Following up on an extensive iPhone update, the Gowalla check-in app for Android has also been renovated. There’s a new action at the top to easily refresh or check-in, regardless of what page you’re on. You can easily manage Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Tumblr links for those times you don’t necessarily want everyone to know where you are. Shared photos are shown in-line along your news stream with easy one-tap commenting. You can also add spots to your Highlights, which is a way of showing your top picks in a variety of categories. Gowalla 3.0 also introduces push notifications, so you’ll know right away when someone comments on your check-in, or when one of your friends checks in.
For those unfamiliar, Gowalla is a location-based social network, where you find (or create, if necessary) profiles for real-world locations, upload pictures of the area, leave comments, gather virtual items, and collect stamps based on where you check in. It’s a little different from Foursquare in that it’s not really trying to be a game with mayorships or points of any kind; plus the stamps have a very unique flavour of their own that I personally like more than Foursquare’s.
This is a pretty huge update for Gowalla, and if the BlackBerry app got nearly this much love, I’d kick Foursquare to the curb in a heartbeat. If you’re into the whole location-sharing thing, Gowalla’s hanging out in the Android Market, or the iPhone App Store below.