When the Nexus One was announced, there were a lot cool new options presented for the phone and Android 2.1: interactive wallpapers, 3D stuff and help for Google Earth. The latter was not available then, and there was not a date set, but it looks like its ready to go on Android Market now.

If anyone have Droid 1.5 or 1.6, don’t waste your time. Not to slap your mother, but your Droid does not have the resources required to power such an intensive application. Users reporting the app availability have all been iPhone users, and that means this is a 2.1-only application for the time being. Android owners will have to hold off for the 2.1 update, which would appear to be taking longer than most would have wanted or thought it would.

Theres not a peep official yet from the Google blog, but we’ll be sure to keep you updated when the announcement is official.

We knew a Gowalla beta for Android was coming this month and the company quietly released one last week. I’ve been following their blog, Facebook, and Twitter accounts watching for an announcement, but the the Co-founder Josh Williams shared the news on the company’s Get Satisfaction page.

“While this is not a final release of Gowalla for Android, I’d like to share the first public beta with you personally. Technically, we are calling this beta release 0.1. We will release a more fully featured beta to the Marketplace before the end of the month. Until then, get started here. We’re excited to have you go out with Gowalla on Android.”Josh WilliamsCo-founder Gowalla

Josh also notes that there are a couple caveats to this release including:

• Gowalla Trips and Items are not supported in this release
• We are not doing any image caching yet, so images will load slow

I’ve been playing with the beta for a couple of days and I can say it easily surpasses the Foursquare Android app. Techcrunch also notes this early beta is already better than its iPhone counterpart.

The beta version of Gowalla is not ready for the Android Market yet, but you can download it by scanning the QR code below or just click it on your Android phone.

For the latest updates on the Gowalla beta, be sure to follow their Get Satisfaction page.

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If you’re into the latest location-based, social-networking check-in styled type ‘game’, you’re in luck. Gowalla has just finished a beta app for Android and is asking you, our faithful readers, to give it a whirl. Previously, you could use Gowalla through a serviceable mobile app but we all know that native apps are the way to go. Gowalla has delivered a great experience for Android (some would say it even trumps the iPhone) but it currently lacks Gowalla Trips and doesn’t do any image caching, so there’s still a little bit left to go.

If you want to get the Gowalla Beta App for Android, point your Android browser to this link: http://static.gowalla.com/gowalla-android-20100212.apk. Make sure you can install non-Market applications by going through Menu > Settings > Applications and checking off “Unknown Sources”.

Thanks Wes!