Stefan Mileschin

Google's Ingress can turn your walk to work into a virtual battlefield, but not every augmented reality fan wants to spend that stroll reinforcing portals. The Strut app from Thickpolicy, which launched on iOS today, offers a different spin on GPS-based gamification. Users unlock achievements ("tiles") for logging their travels (both around the neighborhood and around the globe), and covered ground is displayed on a personalized world map. The goal, mind you, is to "uncover the map of the earth" by unlocking every tile, but there are also leaderboards -- on the city, state, country and world level, no less -- and medals for collecting a certain number of tiles (à la Foursquare badges). Social media tie-ins include the ability to share maps via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Strut is a free download in the App Store (there's no Android version, at least for now) -- hit up the source link to check it out.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/06/s...loring-planet/