Ladies and gentlemen, Pokémon GO has exploded. There's no point in denying it, protesting, or trying to hide. As Nintendo and Niantic expand the reach of their app, users keep joining the new Pokémon legion, and as expected, they turn to the Web to get any extra data. The Poke Radar portal offers nothing less than a detailed map of the places where certain types of Pokémon have been reported, offering good chances of catching one.
By far, the most striking aspect of Pokémon GO is that it forces players to roam their neighborhoods. In the process we've seen all kinds of situations, from rescuing animals to discovering corpses, not to mention the occasional pedestrian crossing the street “smartphone in hand” without looking. These walks aren't only necessary for finding new Pokémon, but also for “incubating” eggs. Some of the most demanding ones require up to ten kilometers of distance, which in normal play would take days, but there are many clever players out there who discovered they can “earn meters” by placing the smartphone on a spinning turntable. Now, when it comes to walking, how do you achieve a more efficient route?
The answer may lie in services like Poke Radar, a Google Maps-based portal that, according to user reports, highlights regions where specific types of Pokémon can be captured. The map is completely collaborative, and in such systems there's always the average troll who bombards the map with false indicators (legendary Pokémon, for example), but the system has a voting scheme through which participants can confirm or deny a sighting and elevate the quality of those reports that turn out to be true. We all understand exactly the strategy of Nintendo and Niantic (legendaries are rare for a good reason), and the idea behind services like Poke Radar is to expand our collection with the least amount of frustration.
Poke Radar has mobile versions, and right now it's experiencing load problems due to demand. Personally, I had a better experience with Chrome, although the “mass disappearances” of Pokémon on the map are commonplace. Anyone planning to use both apps at the same time should prepare with some emergency chargers. The GPS was, is, and will be a battery-devouring machine...
