For the past two weeks I’ve used Airlock to automagically lock my Mac Pro’s and MacBook Pro’s screens as soon as I and my iPhone are not in the room anymore. It’s a nice way of ensuring that nobody will read what’s on your screen or does stupid things using your Facebook or XMPP accounts—at the office as well as at home or on the road. A few years ago, before the iPhone, I remember I used something called “BluePhone Elite” to do the same. Unfortunately the shortcomings of this method remain the same: While these tools always know when your phone is not found via Bluetooth and lock your screen accordingly, every now and then the lookup fails and you’re facing a locked screen after sitting down (which requires that you enter your password to disable the tool temporarily—it re-enables automatically a few seconds later, as soon as it found your phone). I’ll keep using Airlock for now—let’s see whether it behaves. If it bugs me too much, I’ll have to make a decision against security. That’s not desirable.

One of the first location-based apps on my iPhone was Brightkite. I liked the idea of leaving a note at places—but Brightkite quickly got boring and I didn’t check in often.

Gowalla makes checking in everywhere and sharing places fun. It motivates its users by rewarding them with stamps on their passports and items in their packs—it transforms everyday activities into a kind of scavenger hunt, not quite like geocaching, but it’s an interactive social game you can play everywhere you go.

I used it for one day now and I really like it. Check it out and visit my profile! Oh, and for those of you speaking or rather understanding German: Lest euch unbedingt Martins Einführung zu Gowalla im Blog auf Labuschin Webdesign durch!

Julian Schrader posted a photo: