For some time now, it has seemed like Foursquare was the only game in town. I mean “game” literally, as of the major location-based services, Foursquare seemed to be the only one really emphasizing gaming elements. But now Gowalla is starting to emphasize it more.

To be fair, Gowalla has had a sort of sub-game based around the dropping and picking up of items (basically, virtual goods) since the beginning. But in the latest build of its iPhone app which hit the App Store today, version 1.3, there are some new gaming aspects. The first is that items now have histories attached to them. This allows you to see who has had an item before you in a city. Looking over some of my items now, it’s actually pretty interesting to see that I know some people who have some of them before me.

While at first the idea behind including items in Gowalla didn’t make sense to me, after meeting with (Gowalla parent) Alamofire CEO Josh Williams, it makes a lot more sense. Aside from this history element, which is interesting, and that different items are of varying scarcities, there is also a plan in place to allow for the items you pick up to be exchanged in real life for actual goods, Williams says. He wasn’t ready to share any specifics just yet, but notes that there are already some interesting proposals on the table to do this. And Gowalla 1.3 is a “bit of a Trojan Horse right now,” for that, he says.

Obviously, the eventual idea behind this is that Gowalla could monetize these transactions. The core concept is similar to what Foursquare is doing with its Mayor Deals, but they too haven’t yet started to monetizing those. With location-based services still in their infancy, all of these services are simply focused on gaining users.

Williams also noted that Gowalla could eventually take a page from Alamofire’s first project, the Facebook app PackRat, and start selling certain items in Gowalla as virtual goods. Williams says they’re just thinking about the idea now, but with the iPhone’s new in-app purchases for free apps, it’s certainly possible.

And there’s another gaming element that Gowalla has added to the latest version of its iPhone app. Now, when you click on a venue, and click on the people tab for it, you can see a list of the top 10 people for that location. This is a list of the users who have checked into that venue the most amount of times over the past 90 days. In Foursquare terms, the top person would be the “mayor,” but again, this is a full top 10 list so more than just the top dog gets recognition.

Perhaps more importantly, with version 1.3, Gowalla has eased some of the GPS restrictions that curbed cheating but made it hard to check-in at certain indoor places. This should be much, much better, Williams tells us. The service is also hard at work on its native Android app, though they recently released a mobile web version that works with Android.

Gowalla is a free download in the App Store, find it here.

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Originally posted here: 
Gowalla Ups Its Game And Hints At Future Business Models

We promised we’d start publishing some of the more entertaining emails we get in our inbox, in the probably ridiculous hope that publicly shaming people may actually lessen the flow of these absurd messages.

A couple of weeks ago we posted a harried email written by a reader looking for legal help (see No, Don’t Sue Facebook. Yes, Do Get A New Boyfriend).

Now we’ve got another one. Hachette Filipacchi Media, which publishes notable magazines like Elle, Car and Driver and Road & Track, wants a little help with their search engine rankings.

The company’s Digital Outreach Coordinator, Automotive Group sent us an email telling us how much they loved a recent CrunchGear post about Ford. They offered to “link to your site on our microblogs to improve your pagerank.”

Hey, great! We love links. But this link requires a little payback. They want us to link two pages on CarAndDriver.com to the anchor text “Ford Vehicle Buying Guide and/or Ford Flex Buying Guide.”

We get reciprocal link spam emails all the time (all sites do), but it’s rare for a large brand to engage in link farming so boldly. For that, we salute them (and we passed it on to Google’s Matt Cutts).

The full email is below, with the links as they suggest them. We’ve added nofollow tags, but since the email doesn’t specify that we can’t do this, we’ll expect our links back shortly.

From: [removed]@hfmus.com>
Date: November 18, 2009 4:18:11 PM EST
To: “‘tips@crunchgear.com’”
Subject: Question for Matt

Matt,

I read your article on Ford’s efforts to cut down on petroleum usage by using wheatgrass as an alternative in its third row storage container. This concept is extremely interesting and I would love to be able to either refer your post on one of my microblogs or link to your site on our microblogs to improve your pagerank.

What I would need from you is to place either in the article or really anywhere you think on your site that makes sense: Ford Vehicle Buying Guide and/or Ford Flex Buying Guide.

Let me know what you think!

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Email Of The Week: CarAndDriver Launches Bold Online Link Farm Strategy

Woot, the popular bargain site that offers one good (sometimes great) deal a day, has just launched a new portal at deals.Woot. The new site is a fairly major departure for Woot, which up until now has been driven by product selections from a team of Woot employees (aside from the main Woot.com site, which is often tech/geek focused, there are special subsites for shirts, wine, and a handful of others). Unlike these sites, Deals.Woot is run by its users — it’s essentially a Digg for bargains.

