masukomi's dashboard

masukomi shared an idea in Gowalla on November 17, 2009 14:46:

Round Up e-mail suggestion

You know what would be cool?
It would be cool if at the end of the Round Up e-mails was a paragraph or two about improvements or changes made to Gowalla over the past week. Like list the new categories you made, new features, maybe any bug fixes that have been implemented. If you're mailing us anyway why not also make it informative about Gowalla itself. If nothing notable's happened then just a note to the effect that everything's going well at Gowalla HQ.

A comment on the problem "RoundUp e-mail tells me about checkins from a "Friend" I don't have" in Gowalla:

yes. I feel bad for other Gowallans who shan't experience this splendid serendipity. :) – masukomi, on November 13, 2009 00:04

masukomi marked one of DR2000's replies in Gowalla as useful. DR2000 replied to the idea "Friend-Only Spots".

A comment on the problem "RoundUp e-mail tells me about checkins from a "Friend" I don't have" in Gowalla:

first, and I just forwarded it. – masukomi, on November 12, 2009 16:33

A comment on the problem "App crashes intermittently" in Gowalla:

coming back from map mode crashes frequently for me too. – masukomi, on November 12, 2009 02:28

A comment on the idea "Regional Spot Moderators" in Gowalla:

well yes it *could* be crowdsourced, but why go to all the trouble of writing the mechanisms to support that when we've got Street Team Elite being ramped up and Josh's comment that they might implement Zach's idea of letting people who check into a place frequently have the power to tweak it.

Those are much easier to implement and manage than automating AI nudging and writing a voting system for it with a filter that just allows people who've checked in there to vote on an AI thing that may only be better but still not accurate. With Street Team Elite you've got an accurate adjustment, ditto for people who check in regularly and care enough to fix it. – masukomi, on November 12, 2009 02:24

masukomi replied on November 12, 2009 00:21 to the problem "can't query someone requesting friendship" in Gowalla:

meh, not really. I was doing that anyway. But I'd debate the logic of not exposing the requestor's raw e-mail address because you have already deemed that exposing it is acceptable between people who are approved friends (i'm assuming this functionality was intentional). And, the person whose e-mail you would be exposing has already approved their end of it. If i click to approve I get it anyway.

So, a) they've already said it's ok and b) you're not giving me anything I couldn't get the moment I clicked approve.

So, the requestor's e-mail isn't being protected by the current state of things in any way. It just makes it require 1 additional click to get.

I'm down with changing the system to never expose them and replace with a messaging system, but in the meantime I say remove a "protection" system that doesn't protect at all and make it easy for people to talk to people who have approved exposing their end of the conversation without having to click approve, send an e-mail to the now exposed e-mail address, and then maybe disapprove. Either way I get to e-mail them.

a better interim solution (untill you get a messaging system ) might be to just make username@gowallamail.com email addressses for all users and have those just forwards to their main address if the sender's addy matches that of one of their friends. Pretty simple to set up, no e-mail storage, protects everyone's e-mail address, and limits mailings to friends.

masukomi reported a problem in Gowalla on November 11, 2009 14:55:

can't query someone requesting friendship

I have two friend requests sitting in my inbox. I can't figure out who these people are. I'm assuming they're not just randomly picking me as someone to friend, but then again, maybe they are.

The problem is, I have no way to respond to their friend request and say "Wait, who are you again?" Before I start sending them regular updates as to my whereabouts. I'm betting that a few of the requests I'll get are from internet friends who I just know by nicknames instead of real names, and wouldn't mind friending, but some of them not so much...

I don't think it's a violation of their privacy to be able to contact them since they've claimed on their end that I'm a friend.

In the meantime I'm going to have to track them down via other means and contact them, which is a pain in the butt, and may surprise them to have an out of band communication about Gowalla.

masukomi replied on November 08, 2009 15:01 to the idea "Regional Spot Moderators" in Gowalla:

This assumes that most people walk right up to a place when checking in. However, I suspect there are quite a few people like me who will check into a place that shows up as they're walking down the road, frequently on the other side of the road. And then you've got larger places like malls and large parks where people could check in anywhere in a large radious

Simply put, you've got far too many data points that don't approximate the center of the location to have an automated nudging. It's a good idea though.

masukomi reported a problem in Gowalla on November 05, 2009 23:26:

twitter feed sidebar doesn't convert linebreaks.

Twitter feed sidebar doesn't respect newlines/linebreaks. Newlines in tweets aren't converted to
elements as they should be.

masukomi started following the idea "Friend-Only Spots" in Gowalla.

masukomi started following the idea "Stay Logged Into Website" in Gowalla.

masukomi replied on November 04, 2009 16:24 to the problem "RoundUp e-mail tells me about checkins from a "Friend" I don't have" in Gowalla:

side note... I've done the "Add Friend" now... but she wasn't when I wrote this.

masukomi reported a problem in Gowalla on November 04, 2009 16:23:

RoundUp e-mail tells me about checkins from a "Friend" I don't have

RoundUp e-mail telling me about a "Friend" I've never heard of and isn't listed in my friends

i'm masukomi
in the "scoop about some of your friends" it tells me about KatieWallace who isn't a friend
:( *sniffle*

Maybe I should take this as a hint and make a new friend, she is nearby.... but even if Gowalla is being prescient I'm thinking it shouldn't tell me about her as many people will see this as a privacy violation and be quite up in arms about it.

masukomi shared an idea in Gowalla on November 04, 2009 15:05:

can't enter returns/newlines in a check-in message

the return / newline character is perfectly valid in tweets and many desktop clients display it appropriately. Some clients just ignore it. I don't know if it's also supported by FB status updates but if it isn't it could be easily filtered out.

I use returns in pretty much every Tweet I make, so it'd be nice if the iPhone app would let me enter them.

masukomi replied on November 04, 2009 14:16 to the idea "Push based on distance from yourself." in Gowalla:

I think I'd want a variant on this where I could specify on a per user basis. There are going to be cases where a friend will go of a distant trip and I'll want to partake in their adventure vicariously, but also, like you said, some friends I'd only want pushes on when they are nearby BUT this raises the questio of what counts as nearby. Is nearby relative to my last checkin or my home base. It I go to the distant friend's home town and she to mine I'd still like pushes so that I could recommend spots near her but if she returns home and I'm still in that town I'd also want pushes because she's physically close. So I think physical proximity is important but so is the concept of a home base.

masukomi started following the problem "Laundromat" in Gowalla.

masukomi started following the idea "Check-in / Item stats (graphs etc)" in Gowalla.

masukomi started following the idea "Push based on distance from yourself." in Gowalla.

masukomi shared an idea in Gowalla on November 04, 2009 12:59:

Twitter / Facebook Posting prefs

Twitter / Facebook posting
Right now the iPhone app appears to leave these toggled to whatever state they were last set at. I would prefer it if they stayed on a default instead.

That way, if i typically want it off but then decide i want to post something, I don't have to remember to turn it back off the next time (last night i accidentally sent a couple i didn't intend after posting one I did). And conversely, if I typically like posting my check-ins, but go somewhere that I don't want the whole Twitterverse to know about I can turn it off for that time, but not have to remember to turn it back on again for the next spot.

I think having a default would prevent undesirable posts for us who don't use it much and help prevent missed posts for those who use it a lot.