Ben Hamill's dashboard

Ben Hamill shared an idea in Gowalla on December 22, 2009 03:01:

Childcare Category

Maybe I'm missing it, but I feel like there should be a category for child care center or daycare or preschool. Something that would catch all of these, anyway. I guess it would go under Education, though most people purchase child care as a service, sort of.

A comment on the idea "Tell Me When Friends Are Nearby" in Gowalla:

I was thinking it would just use your last check-in. And maybe only if said check-in were pretty fresh. Maybe 20 minutes or something. – Ben Hamill, on December 11, 2009 15:12

Ben Hamill replied on December 11, 2009 15:06 to the idea "Keyboard shortcuts would be nice" in OtherInbox:

OIB could use some awesome (vim-like) keyboard shortcuts (as gmail tries to do).

• h/l to switch focus between mailbox list and mail list.


• j/k to scroll said lists.


• J/K or maybe n/p to go to the next unread item.


• g-i to go to inbox, g-s for saved, g-t for sent, g-d for deleted and g-b for blocked.

I'm sure you guys can come up with reasonable ones for marking as read/unread, deleting, etc.

Ben Hamill shared an idea in Gowalla on December 10, 2009 05:35:

Tell Me When Friends Are Nearby

Alert me if I check in at the same place that one of my friends just checked in to. Maybe alert them, too. This way if my buddy and I are both at the HEB at the same time, but don't know it... maybe we'll hook up to chat or whatever. I'm thinking it should be on the order of the push alerts. If your phone is locked, it doesn't bug you and if you're doing something else, you can just hit close and be done.

Ben Hamill shared an idea in Gowalla on December 02, 2009 03:46:

See Details for Items Not In Pack

I wish you could also see the history of items that've been dropped in a location. I want to make sure I'm not picking up something I dropped there a few days ago.

Ben Hamill started following the idea "FEEDBACK: You should modify your welcome message" in OtherInbox.

A comment on the question "Why do you use redirection links in e-mails?" in OtherInbox:

Whenever you click a link, your browser builds an HTTP request to send to the new host for whatever content resides at that address. As part of this request is a header called the referrer. It is the URL of the site that had the link you clicked on. This isn't something the site with the link fills in, but something your browser does. This is how, for instance, Wordpress tracks who's linking to your blog in their stats page.

So, actually, your browser does send a part of the browsing history to every website you visit via a link. I hope this doesn't come off as condescending, but it's important to know how these things work. Depending on how much information OIB encodes in the URLs of their service, it could every well be a security risk. I am, myself, a web developer and nothing he said sounded implausible to me. – Ben Hamill, on November 29, 2009 02:07

Ben Hamill reported a problem in Gowalla on November 25, 2009 20:50:

Merge Highland Lanes

http://gowalla.com/spots/85256 and http://gowalla.com/spots/22701 appear to be duplicates. There's only the one bowling alley there.

Ben Hamill started following the idea "Better item information on the app" in Gowalla.

A comment on the problem "Missing Pin?" in Gowalla:

It's shown up by now. I'm not sure if it was before I commissioned my 11th spot or not. As long as y'all don't think it's a bug, that's cool. :) – Ben Hamill, on November 12, 2009 14:55

A comment on the question "Spots merged?" in Gowalla:

I sent you an @ on Twitter and you can ping me there, if you like. Else there's contact information on benhamill.com. No hard feelings. With the enhanced description, I actually feel like having just the one spot should do fine. I'll see about testing next week if, when I'm at the bowling lanes, I can check into the Union. It reads as 3 GPS bars, but it might be lying about accuracy since it's, you know, under ground.

No hard feelings about the merge. It's good to keep an open discussion about things. Thanks for explaining. – Ben Hamill, on November 06, 2009 06:44

Ben Hamill asked a question in Gowalla on November 05, 2009 22:30:

Spots merged?