The new site features a list of top deals, as voted on by the community and chosen by the Deals.Woot algorithm. This will be going head to head against other deal sites like SlickDeals and FatWallet, which have well established communities. Woot already has plenty of fans, but it may take some time to build out a base of deal hunters.

But the very top of the site actually isn’t dictated by users. Instead, it’s dedicated to “Sponsored Deals”. Woot explains that these deals are paid for by advertisers, but that they’re still bargains:

OK, yes, companies pay a little something to be Sponsored Deals. But we don’t allow just any old crap in this section. Sponsored Deals are proposed to us by other retailers, manufacturers, and even other daily deal sites. If we find the deal compelling enough that our members will appreciate us bringing it to their attention, we’ll feature it here. Believe it or not, we have a reputation to uphold.

The site has been available for weeks before now, but was only available until members up until a few hours ago.

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Original post:
Digg For Bargains: Deals.Woot Is Now Open To The Public

It seems that flight delays could turn into a big business. FlightCaster, the startup that helps predict flight delays long before the airlines themselves usually do, has just landed a $1.3 million funding round led by Tandem Entrepreneurs and Sherpalo Ventures. FlightCaster previously recieved money as part of the Y Combinator program. Today the company is also launching a new API, which developers can learn about here.

FlightCaster’s goal is simple: it wants to let you know when your flight is delayed as early as possible. Using a variety of data sources and complex algorithms, the service will alert you whenever it thinks one of your flights will be delayed, along with an explantation of the factors that contributed to its prediction. And so far, it seems to be working — co-founder Jason Freedman says that four hours below takeoff, Flightcaster manages to predict ten times as many delays as the airlines do. And they manage to stay 90% accurate (which is on par with the airlines).

Back when I first wrote about the startup, I questioned how helpful knowing about a delay in advance really was. After all, FlightCaster’s notifications state that a flight will probably be delayed. But sometimes they’re not, so it isn’t wise to show up at the airport a few hours late. Freedman says the FlightCaster team had the same concerns, but that there are two discrete sets of users who value the service. The first group of users (which is where most people fall) just like having a heads up that their flight is delayed, mostly so that they can warn friends and co-workers that they might be late.

The second group loves FlightCaster for a different reason: they will change their plans if there’s a possibility of a delay. Freedman says these tend to be frequent fliers (likely business travelers) who don’t want to get caught in delay limbo and are willing to pay to swap flights even if a delay isn’t certain.

It’s this second group that will likely prove most valuable to FlightCaster. The company is currently in talks with a number of major travel sites (and even some airlines) to integrate their predictions. Freedman won’t get into specifics yet, but he says some of these partners are interested in helping frequent fliers rebook their flights as soon as there’s a delay alert.

Along with the parters FlightCaster is already talking with, other developers will be able to tap into the Flightcaster API for a fee.

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FlightCaster Takes Off With $1.3 Million In Funding And A New API

Continue reading Samsung Story external HDD now boasts 2TB, eSATA

Samsung Story external HDD now boasts 2TB, eSATA originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As anticipated, Google has taken the first step to launch full extension support for its Chrome browser. Starting today, Google is allowing developers to upload the extensions they are making to the new Extensions Gallery. This gallery isn’t yet open for Chrome users to test out, but Google is saying that they will open it to “trusted testers” in the next few days.

If you are a developer working on an extension, you can simply agree to Google’s terms and upload your extension to the gallery right now. One of those terms is that Google has the right to review your extension before it’s published, but they are saying they will only do that if it includes “include an NPAPI component and all content scripts that affect “file://” URLs.” Google goes on to note that “For security reasons, developers of these types of extensions will need to provide some additional information before they can post them in the gallery.” Fair enough.

As we noted a few days ago, there are already some Google-made extensions that are working in Chrome now, such as a Gmail Checker, which is handy. These were mainly made to be examples in helping walk developers through the extension creation process. You can find their documentation on that here. Google promises the whole process (both creating and updating extensions) is simple.

Extensions are important to the growth of Chrome as they are one of the most popular features of Firefox, the browser that has been able to best combat Microsoft’s Internet Explorer over the past several years. Of course, Google is the biggest backer of Firefox-maker Mozilla, so the growing rivalry between the two is interesting.

