Recently I had lunch with Loopt’s CEO, Sam Altman, where he pulled out his iPhone and showed me a new version, called Loopt Star, that gives you incentives to visit major retailers. I talk with him about that in the video embedded on this post.

I’m working on a longer post about the location-based services that are out there and I’m getting tired of the data silos that are being built up here. I’d love to see someone take more of an integration approach and do that first before going after the monetization like Loopt is here, although I understand why Loopt is doing that.

That said, this is an interesting new entrant. Will it get me to check into it along with Foursquare? That’s the big question and I don’t see enough utility is here yet, but I’ll keep watching to see what the offers are like and whether that’s enough of a hook to get me.

There’s a ton of other reports about Loopt Star on Techmeme.