Gowalla 1.2 Review
I just got the new version of gowalla. When I was in Austin in early August I meet with the Alamofire people and they let me play with a beta of the new version. I've been awaiting the release of 1.2 since then.
Here are the updates:
Friends: The most important update is that I can actually see where my friends are and tell them where I am. I'm really liking the push strength it has so I can have 'accidental' encounters with some of my friends when wondering Covent Garden.
Tilt: Did you know if you where on the places tab and you put your phone in landscape mode you get a really cool semi-hidden screen. It shows you all the places around you where people have checked in. The Red ones are places I haven't been, green are places I have. I really dig this. Great way to find new things or know what's-what in a new area.
Best Feature: Publishing to facebook. 
This just looks so sharp, especially with featured icons. It's becoming the most important feature for whatever I'm signing up for to play nice with twitter/facebook. And Alamofire's icon creating abilities make me want to publish to facebook. So far I've been publishing most of my checkins to facebook, and probably half of my check in to twitter. I don't want to over run either facebook or twitter with my whereabouts.
The other big thing for me , I can go anywhere! Foursquare seems to be what all the cool kids are playing with in NYC, but I'm only in NYC once, maybe twice a year max. Austin is a registered fousquare city, but it didn't seem like that many people where playing it. Most importantly, foursquare hasn't hit London yet. When it does, I plan on playing it. I'm using the word 'playing', because it's more of a game. Gowalla feels more like the vimeo of the geo-web (HT: http://jkleske.posterous.com/ ).
What's missing: Really cool feature of landscape mode for 'Places' to find new things around me. I want the same one for friends. It would be nice to go into landscape mode for the friend's tab to see where my friends last where. Perhaps it could be color coordinated by time.
Overall: I'm crazy excited about the geo-web. It feels like the next step in integrating technology with the 'real world' to give it a geo context. Our phones definitely have the technology it's just a matter of doing it right. It is very imaginable to have a world that I travel to Tokyo and I want to see what my other friends visited and recommended while in Tokyo. Or I create a digital graffiti treasure hunt. Or I catch my girlfriend cheating (yes, prying eyes must be a factor). Gowalla is making a step towards a more usable geo-web, I'm excited about this is becoming a normal thing for me to do when I arrive at a place.
