In typical napkin fashion, this idea came to me several weeks ago on a plane while reading more stories about how the mobile web is taking off with the iPhone and expanded consumer use of smartphones with web browsers and increasingly fast Internet connections. Having not yet drafted this blog entry, I recently learned about Loopt, a mobile social networking setup that allows you to know where your friends are and likely have been (was announced during the Apple keynote and thus downloading of the software seems to have overwhelmed them and I haven’t been able to demo yet).
I think it’s great that mobile social networking will allow me to know when someone is around the corner at the other Starbucks, but what about the past? My idea was along the lines of “was here” graffiti in bathrooms. I’ve always been fascinated by why people want to leave their names in bathroom stalls. Do they really believe a friend well happen upon their tag, or are they somehow trying to find celebrity? I really don’t have any great insights into this habit, so I’ll end here. But, I do think it would be cool if I could do a virtual “was here” when I happen upon a really tasty new burrito dive or a bar that happens to serve my favorite vodka, Ciroc, that still is not distributed enough.
Having used the Google Maps application on my Blackberry for several months now having only the cellular tower triangulation location specifics, I’ve been inspired to want to leave breadcrumbs of where I have been, how it was, whether I liked it or not, etc. Especially when it comes to restaurants (still believe there is no great restaurant guide online).
Here’s how I’d setup this service. It would need to be a mobile application that ran minimally on the iPhone (Apple if you’re reading this I’ll donate my ___________ to work with you). Leveraging GPS or cellular triangulation technology now being used by other mobile applications, it would be able to keep track of where you were. You could then add your thoughts to the location and share them with friends, both real time and later online. The online site would then become a home for your adventures and opinions, like your own personal Yelp meets TravelAdvisor.
Darin.washere.com could be the format of each individual users info. Add in some social networking functionality and bingo. Here are some other key features I’d like to have:

• Snap picture in location with tag of your thoughts. When others are in the location, they’d be notified that a friend has been there and could view your picture and comment (of course there would be all kinds of permission based settings such as what I want my boss to see and what my best friend gets for a true commentary)
• Store location data from phone and attach as meta data. This obviously allows you to link up what the place is (like Google Maps already does on the phone). If the location wasn’t “registered”, it would have a way to register it. This would include temporary venues such as a concert in a park or annual street fair
• When visitor is at location they can access others washere photos and messages (you could also have the option to share with the world publicly either anonymously or as your handle, providing a real time Yelp type service) [maybe Yelp could provide the service into this so as not to reinvent that wheel]
• Social network integration would allow you to see if any of your friends were there when you were (having just heard about Loopt, this is covered)
• Track individuals and use map pins of where they were; show online to friends (think this is also covered by Loopt). Again key here is having the website where you could have a better UI for more complicated permission questions, such as do you want your paths to be forever available or dissolve as time goes on.
• Browse where your friends have been. What a deal, no longer would you have to answer the question of, “what have you been up to?”
• Reference company with tag sticker program that’s similar
• As soon as you get into a place, the system would notify you that one or more friends have been there. You could then decide what to do with the information. If someone you know was there right then, or recently, you could then decide if you wanted to connect with them. Of course, I’m a big fan of invisible mode too as many times I don’t want to be bothered. Come on, you know you’ve put your head down and walked faster by someone you know at least once in your life when you didn’t want to be bothered.
• Notifications if someone with similar tastes liked it (mobile yelp)
• Recommendation engine for businesses. If I’m walking around and want lunch, I should just be able to ask where the closest food is that I would like. It’s great that Google Local can tell me what’s close, but if I’ve rated a bunch of burrito shops and so has a hundred other people, I should be able to make some correlation between what people like and recommend places based on others assessments that like similar places that I do.
• Recommendation engine for events (sports, date) using the same process

Author’s Note: After researching references for comments in this entry, I found Wirrl mentioned in an article. It looks to be the closest application out there to fit my idea. It looks like when the iPhone application store comes online, they’ll have it!

