Gowalla iPhone App Review.
With the new hype around social gaming that's been around for some time now, I wanted to bring to you an interesting mobile experience that Gowalla supplies by tying the magic behind GPS, the gaming aspect of collecting items and the power of Facebook Connect to supply the social aspect in this location-based travel game that rewards you for every place you visit with your iPhone.
Check-In At Your Favorite Places
The idea behind it is simple enough. Once you're in a cafe, restaurant, musem you haven't been before or any ordinary day-to-day location, pull out your iPhone and check-into that location and add it to your collection of unique passport stamps. Once checked-in, you can see whoelse checked in that location and even collect items left behind by them. Amongst other notable collectibles are famous landmarks, cool architectural buildings, coffeehouses and retail stores. The best thing of it though - you can add your own favorite hot spot, and enable others to check in there.
With Gowalla, you can mark various locations around town, earn pins for every hotspot you drop, and collect icons associated with the different types of business. The process of checking in, droping hot spots, and collecting items is all-in-all fun. And I guess that's what attracted me to the app in the first place. It's easy to use, intuitive, a clever design for the interface and an overall fun experience to start with.
Complete Trips And Get Prizes
And it doesn't stop there. The true inovation for Gowalla, in my opinion, is the Trips section. Essentially, Trips are lists of locations that you must check in in order to complete each trip. Of course, the only way to check-in to that location is to be physically present there and hit that Check-In button. With each trip completed, you earn a special badge on your Gowalla profile. However, you can't create trips all by yourself, but the app provides you with a long enough list to complete in the mean time. Most of the trips are however in the U.S. for the time being.
Our Most Requested Features
The app has a lot of potential in developing a stable and fun environment for us the users. Perhaps we can challenge our friends to complete the trips we've created. Or perhaps we can create and alert our friends of near-by meet-ups and events they can check-in at and earn badges. To go with the app, you also get a nice website where you can view your profile, edit settings, invinte friends, share your experiences on Facebook and Twitter, and generally complement your iPhone's features on the web.
Screenshots
Developer: Alamofire
Category: Social Networking
Released: November 21st, 2009
Price: FREE
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