Gowalla (for iPhone)

Gowalla is a free smartphone app (for iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry) that taps into a user's geo-location data to suggest places nearby, from service industry businesses to museums and landmarks. Gowalla users can virtually "check in" to a location when they visit it, and their account will record and save the activity. They can also see suggestions from other users about various locations, or leave their own tips for others to see.

"Featured" spots are places or attractions that are very popular in a given city. Each featured spot has a custom stamp that Gowalla has created for it.

Gowalla users can earn pins (or badges) after doing certain actions, like visiting particular locations or checking in

Gowalla's profile saves a person's name, photo, location, total number of "friends" (or connected Gowalla users), and total number of pins earned.

The Gowalla mobile app can connect with Foursquare and Facebook Places, its two biggest competitors, but I had a difficult time getting it to work while testing the integration.

"Trips" in Gowalla are not trips you have taken, but rather a list of places to visit while touring some place that other users have created. In browsing the few trips that actually show up in Gowalla, I noticed that many (though not all) of them were created by Gowalla staff members.

One of the better features in Gowalla is the ability to bookmark places you'd like to visit. Once you book mark a spot, removing it from your list is easy.

The search function in Gowalla is more helpful in finding places than filtering by category.