As GPS chips become embedded in more and more phones, location based services will begin to explode. We have seen many different applications come out of the smaller more niche mobile carriers and some basic applications such as child finders deployed to the big national carriers, but the mobile advertising promise of promoting a hot cup of coffee as you walk by Starbucks has yet to materialize. One area I haven’t seen anyone mention yet is around environment targeting along with behavioral targeting. Obviously, Google and others will have a tremendous amount of insight about their users and could use this in a mobile setting, most likely their primary driver for their 700 MHz bid in the US and metro wi-fi attempts. But, I think another key opportunity is around environment targeting.
Let me explain this idea briefly. If I’m in Phoenix, Arizona and its 103 degrees, I’m not going to likely be interested in a hot latte no matter what the mobile coupon offer is. But, if I’m walking down the street and I get a note about a cold, chilled Frappuccino, I may just take the bait. Now, there are a couple of key pieces of information in this scenario that I just shared that the technology could determine and use to target the advertisement to this particular situation. The first was the fact that I’m walking. The slow pace of my movement could be understood by an application as “walking” and could trigger a business rule that says I’m likely more inclined to take the bait. Whereas if I’m driving 45 MPH past the same Starbucks, it’s probably not as effective to send me that same ad. Additionally, with my location information, an application could determine that it’s remarkably hot and decide to send me the ad for the ice cold Frappuccino rather than the hot latte. This environment targeting could be a key addition to mobile marketing or push advertising.

I often find myself referencing an article in discussion and want to be able to share it with those I’m in discussion with or use it to prove a point. And other times, there’s just an interesting story I want to show someone because I can’t remember the details. Recently, I read an article in Wired magazine about the amount of caffeine in soft drinks. They published the findings from a test that identified the milligrams of caffeine included in the popular beverages. In the article, it made reference to a URL that had the full list. But, when I went to show my friend, and explore the rest of the list, I no longer had the magazine, nor could I find the article searching through their site.
Maybe it’s just me, who carries magazines around with me wherever I go and drops them into trash bins wherever I finish, but I’d like to have a way to keep track of those really good articles or even share them with friends on the spot. I think the easiest way to track and organize this process would be through a combination of SMS and the web. If each article had a unique ID, I could then send that ID to the magazine publishers short code. The system would then keep track of the article for me in as online bookmarks. The system could ask me if I’d like “more info”, if there was more to the article. It could then send my phone a URL where I could pull up the additional info (like the total list of sodas in the caffeine test). I could then forward it to a friend via my phone, or later share my bookmark with them.
The publishers would obviously love this. It would give them a way to track who’s reading what and when, which would be great for getting the advertisers excited about the print world in the way they like online ad tracking. And given many magazines are owned by the same publisher, they could use one system for all their magazines which would make it more valuable to the reader as well because then all their bookmarks would be together. They could even have features that allow the reader to comment directly on the article from their phone, and further connect the authors with the readers.

The real need is to be able to go from work to personal and back. This includes not only the messaging, but the look itself. The pearl is a great step, but the software has a long way to go. Have a switch on the outside to go from work to personal. This would allow the person to really feel like they were “switching work off”. The settings could be such that email is no longer pushed, but is queued for later. Maybe the ringer changes and even the home page of the start screen. For example the camera link could become front and center verses the task list. Email needs to be clearly separated. I don’t want to have the temptation of getting caught up on a work item when I’m trying to check in on the weekend plans with some friends. Instant messaging could also help send the message. I’m not working, ping me later. Hit the switch and the presence info changes back to working. Integration with work phone “follow me” systems could also be tied in. I’m always annoyed by having to remember to call into the system to let it know I’m at my desk or working. Calendar integration should go beyond the corporate server. Using Google calendar to share my travel schedule with friends is fun, but requires me to keep my calendar updated in two places.