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Gowalla & The Icon Factory are teaming up to give Gowalla users a new item to collect. And of course it’s the mascot of The Icon Factory’s Twitterific Twitter app, Ollie. Just check into your closest Apple Store in the U.S. to find your very own Ollie, but be quick! You will only be able to find Ollie until April 6, 2010! And there are only 10,000 of them!!!
Twittelator Pro & Gowalla need to hook up! I love Twittelator Pro!
This is another post about Gowalla. Yes. I love Gowalla if you haven’t been able to tell. I’ve noticed several things with users since I’ve started using Gowalla last year. Here is a list of things that are not cool or cool with Gowalla & Gowalla users.
Not Cool: Foursquare’s user interface.
Cool: Gowalla’s user interface.
Not Cool: Loosing your mayorship in Foursquare.
Cool: Finding a needed bonus item in Gowalla.
Not Cool: Creating a duplicate spot.
Cool: Checking to see if there is a spot already created at your location before creating another spot.
Not Cool: Not editing a spot to fix it’s location or name after a few days.
Cool: Editing a spot after you created it to fix it’s location or name as soon as you can.
Not Cool: Creating fake spots.
Cool: Not creating fake spots.
Not Cool: Creating spots in non-interesting locations.
Cool: Creating spots in interesting locations where many people will check-in at.
Not Cool: Not dropping an item at spots when you check-in for the 1st time.
Cool: Dropping an item at spots when you check-in to them for the 1st time.
Not Cool: Creating a spot for your house. You’re not that clever.
Cool: Not creating a spot for your house. (Don’t you people see posts about this stuff?)
Not Cool: Being flooded by multiple notifications to your smartphone.
Cool: Being about to turn off notifications per user or completely.
If I come up with any more, I’ll be sure to add them. If you have any, let me know and I’ll add them to this post.
The other day Josh Williams, founder of Gowalla, posted Guidelines for Spot Creating & Editing on their blog & on their GetSatisfaction.com support site. Josh says to “consider this an incomplete list of best practices when creating and edits spots on Gowalla”. It’s a good read and gives some good tips from the company themselves, it even includes a few things that can get your account suspended or terminated.
Topics covered include:
I have a post that has some tips and personal advice on using Gowalla in case you missed it: TIPS FOR USING GOWALLA.
I’m willing to do a swap for some needed Gowalla items. We can set up a swap somewhere in the northern Delaware area. Get hold of me on Twitter or leave me a comment here. First come, first serve. If you don’t have anything I need, that’s cool. I can still drop an item for you to pick up.
Here’s what I need:
Designing with Web Standards
Crush It! Book
Roadrunner
Longhorn Skull
Longhorn
Fieldnotes Pin
Big Belt Buckle
Airbag Industries Pin
Two-Headed Serpent
Roughly 2 hours ago Gowalla tweeted the following:
I was able to go out and check to see if this was finally true. And YES IT IS! I scored several items and 2 of the new bonus items from last week (2-piece Luggage and Gowalla Cling).
Now I’d love to hear, by a blog post or a post in the support forum on GetSatisfaction.com, of what happened. I think most of us Gowalla users are technical enough to understand.
UPDATE 03/14/2010: Due to the large amount of posts to the item drought thread, earlier posts have been deleted. Anyone suffering from the same issue should click on the “I’m having this problem too” link and post a comment.
It’s been almost 2 weeks now since a Gowalla user posted about an issue on their support site at GetSatisfaction.com about the lack of bonus items dropping when checking into spots. Since that first post, Gowalla marked it as “Not a problem” yet more and more people are adding replies to the post about having the exact same issue, including me. The issue has quickly been labeled as the “Item Drought”.
I stumbled upon Gowalla back in the late summer/early fall of 2009 and quickly got addicted to it. I used it all the time, creating new spots in my spotless area and got others to start using the app. I was in love with Gowalla. I loved the fact that it had items to find and collect and I got addicted to finding the new bonus items. Then all of the sudden no bonus items were appearing.
Read the rest of this entry »
Yesterday, Josh Williams of Gowalla posted about 2 new features in Gowalla: Trips and Bookmarks.
