Take search. Most everybody has some experience with Google Maps on the desktop, but iPhone 1.0 users have had this familiar experience upended in highly pleasurable ways: How about triangulating your approximate location on a map?
Sounds mundane, but with a location-aware mobile device in your hand, you now have an absolutely awesome way to explore an unfamiliar city on foot (as Bigfathuge did on recent trips to NYC and Hong Kong).
It Gets Better. With the release of iPhone 3G, geek hipsters can now go all GPS on your old school phone, pulling down satellite data for turn-by-turn directions, seeing live traffic snarls and more.
Location functionality is integrated into the address book too, so remembering directions to infrequent contacts (viz., our tax-prep guy who we visit once a year) is a thing of the past. Finding the nearest coffee shop, hip art gallery, or Kinko's will never be the same. With the recent announcement of Google AdSence for mobile, brands will have new ways to engage.
Its beauty, as they say, is in its utility.
Proximity Networking
Here's a new twist on social networks: whereas your old-school social network was defined by the peeps with whom you share an interest or history, proximity networks are about interacting with peeps who are simply near you (whether or not they are friends).
Brightkite, Loopt, and others are new ways to interact with social networks on mobile devices. If this was only about Facebook on the small screen, we wouldn't be very excited. What proximity networks offer is a new way to share experiences and interact with people in your real life while doing real stuff (scary concept, we know).
This is pretty cool stuff, and none of it has been lost on Michael Arrington:
"Imagine walking into a meeting, classroom, party, bar, subway station, airplane, etc. and seeing profile information about other people in the area, depending on privacy settings. Picture, name, dating status, resume information, etc. The information that is available would be relevant to the setting - quick LinkedIn type information for a business meeting v. Facebook dating status for a bar."
via Techcrunch
Here at Bigfathuge HQ, we've been putting Brightkite through its paces and have been impressed so far. No GPS required, users just volunteer their location (zip code or city name etc) and then have the ability to share that info with friends or strangers (it even integrates with other services like Twitter).
So while Twitter and Friendfeed give you lifestreams, Brightkite gives you placestreams - comments, pix, ephemera that are contributed by dozens of people who've been to (or who are currently experiencing) the location where you're standing. Like ghosts, these contributions accrete around a location and susequent visitors can see the notes of visitors past.
Check out the placestreams for London, Lawrence KS, or Tokyo.
Users can save a list of "placemarks" for places you visit regularly (fav bar, the office, downtown hot spot) so you can keep tabs on what's happening at their favorite haunts.
Urbanspoon
We've saved the best for last. While not a network per se, Urbanspoon is iPhone app for finding restaurants near you; it looks up your location via triangulation, and presto you get a listing of the restaurants, cuisines and price points.
Can't make up your mind where to go? Shake your phone and the it spins out a "winning suggestion" like a slot machine:
Urbanspoon integrates digg-style votes, reviews from Yelp along with basic address and phone number. You'll never have to hunt blindly for a place to grab a bite!
Clicking the address brings up Google maps, and together with your current location pulled from GPS or triangulation, you've got step-by-step directions to that hip new bistro everybody's been talking about right in the palm of your hand.