Ben Dodson's dashboard

Oops a little bug on my part - all fixed now though. The Flickr Bookmarklet now pulls in the machine tagged photos correctly! – Ben Dodson, on December 24, 2009 19:00

Sweet! I'll add it to the site :) – Ben Dodson, on December 23, 2009 22:29

The app very clearly shows you the location that you are going to drop the pin before you hit the "create spot" button. One of the reasons for the movement limit (aside from stopping cheaters) is to make people more mindful when they create their spots. I had to create a duplicate spot checker for my GowallaTools site because so many people create spots when their GPS isn't correct (rather than waiting for it to lock on) and then don't bother to alter the radius / location from the website later on (even if it is within the 1km limit) that duplicates were being created.

If you are creating a spot, check carefully that the micro map it shows you has the pin in the correct place and you won't run into any problems. If the GPS veers off at the last second (though this is not so much an issue in v1.3 as it was in 1.1 and 1.2), then provided it's within the 1km area you will be able to edit it on the website, otherwise just create a case on GetSatisfaction and the Gowalla Team will take care of it as they used to before the ability to move spots was granted.

The movement limit is there for good reason - there may be a case for increasing the area slightly or for letting STE members have a larger editing radius, but I'm not in favour of dropping it completely. – Ben Dodson, on December 23, 2009 17:24

Seems to be working ok - you may well have been trying it whilst I was pushing some updates.

There is also a Flickr bookmarklet available for viewing Flickr photos on the Gowalla site - http://gowallatools.com/web/flickr/ – Ben Dodson, on December 23, 2009 12:49

"Clarification that this really is how the contest works would put my mind at ease, and is really all I'm looking for so I can stop making as much effort as I used to, and resign myself to the fact that I really have no chance."

I'll clarify it for you - It's called random luck. Keep checking in and you may or may not win a prize. Moan publicly that you've not won anything so it must be rigged just makes you look like a sore loser.

As far as I can tell, there is absolutely no pre-rigging of gifts - the gifts themselves are pre-determined (in that a certain number will have a certain item, it's not randomly decided upon opening) but the winning of said items is as random as any other item pickup.

Besides, if the competition were rigged then it would be illegal - I'm fairly sure if Alamofire wanted to give people t-shirts or iPod nanos they would just do it rather than creating an elaborate scheme to deceive in the form of a competition (it'd be cheaper and easier).

So, get over it.

It'll mean that any photos you've set as visible will be visible to everybody both on the website and through the API. At the moment your photos are already visible but you haven't allowed permission to search through them. If you set an individual photo to friends only, family only, or private, then it won't show up regardless of the settings in that panel. It will only affect public photos :)

Can you login to Flickr and then go to http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/o... - this is the privacy settings on your account. You'll need to make sure that the boxes are unchecked for your photos to show up in searches and on GowallaTools as well - I think that this may be the problem! – Ben Dodson, on December 14, 2009 01:58

Hi!

Gowalla Tools doesn't have an iPhone App in the App Store. We do have a website with some tools you can use from your browser and an iPhone Web App which is styled the same as a native app but runs in your browser.

iPhone Web App: you can go to http://iphone.gowallatools.com/ to see your missing Gowalla items as well as the locations near to you that may have them as popups.

Site: you can go to http://gowallatools.com/ to find a collection of tools that run in your desktop browser. These include such things as The Gowalla Map (shows you all the items in your local area, flickr photos of spots, and a few other bits and pieces) and various bookmarklets which extend the functionality of Gowalla.com (by showing the radius of spots for example).

We may make a native iPhone app at some point in the future but for now there is just the web app and the website.

Hi Lee,

This is an interesting one! First of all, the Gowalla Map searches only by location and has no bearing on whether you've added photos to the Gowalla group or tagged them with the gowalla:spot=xxxxx machine tag pattern. This is so that photos are available for all spots with the tools already available rather than creating new systems which people may or may not understand (depending on their level of knowledge with Flickr).

When I first looked at the spots, I assumed that your location was out slightly as the photo needs to be Geo-tagged within the radius of the spot. The Flickr map for the areas you've tagged doesn't have the ability to view with aerial photography close up so I couldn't confirm that but they don't look 100% accurate. I can't make the photo radius wider as this would mean photos being tagged in places like London would be over run with more popular spots (for instance, you might want a photo of the Abraham Lincoln statue in Parliament Square but you'd only get Big Ben photos as they would be within an enlarged radius and there are more of them).

So, to get your photos up, I decided to add machine tag searching as well so that a spot will show up to 30 photos that are in the radius area followed by up to 10 most recent photos that are machine tagged with the Gowalla spot id. This is now up and running (and you can test it by looking at the spot "Central Perk" (http://gowalla.com/spots/35306) which is pulling in 30 geo-tagged images and then one machine tagged image uploaded by Jo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelsk/...)

This should have solved your issue but your photos still don't come through. I've had a look and can't find a reason for this, yet on the Flickr site itself if you search for all Gowalla machine tagged photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/gow...) your photos don't show up. I can only assume that you have some kind of privacy setting which is stopping your photos from showing up in these public searches (it might also be your copyright restrictions though I'm not sure).

So, quick summary:

* Gowalla Map now shows upto 40 photos; 30 geo-tagged ones as before and 10 that are tagged with the gowalla:spot=xxxxx machine tag
* Your photos aren't allowed to be displayed through the Flickr API so you need to change some privacy settings somewhere.

Hope that helps :)

Ben

I've taken a look and can't seem to replicate the problem (I've asked a few other people who've been playing to double check as well).

Can you let me know what browser you are using and anything in particular that seems to cause it (or is it literally every time after 2-3 reloads).

So it does! I'll take a look into it

As far as I was aware, it's called the "United States Postal Service". Surely it should sit under "Shopping & Services" -> "Services" rather than Government as that way it would make sense for Americans and for that little thing called "The Rest Of The World". – Ben Dodson, on December 09, 2009 10:45

Fixed!

This issue has now been fixed on the live site - had to do some encoding of my own as the JSON file provided by Gowalla wasn't escaped properly so was causing a few problems.

Well you could have someone shout "GOOOOOWWWAAALLLLLLAAAAA".. alternatively the sound of a Gowalla is very similar to the sound of a dying yak - kind of a "mwwwaaa mwwwaaaaaaa" noise. – Ben Dodson, on November 30, 2009 10:19

Touché Wicks. – Ben Dodson, on November 24, 2009 16:01