The Gowalla iPad app is beautiful. The experience on the iPad is fluid and gorgeous and is a cool showcase for the devices capabilities. The biggest difference is the appearance of the icons on the map. It shows you the Gowalla identified locations in the area. You can click on the icons and get information on activity and see photos. It’s beautiful.

Showing the past few places I have checked in.

Next Release

Of course I cannot help but make suggestions. I am sure this stuff is on the road map, but here goes:
I want search. I just got it in the iPhone app and I cannot live without it any longer. That said, I do not want to use it to simply find a nearby point of interest. I want Gowalla to allow me to set a location as my location regardless of whether I am there or not. This way I can explore places with Gowalla prior to going to the location. It would also be very cool if I could toggle some indicators on the icons such as number of unique visitors, checkins and photos. This takes Gowalla from checkin tool to a business intelligence tool which could then evolve. I can imagine being able to overlay check ins by segment like application use and check in type (for example: people who check in to restaurants).

Icons show the places in the area. Yes! You can zoom.

What would you like to see in the Gowalla iPad application?