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Nudging the location pin when creating Spot...
Maybe have the ability to "pick up" the pin and slightly nudge it to another city block during spot creation or after? Or maybe be able to do it from the web? Or iPhone app? (or both?!)
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The company has this under consideration.
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All of these ideas are ones we agree with and are working on: we want you to be able to, within reason, nudge the pin if the network/GPS on your iPhone is resulting in wonky pin placement. We also like the radius-boosting idea, and we ourselves do routinely boost the radii of spots travelers make. So keep an eye open! Thanks for the great input!
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I'm sure you guys have an idea of how to do this already but I just came across another app that does something very similar. It is the AT&T app called Mark The Spot. It is used to report areas where the AT&T coverage is incomplete or where you have dropped calls/data signal. I used it this afternoon and it was very cool. It will by default pick up your GPS location but then you can click on the Map button and it will bring up the Google map showing your current location. You can then move the map but the red X in the middle is where you can set the actual location of the problem. Once you have set the proper location, you just click Done and it sets the Lat/Long exactly where you picked. This is exactly what Gowalla needs.
Hope this helps and I can't wait for this feature to be added.
I’m excited for the posibilities
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For those of you that wanted to be able to see how big the radius actually is (rather than just in terms of 'small', 'medium', 'large', etc) I've added a new bookmarklet to Gowalla Tools which will allow you to see the radius on a spot page or when editing a spot - check it out at http://gowallatools.com/radius/
I’m hopeful people will find it useful!
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Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, you can now adjust the location and the radius of a spot from the website.
I’m kickin'
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Speaking of radius, I'd also like to be able to adjust that as well. Say for a stadium, nudge the pin to the middle of the field and make the radius big enough to cover the entire stadium. That way if I created my spot at gate 1 but you're coming in at gate 23, you could still check in there, or even from your seat since you'd be within the circle.
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Inappropriate?This is the only real problem I have with Gowalla is that sometimes the GPS is a little off, or maybe you're in a hurry and remember at the last minute to create a spot before you leave so the market is a little off. I'd like to be able to log in afterwards and move the pin. Maybe have a limited radius in which the pin can be adjusted?
I’m looking forward to this feature!
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Inappropriate?Speaking of radius, I'd also like to be able to adjust that as well. Say for a stadium, nudge the pin to the middle of the field and make the radius big enough to cover the entire stadium. That way if I created my spot at gate 1 but you're coming in at gate 23, you could still check in there, or even from your seat since you'd be within the circle.
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Inappropriate?All of these ideas are ones we agree with and are working on: we want you to be able to, within reason, nudge the pin if the network/GPS on your iPhone is resulting in wonky pin placement. We also like the radius-boosting idea, and we ourselves do routinely boost the radii of spots travelers make. So keep an eye open! Thanks for the great input!
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Inappropriate?I love the idea of being able to boost the radius! I went to Mohegan Sun Casino to collect my first stamp the other night, and didn't realize I was going to have to go to the exact location where the spot was created! Let me just say that the casino is pretty big, and of course I came in at the opposite side of where the spot was! -
Inappropriate?I've seen a couple of people having issues with the pushpin not dropping in the right place - are you guys going to support moving it? Couple of times I've had to go outside and I don't like going outside when it's cold!
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Moving the pushpin.
I’m inquisitive
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Inappropriate?Glad to hear that y'all are working on this! I've only created two spots so far, but both have dropped pins that are no where near the spot — due to problems with GPS.
It breaks my heart that my babies aren't perfectly placed.
( I'm not OCD. I'm not OCD. I'm not OCD. )
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Tell us where, Christian, and we'll get 'em moved: live {a t] gowalla dot com -
Inappropriate?Do you want us to report bad drops to you, or wait until we can edit them ourselves?
I’m amused
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Inappropriate?Eva: it's at 315 South Main Street, Salt Lake City — halfway between the intersections of Main and 300 South, and Main and Market Street. The pin should be on the east side of the street.
Brüges Waffles & Frites: it's at 336 West Broadway, Salt Lake City — halfway between the intersections of Broadway and 300 West, and Broadway and 400 West. The pin should be on the north side of the street. Also, Broadway (depending on the map) is also called 300 South.
:)
You're a saint, Jonathan! -
Inappropriate?I too need to nudge some pin placements for spots, but how do we specify exactly where they need to be?3 Comments Add a comment
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I uploaded a screen capture onto one of these threads with an arrow pointing to where the spot needs to be. That always did the trick!
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Yeah I realized GS posts can have uploaded attachments, that's what I did. Thanks!
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No worries.
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Inappropriate?how can you edit a location? the map pin is in the wrong spot
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
move map pin.
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We'll be allowing spot creators to move the pin very soon. Thanks!
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Inappropriate?I realize you said you're already planning to address this. But I figured I'd chime in anyways. Some sort of extended fudge-factor would be *very* helpful for those of us with inaccurate location systems. For my 1st-gen iPhone, best case is that there's a registered WiFi AP nearby, othewise, it's just going to latch on to the nearest cell tower, which is usually quite a distance away (I've seen it put me a half-mile or more away from my actual location in a couple of instances).
Using the GPS accuracy info to dynamically adjust the location radius in some way would be awesome. In other words, if I create a spot with a really bad location error factor, take that into account when people try to check in at that location later. And maybe as more people check in, with more accurate devices, use that to automagically nudge the spot location (take an average of the previously recorded location, and the device location, weighted for accuracy?)
I've created several spots, only to find -- to my dismay -- that the created location is waaaay off-base. Which means that others will have trouble checking in. And I might even have trouble myself on the next visit, just because of the fluctuating signals from various nearby towers. And on a couple of occasions, I was unable to create a new spot at all, because the app would just sit on the "verifying location" message forever.
Being able to make spot location corrections from the phone would be great, but I'd settle for being able to do it after-the-fact on the web site.
As an aside, what about the notion of doing a search on the server side at creation time for nearby locations matching the given name? For example, something like this:
* I start to create a new spot. I name it "Joe's Pub", pick an appropriate category, and submit.
* On the server side, Gowalla does a search (google, yahoo, or whatever) for "Joe's Pub" near my phone's location. Mark each match with some sort of relevancy score, and if matches above a threshold are found, send a list back to the phone.
* If the phone gets a list of possible matches back, let me choose the best one for an exact address location, or a choice of "none of these" to just use my phone's GPS location.
* If there are no matches, just use the GPS info as you do now.1 Comment Add a comment
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I've recently made spots that I can't check in to because they are so far off-base. really want to see this fixed soon!
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Inappropriate?Just in case anyone hasn't noticed, you can now adjust the location and the radius of a spot from the website.
I’m kickin'
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I saw the pin nudge, how do we change the radius?
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Ah, they added the radius thing since the last time I was on the site. Initially it was just pin nudging. Thanks for the heads up!
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Will this be available from the iPhone app too? (both adjusting a location and the radius)
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Inappropriate?Thanks for adding this feature! I was able to fix a lot of the locations of my spots. What is the approx radius of each level? Eventually, It would be nice to see the radius on the map to make sure it encompasses the entire location (with a buffer to account for GPS float)..but in the meantime, thank you!
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yeah the radius range as well as seeing the radius would be helpful.
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yeah the radius range as well as seeing the radius would be helpful.
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Yeah, being able to see the radii at each level would be helpful...
http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-ar...
Great work on implementing these features, though!! -
Inappropriate?For those of you that wanted to be able to see how big the radius actually is (rather than just in terms of 'small', 'medium', 'large', etc) I've added a new bookmarklet to Gowalla Tools which will allow you to see the radius on a spot page or when editing a spot - check it out at http://gowallatools.com/radius/
I’m hopeful people will find it useful!
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You rock.
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Nicely done!!
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Inappropriate?It's nice to have the option to now edit the spot and actually move the pin to the correct position if Gowalla has misplaced it during the initial process...! :)
However with one spot I created I noticed that the pin was way off and that I'm unable to set it to the right location -- instead i get a message that the new position is too far away from the original position and that I can't place the pin there...!? Any ideas how to fix this...?!
I’m confused
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Inappropriate?I've got the same problem as MILE at the moment as well. I've moved it as near to the right location as it will allow though...
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Inappropriate?Just created a new spot which Gowalla got the location wrong by like 5 miles. When I tried to change the spot it gives me an error saying it's too far from it's original location.....
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Are you a Street Team Member? If you aren't just add it again if you can and I can merge the two spots for you.
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Not quite so far off, but when I'm in the back of Bellevue Hospital in NYC, my GPS (in Gowalla and verified in the google maps ap) puts me near the Empire State Building. There is already a Bellevue spot I can check into when I'm in front of the building, so I don't want to create a new spot. But it seems there should be a way to reconcile that the GPS shows two very different locations for the same building depending where I am in the building, so that I can check into either. Of course, I didn't create the existing spot, so I can't edit it regardless. And, with GPS so far off depending on the part of the building, the check-in radius would have to be huge to work. This seems to be a pretty common problem in NYC, where GPS often puts me blocks away from a location.
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Inappropriate?I'm a little confused about the "nudge within a certain radius" concept. Why can't we just fix a spot that's wrong? The distance shouldn't matter. The pin is in the wrong spot, I want to move it to the right spot. We're trying to make things more accurate and it seems like the app is hindering the process not helping.
I’m confused
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Inappropriate?Hi William,
I assume it's to stop people playing the game in a way which isn't in the spirit of the game - i.e. sit in one location, set up spots for the whole city and then 'nudge' them all to the correct places on the web.
Daisy
I’m thinking like a cheater
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I would imagine that was the thinking, but I would argue that it's unnecessary in a game of this type and scale. There are no leaderboards or global standings. So there's really no reason to do the cheating that you're talking about. Also, if there was, cheaters will always find a way to cheat. Most often, draconian controls put in to stop cheating really only cause legitimate players inconvenience while cheaters continue on their marry way working around whatever systems have been put in place.
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That was indeed the thinking. If someone could move the pin anywhere they wanted, they could create a pin, check in, move it to somewhere else and then ask for it to be merged with the legitimate pin. I appreciate that's taking it to the extreme, but if there wasn't a limit to how far you could move the pin, then it could happen. The limit certainly doesn't cause inconvenience as far as I'm concerned.
Why would someone do it? Well, for the kudos of creating a spot at a great place (e.g. the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which is still outstanding) which could then get featured. Part of the fun of Gowalla is actually visiting great places and creating a spot before anyone else. Being able to create spots all over the world from your home town/city defeats the whole purpose. -
I certainly see the "potential" issue. However, limitations like this sacrifice accuracy for the sake of the potential cheater. Personaly, it's inconvenient for me when I try to create a place and my GPS hasn't updated fully, or something else is causing an inaccurate position (like cloud cover, or other interference) and I'm unable to correct the issue after the fact. So, now there's a spot that I had the opportunity to create because I was the first one to visit with gowalla but others are going to be very frustrated because they won't be able to check in because the inaccurate spot may be too far away from the actual location for them to check in.
Your example of the Harbour Bridge is perfect. I'm the first one to visit the place and enter it into Gowalla, but my GPS is wonky. Since I'm on vacation to Sydney it's unlikely I'm going to be able to return to the location to try and drop another more accurate pin. So, I go to the website to correct the problem and I can't move it close enough because of the arbitrary limitation. Now, a cool landmark destination that has the potential to get featured can't be checked into by other users because when they visit the spot is too far away and out in the middle of the harbour.
I'm not a fan of catering to cheaters. They should be policed and removed from the service certainly, but there are other ways to detect cheating rather than arbitrary limitations put in place for imaginary scenarios. -
The app very clearly shows you the location that you are going to drop the pin before you hit the "create spot" button. One of the reasons for the movement limit (aside from stopping cheaters) is to make people more mindful when they create their spots. I had to create a duplicate spot checker for my GowallaTools site because so many people create spots when their GPS isn't correct (rather than waiting for it to lock on) and then don't bother to alter the radius / location from the website later on (even if it is within the 1km limit) that duplicates were being created.
If you are creating a spot, check carefully that the micro map it shows you has the pin in the correct place and you won't run into any problems. If the GPS veers off at the last second (though this is not so much an issue in v1.3 as it was in 1.1 and 1.2), then provided it's within the 1km area you will be able to edit it on the website, otherwise just create a case on GetSatisfaction and the Gowalla Team will take care of it as they used to before the ability to move spots was granted.
The movement limit is there for good reason - there may be a case for increasing the area slightly or for letting STE members have a larger editing radius, but I'm not in favour of dropping it completely. -
Yes the app shows where the pin is being created and yes in an ideal world one could sit around until Kingdom come waiting for the GPS to "lock on" to the correct location. But as I said, sometimes that doesn't happen. It's frustrating to sit around in 20 below weather, holding your phone to the sky, praying for the satellite gods to bestow pin-point accuracy upon you just to get a spot created in Gowalla. I do look at the mini-map, very closely in fact, and I do go back and edit the radius of just about every spot I create. One of the ways I know that i need to go back an edit a spot is because I was looking at the mini-map and it told me it was going to create my spot in the incorrect location. Sometimes that location is way off.
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William - I hear what you're saying. Sometimes the GPS is a little wonky and I've been places where I've waited around for ages trying to get a 'lock on'. But there's a number of ways you can help the app. Sometimes I launch the Google Maps app to locate me, then go back to Gowalla. Also, switching on your wi-fi seems to help find you as well (although I wouldn't recommend keeping wi-fi on, as it can drain the battery). If all else fails,'m with Ben on this one that's there's enough help out there to get the location right. If it's too far away for you to adjust (more than 1km) then the Street Team Elite have an increased range of 2km. If it's outside this range, then the devs can sort it (and the STE have one onboard as well). STE will adjust things really quickly for you.
Because of this extra help, I don't think there's a need for everyone to have an increased radius (it only affects a few spots anyway) or unlimited radius. -
Inappropriate?I'm sure you guys have an idea of how to do this already but I just came across another app that does something very similar. It is the AT&T app called Mark The Spot. It is used to report areas where the AT&T coverage is incomplete or where you have dropped calls/data signal. I used it this afternoon and it was very cool. It will by default pick up your GPS location but then you can click on the Map button and it will bring up the Google map showing your current location. You can then move the map but the red X in the middle is where you can set the actual location of the problem. Once you have set the proper location, you just click Done and it sets the Lat/Long exactly where you picked. This is exactly what Gowalla needs.
Hope this helps and I can't wait for this feature to be added.
I’m excited for the posibilities
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Inappropriate?There has to be a limit on how far you could nudge otherwise you could sit in your armchair creating spots you've never been too. in which case what is the point of using Gowalla ? -
Inappropriate?Well, even now you can sit in your armchair and create spots and a second later move them in your browser there they should be. So the web interface should also have a limit (if it doesn't have it already). -
Inappropriate?Yes there is a limit to how far the spot can be moved. For a normal user it is a small limit like about 1km. For STE members, it is about 5km. Anything above that needs to be done by an Employee.
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Inappropriate?I think if you average the check-in GPS readings on a spot it will get more and more accurate. Could also generate the radius based on statistical averages of check ins. Base it on the check ins from founders and then don't mess with it...
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This deserves its own idea topic if I does not already exist.
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Inappropriate?I have had an issue where the creator put the pin at the address of the location, but the front door is on the other side of a huge parking lot. You have to drive to the road to check in. Since I didn't create the location it is not allowing me to make the nudge.
Is that where I need to create another location and have you merge the two spots?2 Comments Add a comment
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Please create a post in the Report A Problem section of these forums describing the problem. Include a URL to the Gowalla spot that is in the wrong location and info of where it should be. It is easiest if you can include a map image showing the proper location.
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Thank you. Will do!
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Inappropriate?Have there been any considerations to allow access to move a pin if the spot was not created by the person wishing to mark the location more accurately? I'm getting to know the create a trip feature, and without wanting to create a duplicate, I'd like to have the spots I choose be as accurate as possible, which I can't do with certain locations because I didn't create them. Would this be better addressed in "report a problem"? I promise to be more concise if I repost there, or at least I'll try.
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Yes, do a "Report a Problem" report and show the Gowalla page with the location you want to move and then find the right spot using Google Maps and they can move it for you. Or just the GPS coordinates. They moved a couple for me within a few hours. Pretty quick work they do.
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This comment was removed on 02/03/10.
see the change log -
Inappropriate?Yes, do a "Report a Problem" report and show the Gowalla page with the location you want to move and then find the right spot using Google Maps and they can move it for you. Or just the GPS coordinates. They moved a couple for me within a few hours. Pretty quick work they do.
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Inappropriate?Thank you for the suggestion!
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Inappropriate?Yeah, I was just going to say, if you send them the URL of problem spots, even if they're not yours, they'll see about correcting them, including annoying (at least for me) spelling mistakes & such.
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