Last Thursday, Google also showed off Chrome OS, it’s operating system based on the Chrome browser, for the first time. And in the next few weeks, a beta version of Chrome for Mac is slated to launch. It’s worth noting that the test extensions already work in the dev builds of Chrome for Mac.

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Google Opens Chrome Extensions To Developers, Will Only Review Certain Ones

You’ll recall that Microsoft recently banned a bunch of people from Xbox Live because they had modded their 360s. Modding is against the rules, don’t you know? Microsoft told VentureBeat not to believe the numbers being thrown around—the number most relayed is 1 million banned 360s—because it never releases numbers to anyone.

Again, the larger debate is: should you be allowed to mod your console? I think so, but that’s probably because my opinion on every single issue is, “So long as you don’t bother me in any direct way, do what you want.” You bought the hardware (the 360 itself) so if you want to whip out a soldering iron or flash its DVD drive with a custom firmware, be my guest.

At the same time, Microsoft has the right to say, “Look, Xbox Live is a service that we’re trying to keep as clean as possible. If you’re playing a game on a modded console, it’s much harder for us to ensure that the service is as clean as possible.” (Where “clean” means free from cheating, hacks, etc.) Plus, why should someone be able to play a pirated copy of Modern Warfare 2 on Xbox Live when everyone else paid for it? It’s not “fair,” if you will.

That a law firm is possibly looking to start a class-action lawsuit over the bans is sorta silly. The law firm may have something when it comes to Microsoft owing some of these people money for the remainder of their Xbox Live contract, but I don’t know what the EULA or TOS for Xbox Live says about service termination. If you’re banned for being a jerk, are you entitled to any money left over on the contract?

The moral of this particular story is, no, Microsoft didn’t ban “1 million” Xbox 360s.

A surefire way to avoid being banned? Don’t use your modded Xbox 360 on Xbox Live.

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Microsoft defends decision to ban modded Xbox 360s (but says it didn’t ban 1 million of them)

A few weeks ago there was a lot of excitement surrounding the launch of Google Maps Navigation. Unfortunately, it only worked with Android 2.0 and up, which means only the newest devices right now, like the Droid. But today Google has given an early holiday present to its other Android users: Maps Navigation to anyone running at least Android 1.6 (Donut).

Yes, that means anyone with an Android device can now use this awesome new feature. This even includes users with the original Android phone, the G1. But apparently not all of the features found in Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 will work in the 1.6 version. The one example Google gives is that you can’t use the “navigate to” voice command.

This new version of Maps Navigation also includes a new feature included called “Layers” which allows you to put various information such as Wikipedia articles on top of your map as an overaly.

The update is available in the Android Market today, obviously for free. Sadly, the service is still U.S.-only, and Google warns that it’s still in beta, something which we’ve come to ignore the meaning of thanks to Google’s own Gmail.

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Google Gives A Slightly Crippled Maps Navigation To All Android Users

A little over a year ago, Swype announced at TechCrunch50 2008 that they were going to “change how the world inputs text on screens”. By allowing the user to type words by tracing a path between its letters rather than tapping them out one-by-one, Swype claims to speed up typing on a mobile handset while doing away with accuracy annoyances. Swype is the brainchild of Randy Marsden, developer of the Windows Mobile onscreen keyboard, and Cliff Kushler, co-inventor of the T9 input method.

Early next month, Swype will make the jump from the demo stage to a real world product as it debuts on the Verizon Samsung Omnia II.

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Swype To Debut On The Verizon Samsung Omnia II

Google’s on a bit of a shopping spree this holiday season. The search giant just acquired AdMob for $750 million a few weeks ago. Today, Google has acquired display advertising company Teracent for an undisclosed amount of money. The deal is expected to close this quarter.

Teracent’s Intelligent Display Advertising technology creates display ads entirely customized to the specific consumer and site. The startup’s proprietary alogirthims automatically pick the creative parts of a display ad (images, colors, text) in real-time determined by like geographic location, language, the content of the website, the time of day or the past performance of different ads.

To date, Teracent has only raised $5.8 million in funding. Google says that Teracent’s technology will now be offered to its display advertising clients who run campaigns in Google’s Content Network and to DoubleClick clients. Google had been rumored to be in talks with Teracent about a possible acquisition a few weeks ago. Earlier this year, Yahoo announced a partnership with Teracent as part of its “Smart Ads” program for PC and mobile advertisers. With Teracent’s acquisition by Google, I’m assuming this partnership is nullified.

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Google Acquires Teracent To Apply Machine Smarts To Display Ads