A friend and I accidentally each created (at the same time, no less) a spot for the Union Underground on UT. We thought we'd ask that they be merged, but it looks like, before we did, they got merged with the Union as a whole.

It might be that the Union just needs to be moved or radius increased (we were too far away from the spot to check in while at the Underground), but we both sort of felt like the Underground is distinct enough from the Union to warrant its own spot.

I just thought I'd bring it up here for discussion. What's the policy/thinking on this?

Ben Hamill marked one of Dr. Barnabus Peddingferd's replies in Gowalla as useful. Dr. Barnabus Peddingferd replied to the idea "Get rid of the chains please". Ben Hamill and 7 other people think it's one of the best replies.

A comment on the problem "Hello Cheater, paging Miss Cheater." in Gowalla:

I disagree with this philosophy. I view spots as guides or suggestions. They will help allow someone to be where I think something is interesting or see what I thought was cool, but if they find something else cool, it should not REQUIRE them to see what I saw, etc. I made a spot of an wilderness park. I didn't put it in a neat little back corner so you had to go all over the park to find the Spot, I put it in the center (as best I could tell, as it's shaped strangely) and gave it a generous radius. So if you're just picking up your friend in the parking area, you can check in. If that's what makes your day, awesome. If you, like me, want to wander in the woods, that's awesome, too.

I guess I'm all about letting people find and make their own enjoyment, rather than trying to tell people how to play. – Ben Hamill, on November 04, 2009 16:51

Ben Hamill reported a problem in Gowalla on November 04, 2009 16:28:

Missing Pin?

I got an email saying I had created my 10th spot, but I don't have the Commissioned 10 Spots pin. Is this pin for something different than I think it is?

Ben Hamill replied on November 03, 2009 23:30 to the question "New category suggestions" in Gowalla:

Some of my favorite hard-to-find places that I'd like to make into Spots are courtyards of buildings. For now, I've been tagging them with square/plaza, but that's not quite right. It would be nice to have a Courtyard category under the Architecture super-category.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Add a Courtyard Category.

Ben Hamill replied on November 03, 2009 21:45 to the praise ""Our" Game" in Gowalla:

Concur! The sense of ownership is a big draw for me. Strong work, y'all.

Ben Hamill posted a topic that has since been removed from Gowalla. see the change log

Ben Hamill replied on November 03, 2009 00:17 to the idea "Allowing profile pages to be made private" in Gowalla:

A discussion with a friend developed these thoughts:

1. I should be able to turn on protection.

2. If I'm protected, only my friends should be able to see my Top Spots, Stamps, etc. Seeing my Pins, Friends and Items doesn't seem problematic to me.

3. If I'm protected, people should probably still be able to see that I've been somewhere where they're checked in (founding is all about bragging rights, so it makes sense to show this). This includes So-and-so Dropped a Whatever here 1 day ago, etc.

4. If I'm protected, someone should have to be logged in to see my user page at all.

This might make my user page somewhat anemic to non-friends, but y'all seem to be using Facebook and Twitter for friend discovery, mostly, anyway.

These four points, coupled with friends-only spots (for my house, for instance) would give users a lot of control with only two toggles to deal with on the coding side (profile_protected? and spot_protected?).

A comment on the question "Can I unvault an item?" in Gowalla:

Note: I think it would be best if you couldn't simply unvault an item. That makes the ten-item limit on your pack sort of silly if you can also vault and unvault stuff from your phone. I think it would cool if there were some things you could only do with vaulted items, like send them to a friend or something.

A friend of mine had this idea: Trade-ins. Say you partner with some company to give away a bunch of their swag. Make people "give" you their vaulted bag-of-swag item in exchange for actual swag (you're remove it from their account and put it back in circulation). Or if Austin Pizza Garden wants to offer some 15% discount through Gowalla, have people trade in their vaulted piece of pizza item. This is clearly not a finished idea, but you can run with it if it strikes your fancy. It would help put things that have "run out" back into the economy. – Ben Hamill, on November 02, 2009 14:52