Location based check-in app Gowalla will be joining the the throngs of furries, Star Wars superfans, comic book aficianados and Joss Whedon devotees at Comic-Con 2010, the yearly mecca of all things drawn, digitized and generally geeky. As many of us found at this year’s SXSW in Austin, services like Gowalla and Foursquare really shine when you get thousands of geeks together in one location. What better place than Comic-Con to take advantage of yet another large gathering of potential Gowalla users?
In addition to jumping on the comic book bandwagon, Gowalla quietly announced the beta version of its Blackberry mobile app this week, meaning those Crackberry addicts attending can join in on the fun this week too, without having to visit the mobile website.
Conference goers will have a number of features available to them, from custom Gowalla badges to real-world incentives. First, Gowalla is teaming up with Tweethouse to offer a $5 discount into the Tweethouse party. The LBS app has also created a series of “trips”, which consist of several check-in points on the service and will highlight some of the “must see” places at the convention. In addition to all of this, Gowalla will be giving out free Gowalla t-shirts at several booths, but really, it’s the pairing of the service with real-world incentives and interests that peaks our interest. The company has created five custom trips for Comic-Con 2010, such as the I Conquered Comic-Con 2010 trip. Gowalla “trips” feature is unique among the LBS apps we’ve played with and can be a great way to experience an unfamiliar place. (I plan on checking out the Freedom Trail trip myself this afternoon in Boston.)
As for the newly released beta version of Gowalla for Blackberry, Jared Smith, ReadWriteWeb webmaster and in-house Blackberry user, said that the beta version was faster than the alpha version, but doesn’t provide a very “cohesive blackberry experience”. Smith said that the notifications were a bit odd, in that they pop up on the screen like an iPhone rather than showing up in the title bar – the norm in the Blackberry user interface. This was an opinion echoed by others on Gowalla’s website.
The beta version of the Blackberry client is available by pointing your Blackberry’s browser to Gowalla.com or by downloading the client and syncing to your device. Gowalla is soliciting feedback in its forums.