Thanks to recommendations by friends I’ve been getting into the location-aware game Gowalla. The idea behind the game is you wander around, checking in to “spots” (i.e. locations) to add to your collection. Spots can be anything from landmarks to shops and when you check in you’re randomly awarded with collectable icons which you can either keep or drop in other spots. If a spot doesn’t exist at a location, you can add it yourself for added kudos.
Anyway, I found myself looking at quite a few spots on Google Streetview but getting the location of a spot over from one to the other is a bit tricky. To help make things a little easier, I’ve created the following bookmarklet which embeds Google Streetview directly into the spot pages on www.gowalla.com.
Please note: This has only been tested in Firefox 3.5, Safari 4 and IE8.
javascript:d=document,e=d.createElement('script');e.src='http://ixalon.net/gwsv.js?'+(new Date()*1);void(d.body.appendChild(e));
This will fire up the main bookmarklet script at http://ixalon.net/gwsv.js (take a look to see how it works.)
Drag the following link to your bookmarks menu to add it: Show Google Streetview
Visit a spot page on Gowalla (e.g. the Arc de Triomphe at http://gowalla.com/spots/23328) and then enter the above bookmarklet into your browser’s address bar. Even better, add it as a bookmark and pick it from your bookmarks menu when viewing the page. You’ll get something like this:
That is frickin’ amazing. Way to go! That completely rocks. Thanks for rockin’ Gowalla.
Very slick. Kudos.
Thanks guys. I’ll keep tweaking it.
I’ve made it attempt to automatically point towards the spot however it only really works when there’s pretty precise GPS coords.
But it does means you can have fun clicking on streets around the spot to see it from different angles. A good example is the Washington Monument: http://gowalla.com/spots/9184
Wow. That is pretty damn impressive and will add to the fantastic Gowalla experience!
Hi Chris, great catch! It looks very impressive. This is one of those ideas the team needs to adopt and implement in the iPhone application too.