I'm starting to see a very interesting trend lately with everyone moving to mobile internet devices like the iPhone and Android. To call those cell phones is kind of a misnomer since the cell phone part of these devices is probably the least used part. They are much more suited to being mobile internet devices and GPS units then mere cell phones. But they're leading to an interesting phenomenon:

The Ability to Map Virtual Objects to the Physical World

I think a lot of the applications coming out for these devices are focusing on "social" aspects of computers and, while they're suited to that, I think there will be another class of applications that will have more to do with mapping virtual objects to the physical place you are now. I know there have been "location aware" applications, but I think that soon we will even be going beyond just awareness and more "location mapping" applications.

A great example of this that I've seen recently is Sekai Camera from tonchidot that allows you to tag real world objects like you would a wiki. Looking through the camera on a mobile device shows you, on top of the real world object, tags and objects that other users have attached to those things. Look through the camera at a restaurant you're standing in front of and maybe a bubble pops up to show recent reviews or current menu items or even recent health inspector reports. Choosing between three different restaurants that are right next to each other and picking a place to eat lunch at just got a lot easier. No more searching for the restaurants and clicking through a bunch of screens to get to this information; I know where you are, where you're looking and what has been tagged in that location and I just make it available to you.

There's also the idea of location-based to do lists. I'm actually building one for Android where you tag your to do items with a tag like "store" and then add GPS data to the tag to say where the store is. The same could be done for "home" and "work" tags. Then, when you open the to do list on your device, the proper to do items pop up depending on where you are. You could say this is just a "location aware" application, but I think it gets more subtle than that at this level because you really have tags these items with a location and they kind of live there to a certain degree. And nothing is stopping you from tagging them with multiple tags. I also see "global tags" like "gas_station" that would have them pop up at a gas station, any gas station.

I know there have been some location messaging (think Twitter with GPS tags, so you only see it if you're at that location. Great for scavenger hunts!) applications thought about too, but I haven't seen any of them take off. The critical mass type apps are going to have a hard time until more people have these devices and are using them in this way. But I think it's coming and I hope to be able to contribute something along the way.

What location mapping applications would you like to see?

Over the past two weeks, I've been getting deep into Google Android development and I'm pretty excited about it. It'll be amazing to see a fully open source platform for mobile phones and it looks like it'll be adopted by all the major carriers (except ATT, for obvious reasons). I'm also glad to hear a lot of talk from the industry about how this could change everything from the standpoint of smart phones, a traditionally locked-down and stagnant area of technology that's always had a lot of potential.

The application APIs are also quite amazing. They allow things like multi-threading, so an application can run in the background while other apps are running, the ability to install by download, so vendors can't lock down what apps you can run, and the handling of events, so if I don't like the default SMS app, I can write my own or install a better one that I like better. Carriers will have to play along to keep everything open and playing friendly, but T-Mobile has already said that they will, so any other carrier will have a hard time selling a locked down version at this point.

With the release of the first Android based phone, the not-so-hot IMO G1, we're seeing these phones coming to market. Here's what I'm hoping happens:

1. The T-Mobile G1 gets released on Oct. 22nd as the first Android powered phone. It'll only be the first phone for the platform, so it's by no means the end-all-be-all. It'll also be SIM-locked to T-Mobile.
2. I'm hoping that it'll only be a few weeks after that when Google open sources the entire Android codebase. We already know that they will and I'm hoping it's sooner rather than later.
3. Once Android is open sourced, it'll start getting ported to other phones, either via the manufacturers of those phones or by open source developers. I'm really hoping it gets to the Nokia phones and other HTC phones sooner rather than later.
4. Once that happens, you'll be free to use whatever phone you want with whatever carrier you want and still get all the great features of Android; the OS itself, the one API needed for all Android phones and all the apps to be written, and already written, for the platform.

If those things do happen like I hope they will, I think we'll really start to see the power of an open platform for mobile. If it was just going to be the G1 and that was it, it really wouldn't be all that exciting, but I think everything is set up to have this take off if it ends up being as open as Google seems to be leading on about.