Gowalla Partners With Travel Channel, Puts Out Android and WebOS Apps

As we gear up for the great cornucopia of tech that is SXSW interactive in Austin, TX, the location wars are getting ever more serious. Gowalla announced early this week, their first major media partnership. Gowalla is teaming up with the Travel Channel and one of their brand new shows (which I'm psyched to watch) called Food Wars. The show features two food rivals in one city in a battle to determine which is better once and for all. Much like the Foursquare partnerships that have popped up over the last month, Gowalla will offer special incentives to users who check in at a location attributed to the show.

This comes very close in timing to the launch of Gowalla 1.0 for Android. The beta for Android has been out for a few weeks, and I've been using it since then. I've been under whelmed by it, and I'm even more disappointed in the major release. Gowalla, I want to love you. I really do. I tell everyone about you, I think you're richer than Foursquare, I think you're certainly prettier than Foursquare, but the app just doesn't cut it right now, I'm sorry to say.

Don't get me wrong. It's as gorgeous as the best Android apps out there right now, including Seesmic and Hootsuite. But, the functionality just isn't there. The beta was missing quite a bit, like trips, items, and the ability to see your passport, but 1.0 just plain doesn't work. It refuses to acknowledge change of location. After it's locked on to one, it took a reboot to get it to find me again. Then, after that, it stopped altogether, and to get it to find me again, I had to uninstall, then reinstall the app. I checked the app reviews and did some google searches to make sure it wasn't just me, and it seems like the problem is widespread.

That said, Gowalla has just today announced their WebOS app which looks gorgeous, and doesn't seem to be plagued with the same problems as its Android counterpart. Coinciding with the WebOS launch is a new promotion that is exactly what Gowalla needed to up the ante: product giveaways. Gowalla has given things away before (Orange iPod nanos), but this time they're giving away Palm Pre Pluses, Pixi Pluses, and Lomo cameras. By checking in, users have the opportunity to win an actual device instead of the digital one in the game. Pretty cool if you ask me. Are you a Gowalla user?

Have you had some of the same problems with the Android app? WebOS user? Do you like the app? Let us know in the comments.