I guess good things really do come in pairs. A couple weeks ago I wrote about 2 Gowalla helper apps that came out within just a few days of each other, Gowalla Sniffer and Gowalla Swag. Today, I have 2 new Gowalla topics to talk about: The Gowalla iPad App and the first Gowalla Tools beta.
Gowallalotbigger!
No, I don’t yet have an iPad, but this release might be one of the things that pushes me over the edge. I’ve been drooling over the Tech Crunch screenshots and @keeg’s Flickr set for weeks now, but I didn’t know it had hit the iTunes store until I saw Chris Harrison tweet: “Gowalla for iPad. I haz it.” You’ll have to rely on the following hands-on reviews until I get an iPad of my own, but it’s sure to be full of win. It’s a free app for the iPad, so grab it now!
- “Wow. Gowalla for iPad is even prettier than the Flickr tease shots posted by @keeg. I am seriously impressed.” – @cdharrison
- “umm, @gowalla for the iPad is freaking awesome! ’nuff said…” – @unmatchedstyle
- “@gowalla app for iPad is gorgeous. I love this simplicity.” – @fredricw
- “Checking out the new @gowalla iPad app.. Love it. Great UI and design.” – @michaeltejada
- “@gowalla for iPad is fantastic, especially with 3G! Serious mobile chocolate addiction…” – @hoisumguo
A Gimpse into Wonderland
Want to know where to find a Gowalla Microbrew? Or any other virtual Gowalla item for that matter? Then you should also be excited about Ben Dodson’s Gowalla Tools iPhone app that is set to be revealed on May 12th. I use the term “revealed” because even as one of the few beta testers, I’ve only seen one small component of app’s functionality, that component is code named “The Red Queen”.
Some of you may remember when clicking on a missing items in the Gowalla Tools web application provided a list of places where you could find that item. Knowing where to look made it much easier to hunt items down. Unfortunately, Gowalla blocked a part of their undocumented API that made that feature tick. Since then, Ben has come up with an ingenious way to provide the same service. He’s crawling every single bonus item popup that the app produces to provide realtime odds of finding item x at spot y. Since Gowalla is constantly tweaking the probability of finding each item, this is a much more accurate way of tacking down bonus items. My actual reply to Ben after testing out The Red Queen yesterday was, “This takes the web app version of your item finder, straps it on solid-fuel rocket boosters and fires it into space blasting AC/DC’s ‘Back in Black’ out the driver-side window…” That description may seem a bit over-the-top, but it will definitely be a useful tool for Gowalla Players and it’s going to be a FREE download on the app store. To stay up-to-date with what’s going on with Gowalla Tools, follow @GowallaTools, the Gowalla Tools Tumblr and curiously enough, a white guinea pig.