Custom trips have been talked about by many on Gowalla’s GetSatifaction.com forum and now they’re available, but their creation is only available from the web site. You can access near by trips from the app so you can do them. You can create as many as 5 trips, each including up to 20 spots. Not bad. More improvements to that will be coming also in the future. You can also create bookmarks now for your favorite spots, from the web site and from the app.
Here’s the blog post:
Today we’re thrilled to announce the launch of two new features: Trips and Bookmarks. Let’s talk about Trips first.
Until today, all Trips in Gowalla have been curated by the team at Gowalla with a little help from select friends. But our goal has always been that you would help us create these trips. And today you can. Simply login to your Gowalla account on the web, visit a spot page, then click the Add to Trip button. You’ll be able to name your trip, give it a description, add up to 20 spots of your choosing, then publish it to Gowalla. Your published trips will be viewable in the Gowalla app by your friends.
Here’s where it gets fun: We’ll be looking for unique and exciting trips created by our community to feature in Gowalla. Featured trips will be promoted based on the quality and relevancy of the trip, the number of people who have completed the trip, and will be given their own custom pin artwork that will be rewarded to those who have completed the trip.
As of today, you can create as many as 5 trips, each including up to 20 spots. As we improve the feature we’ll allow you to create more trips, order their lists of spots, and categorize them into logical groups like Pub Crawls, Nature Hikes, and the like. Also, for now, you may only complete featured trips and trips created by your friends. This is just the first step in making trips a truly key part of Gowalla’s future. We have lots more to do.
Today you can view nearby, featured and friend-created trips in Gowalla 1.4 on your iPhone by tapping the Browse button in the upper-left of the Trips tab. Our forthcoming Android and WebOS clients currently in development will also support this feature.
I’d also like to tell you a bit about bookmarks as well. Now when you visit any spot page at Gowalla.com you can bookmark that spot. You’ll be able to find all your bookmarks in Gowalla for iPhone by tapping Browse on the Spots tab. This simple feature makes it easy to find your way back to a favorite spot. Soon you’ll be able to add bookmarks from your mobile device as well.
Today’s release of Trips and Bookmarks to our community is simply a first step. There is a lot of depth here to be explored. We’re excited to hear your feedback as we continue to improve these, and other, features. Thanks for going out with Gowalla!
Josh Williams from Gowalla posted a new blog post yesterday. Coming soon is Gowalla’s API to developers and already in place is a new privacy policy.
The new privacy policy will allow you to hide your passport from all Gowalla users, if you so desire. By default, Passport Privacy is off. This allows others to view the stamps in your passport and the items you have collected, which include a history of the day and location where you picked up the item. If you choose to turn Passport Privacy on, your stamps (the places you’ve been) and your items will only be visible to your friends.
To find this, log into the Gowalla web site, click Settings, and then Privacy.
I’m a big time fan of Gowalla, as you can tell from some of my posts. Today, Gowalla announced that they’ve partnered with case maker Incase.
If you check into any Apple Store, you have a chance to pick up to 6 new virtual Incase items! I was at my local Apple Store today before I knew about this news. I didn’t get anything. This first week, some people will have the chance to score a real Incase Slider case if they also find the virtual Incase Slide. A fine prize indeed! If you collect all 6 virtual Incase items, you’ll receive the Incase Pin of Glory!
UPDATE 01/06/2009: I scored a virtual Incase Slider today after work! Now I guess I’m waiting for an email from Gowalla, just like with the Golden Gifts they did for Christmas.
UPDATE 01/07/2009: Found another virtual Incase Slider today at the Apple Store. I also posted the question on how we win a real one on the Gowalla forum on GetSatisfaction.com. Here’s the post. Not everyone that finds a virtual Incase Slider wins a real one. Gowalla failed to properly and clearly state the rules. Shame on them. It appears that one person that does find a virtual item will win a real Incase Slider that will be announced on their Twitter feed. I feel very, very fucking disappointed.
Q. What is Gowalla?
A. Gowalla is, plain and simple, a free virtual geocaching app for the iPhone. Currently there is no Blackberry or Android app for it. If you have an Android device, you can use http://m.gowalla.com in your web browser to play. Gowalla says apps for Blackberry & Android phones are months down the road. It is a shame that it can’t be sooner.
Q. Why should I drop items at spots?
A. When you drop an item, you become one of the ‘founders’ of the spot. Each spot can hold 10 items and can have 10 founders. This allows Gowalla to determine what spots get higher traffic. If a spot gets a lot of traffic it can become a featured spot. Dropping items will also eventually get you new pins.
Q. What’s a pin?
A. A pin is received hen you accomplish certain tasks like, creating a certain number of spots, becoming a founder of a certain number of spots, checking into a certain number of spots, visiting a specific number of specific types of spots. You can also get pins for completing trips. You can see what pins are available here.
Q. What’s a trip?
A. A trip is a collection of spots that have been grouped together by Gowalla. You need to check into each spot on the trip to complete it. You can see the list of current trips from Gowalla’s web site.
Q. How do I know if I “need” items for my vault?
A. Right now, you can either (1) check Gowalla’s web site to see if you need an item or (2) add a link on one of your iPhone’s home screens to http://iphone.gowallatools.com in Mobile Safari on your iPhone (click the + at the bottom to add a bookmark and click “Add to Home Screen” button) and use that to check what items you need in your vault when you’re on the go. (More info on Gowalla Tools can be found at http://gowallatools.com.)
Q. Why do I need to vault items?
A. As you find items you can store them in your vault. Each item is numbered so you can try to find the lowest number of each item, as many items as you can, collect unique items (so just one of each) or you can vault as many as you can. It’s just an element of fun added into Gowalla.
Q. Can I remove items from my vault?
A. At this time, no you can not. WARNING: Once you vault an item (even duplicates), there is no way to remove it. Gowalla has no plans at this time of adding this function.
Why should I swap items? Is there a method/strategy to the swapping?
A. When you check into a spot, you might run across an item that you do not have in your vault sitting in the group of items for that spot (each spot can hold 10 items). If you have an item in your pack (also limited to 10 items) you can swap one item from your pack with an item at that spot you are currently checked into. You gain a new item and hopefully someone that will check into that spot in the future will find an items that they need too.
Q. Why is finding friends so hard?
A. That’s a good question. I have a low number of friends on Gowalla. Feel free to add me as a friend on there.
Q. There are no spots in my area. Why should I use Gowalla?
A. Someone has to be the first. Download the app and start creating spots. If you use Twitter or Facebook, you can have Gowalla update your status on either or both sites to attract more people in your area to start using it.
Q. How do I get more items?
A. You have to check into spots, even ones you’ve checked into before. This is part of the gameplay of Gowalla. So get going.
Q. Someone created a spot and the name is wrong, in the wrong location, or it’s a duplicate. What do I do?
A. Go to http://getsatisfaction.com/gowalla and create a new post. Copy the URL for the spot (from Gowalla’s web site), paste it into your post saying what is wrong with it and the correct info. If the location is wrong, you can use Google Maps to find the correct location. You can also contact the Gowalla Street Team Elite on Twitter or here. Also make sure that you clearly state what you want done. I just had a request that got all fouled up by Gowalla staff and a spot I created 250 miles away got deleted, when it shouldn’t have.
Q. What if a spot that I created is not in the correct location?
A. Log into Gowalla’s web site, go to the Passport tab, click on the item, and under the map there is the Edit button. Click on that and reposition the spot. You can also fix the name, category, and check-in radius. When you’re finished, click the Save button. The position may not update right away, so you may have to give it some time.
Q. Do you work for Gowalla?
A. No I do not work for Gowalla/Alamofire. Nor have I been paid or bribed by them (but I won’t refuse if offered). I am just a big fan of theirs and love Gowalla.
Do you have any other questions about Gowalla? Feel free to ask me either by leaving a comment here or sending me a @reply on Twitter. Maybe I’ll add your question to this post.
Updated on 01/21/2010
