location-based

I just installed Gowalla on my iPad and was immediately blown away by its nice interface the moment I fire up the app. Gowalla has just launched their iPad app and is now available for free download from the iPad App Store.

Gowalla’s main page displays a Google Map right-fitted into the iPad’s huge screen showing the spots where you’re friends and other Gowalla members have checked-in. Â If you turn your iPad to landscape mode, the screen will be split into two, with the left column displaying Activity, Spots and Passport and the right column displaying the Google Map.

If you clicked on any recent activity of your friends, the right column will display your friend’s activity as well as the different comments put in by his friends. You can add your comments as well. Now if you click on the spot where your friend has checked-in the right column will display a placeholder for that spot with a Google map, information about the spot and the list of people who have been on that spot. If you’re in the said spot, you can also check-in. Or if you’re not into the said spot but wants to go there you can tap on Â “Get Directions” and Google Maps will show you the fastest route to get there.

Next to the Activity tab is the “Spots” tab. Tap on it and the huge Google Map will be displayed with icons on specific places. This is one aspect which makes Gowalla for the iPad fun. The icons are huge and adds excitement to the overall Gowalla interface. [Read more…]

Originally posted on April 30, 2010 @ 8:34 am

Don’t look now folks, but pretty soon, Â your favorite restaurants and other business establishments might soon be offering various discounts, freebies and other promotional gigs in cooperation with Foursquare. Yes Foursquare, you it right? Â This is because Foursquare has just launched a business strategy that encourages establishment owners to use its service to engage mobile customers with specials and give them the ability to track how their venues is performing over time – through venue analytics.

Foursquare Business provides simple self-service tools that would allow you, as a business manager, to cook up with various kinds of special gigs that would attract customers to your business establishments. Specifically Foursquare Business will let you created the following specials:

Mayor specials can be unlocked only by the Mayor of your venue (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days).
Count-based specials are unlocked when a user checks in a certain number of times.
Frequency-based specials are unlocked every so many check-ins.
Wildcard specials are always unlocked, but your staff has to verify some extra conditions before awarding the special.

What’s cool about this is that Foursquare has mobile apps in three major mobile platforms – Android, iPhone and BlackBerry. And Foursquare can use this mobile apps to send notices to potential customers nearby to possibly invite them to check out your Foursquare promotional gigs.

To use Foursquare’s business tools, all you need to do is claim your venue. Once you’ve done that you can have access to various Foursquare venue analytics tools that will let you view:

most recent visitors
most frequent visitors
the times of day people check in
total number of unique visitors
a histogram of check-ins per day

So, what are you waiting for? Get into Foursquare and claim your venue now before somebody else takes it.

Originally posted on April 22, 2010 @ 5:23 pm