noticin.gs/rules.