Carsten,

In latex, I often use a simple \begin{itemize} with labelled items, as in

\begin{itemize}
\item [3] This will be labelled with 3 instead of a bullet
\item [$\checkmark$] This will have a checkmark in lieu of the bullet
\end{itemize}

In org-mode, with beamer mode, I can do this except for the cases
where the replacement text is just a number as org-mode seems to treat
this as a footnote.  I have fninline set in the startup as well as
org-footnote-define-inline set to t globally but the export still
treats these old style footnotes as footnotes.

I saw the following:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/20073

which seems to indicate you did something to hopefully fix this (I'm
not bothered about the font-lock issue at all, by the way).

I've attached a simple org-mode beamer example.

Thanks,
eric

PS - interestingly, but not annoyingly, "- [$\checkmark$]" doesn't
     work but "- [\checkmark]" does to replace a bullet with a checkmark.