geolocation

The Android mobile app for game-like "check-in" app Gowalla is now live, as Mashable noted over the weekend. Launching its first non-iPhone app is an important step for the start-up as it competes fiercely with several other location-based mobile companies that are all trying to break away from the pack.

Additionally, Gowalla is set to announce a partnership with the Travel Channel for its series "Food Wars," a competitive reality show that pits chefs against one another in blind taste tests. When a Gowalla user checks into a "Food Wars"-featured restaurant, they'll … Read more

In an update to the development build of Chrome, Google on Thursday introduced a rough version of the native HTML5 geolocation API. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Google Chrome dev 5.0.342.1 comes with the geolocation API that Mozilla has supported since it introduced it in last summer's Firefox 3.5.

However, geolocation in Chrome is turned off by default. To activate it, users must go to their Chrome shortcut and add --enable-geolocation to the end of the target line, under the Shortcut tab. To test if it's working, you can go to http://www.browsergeolocation.com. … Read more

A few weeks ago we took a look at CheckoutCheckins, a free service that helps users understand more about their Foursquare addiction habits. Now there's another companion tool (from a different developer) called Meet Gatsby that can help you meet other Foursquare users with those same interests.

In a nutshell, it has people fill out things they like, such as hobbies or social activities. Then, the next time they check in somewhere, it will connect them to someone else in the vicinity who also signed up for the service and who shares one or more of those interests.

What'… Read more

Pretty soon, you'll be able to learn a bit more about where your Twitter contacts' tweets are coming from.

CNET has learned that select third-party developers were informed earlier this week about some forthcoming modifications to Twitter's "geo API," the set of developer tools that currently allows Twitter messages to be accompanied by the latitude and longitude coordinates of where they were posted. (For example, if you're updating Twitter client Tweetie from your iPhone, you can opt to tag the tweet with your location and it'll be visible to people reading your Twitter feed.)… Read more

More than a social statement than an actual utility for aspiring Colton Harris-Moore* copycats, a new site called Please Rob Me has popped up to expose the potential pratfalls of the geolocation craze: If you're pushing a "check-in" from Gowalla, Brightkite, or Foursquare to a local restaurant out to your public Twitter stream, you're broadcasting that you aren't home. Which could be taken to mean that your home is ripe for burglary.

Please Rob Me consists exclusively of an aggregation of public Twitter messages that have been pushed through fast-growing location-based networking site Foursquare, one … Read more

Twitter has added a new feature that can make the service more relevant. In the right-hand navigation bar, under "Trending," you can now select a geographic region to see what's hot on Twitter in one of a few cities.

Only 15 U.S. cities and five non-U.S. countries are on the locality list, although it's very likely that Twitter will add more locations shortly.

Twitter last year rolled out a geolocation API, which lets posts from Twitter apps--but not the Twitter.com site--tag each Tweet with the location where it was made. Presumably,Twitter posts … Read more

Could the geolocation wars be the next browser wars? Maybe. There's a fresh $8.4 million in venture funding for Gowalla, a game-like mobile app that lets you "check in" to locations around the world, see where your friends are, and swap virtual goods along the way.

The Series B funding round, announced Wednesday, is led by Greylock Partners with contributions from Shasta Ventures, Maples Investments, previous investors Alsop-Louie Partners and Founders Fund, and individual investors Ron Conway, Kevin Rose, Gary Vaynerchuk, Shervin Pishevar, Jason Calacanis, and Chris Sacca.

Interestingly, at least two of Gowalla's individual … Read more

Why the long Face...book? A woman battling depression put some pictures of herself having fun privately on Facebook. Somehow the insurance company found them and cut off her benefits saying she looked happy enough and must be cured. Really? We also get further impressions on Google's Chrome OSD now that we've had more time with it, and YouTube pulls a Hulu, but not in the good way.

Try out Chrome OS for yourself http://gdgt.com/google/chrome-os/download/ … Read more

Twitter has now launched the geotagging API, or application programming interface, that it announced in August.

Users now have the option to opt-in to geolocation by clicking a box in their settings menu, according to Twitter. For now, the company said, the impact of geotagging will be in third-party apps. Users won't see a difference to Twitter.com just yet.

Twitter contends that including a user's location when he or she tweets could significantly add to its microblogging service. The company wrote in a blog post that the new feature should allow users to "better focus in … Read more