The internationally geolocated geek's slavery [GeoLocation]

Hi, I'm Rani and I am a geek. I'm also international because I live in Israel, which is located outside US. As a geek I love gadgets and new tech but you've probably figured that out already, if you've seen my blog.


Last month I got my latest toy, a Google Nexus One, which hasn't left my hands since (my wife is close to taking my two year old boy and leaving home). I download and test apps on a daily basis and try to read the reviews as much as time allows. I find the geolocation apps to be very game-ish with their continuing appeal on me to win more points and activate more mayorships as well as complete challenges.

Lately I've started to feel a little frustrated. There is no single venue in Israel in the indexes of SCVNGR, in my city there are about 40 places in Gowalla (a few of which I created), and last but not least, FourSquare, which is better but still I already registered at least a dozen venues. So I'm like making my town visible to the people coming to visit here. I feel like a lone rider boldly going where no one has gone before.

I said a lone rider for a reason. Not only the Israeli places are missing in the geolocation apps but also available friends are scarce. I have more then 500 contacts in my gmail account and more then 250 friends, mostly close friends, and non are SCVNGR usrers, 1 is a Gowalla user which until recently was my only FourSquare friend. I now have 7 friends in FourSquare, 2 of which didn't log in for centuries, 3 promotion companies, 1 from Thailand which I don't even know and asked me to befriend him. I did, what do I care... The last one is the one from Gowalla which is my only true friend. As I said, this is pretty frustrating being the pioneer. I actually feel a little like those pioneer to came and tamed the land here in Israel in the beginning of the previous century. Brave, strong headed, motivated and patriots.

If you are a non-US located geolocation user like me, let me know how is it you experience the check-ins lifestyle? What other locations are miserably abandoned like Haifa?

BTW, you can reach me as ranibaron in FourSquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR.