Location Awareness Is The Real iPhone Revolution

With the imminent availability of the iPhone 3G, we're seeing the emergence of a new category of personal productivity applications that will prove as important as e-mail, word processing, and the spreadsheet: Location-aware applications, software that knows where you are and helps you take better advantage of what's around you.Sure, Apple isn't the first to develop a GPS-aware cell phone: The BlackBerry, to name one example, supports GPS, and has twice the market share that Apple has. But Apple has a way of capturing the public imagination, and building a platform for elegant, easy-to-use apps, that no other vendor can match.

Well, actually, one other vendor can match it: Google. And it's working on its own GPS-enabled cell phone platform, too -- Android.

What are some examples of amazing location-aware applications?

Don't underestimate the revolutionary potential of just getting from Point A to Point B: I like reading maps to figure out the shortest route between two points, but I hate the hassle of following directions, juggling maps and written notes while driving, missing turns, figuring out that you've missed the turn, finding a spot to turn around, doubling back to look for the turn, missing the turn again, getting hopelessly lost and driving around looking for a marked intersection, stopping to ask for directions, etc., etc., etc. The GPS just sits there and tells me when to turn, making a drive anywhere in the world just as easy as the familiar commute between my home and the nearest Starbucks. Getting lost will be something you read about in history books.

Find out where your friends, family, and colleagues are right now. You'll know where anyone in your address book is at all times -- so long as they don't choose to mask the location. Find yourself downtown with a bit of time to kill? You'll be able to find someone to have a cup of coffee with (or *diffident cough* find some other way to pass the time). The privacy and etiquette implications of this are staggering, just like we're still figuring out the etiquette of using a cell phone in a public place. When will it be considered appropriate to mask your location?

Find what you need near where you are now: Nearest cheap gas, nearest Starbucks, nearest place to buy AA batteries.

And speaking of finding what you need right now ... How about an application that finds nearby public restrooms, with user-generated ratings for cleanliness and overall scariness? You're laughing, right -- but you'd use it, too.

Two really interesting location-aware applications for the iPhone, already announced:

Associated Press Mobile News Network will find local headlines near your current location. I travel a lot -- not as much as frequent business travelers, but more than most Americans. Last fall, we took vacation in a small town in Vermont. I would've loved to be able to easily find out what was going on there, not just tourist activities but local news. Sure, I could've just picked up a copy of the local paper, but that wouldn't be very digital, would it?

Omni Group is developing an iPhone version of its OmniFocus personal productivity manager for the Mac (which I use daily). The app will be location-aware, so if you're near the grocery store it will flag you with a reminder to buy groceries.

I love this idea -- we've all had the experience of remembering that we're out of toilet paper when we're home, and forgetting when we're actually in the grocery store.

Even better would be if OmniFocus could tap a database of business locations, so it could remind you to buy toilet paper when you weren't even thinking about household shopping, you just stopped in at 7-Eleven to pick up a cup of coffee.

But I'm sure that I can't even conceive of the most compelling location-aware apps. The killer apps will be as surprising -- and inevitable in retrospect -- as e-mail, instant messaging, and blogging were when they were invented.

What are the most interesting location-aware applications you've seen?

Update 6/11 2:20 pm EDT: Great minds think alike: Mashable discusses the revolutionary nature of location-aware apps in a post that they were likely writing the same time I was writing mine.

Mashable goes on to discuss Loopt and Citysense, two location-aware social-networking apps coming to the iPhone.

And Mashable also has more detail about OmniFocus for the iPhone.