Will location-tagged recommendation services emerge from the accumulated opinions of many consumers, Wikipedia style, instead of arriving in a lump like a commercial guidebook? Can time-and-place-tagged media aggregate into a historical record of your activities – and display the activities of any who choose to share their media stream?
As WaveMarket’s “Director of Engineering, Weblog Products,” noted blogger Russell Beattie puts it: “Location will soon be an integral part of just about every mobile application we use, but for most people out there, it’s not a reality yet. However, just like we can’t imagine anyone today without a phone or without an email address, there’ll be a day very soon when we can’t imagine not knowing our exact location at all times. We’ll never believe we used to get “lost” on the way to finding a friend’s place, or that we used to “just miss” seeing an old friend at a coffee house, or wondered where a picture was taken.” This idea has been around for a while – Locative Media Lab, for example, has been talking about it longer than I have. And Emeryville, California, startup WaveMarket’s “location blogging” services are proprietary, not open. But anyone who puts tools in the hands of users has my attention.
