abirdtold.me

This week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office revealed a patent filed by Apple for “Transitional Data Sets” – a technology that would update an iPhone’s home screen based on your current physical location. Of course, as with all patents filed by major technology companies, a patent won’t necessarily translate to an actual feature -it just represents intellectual property. For this reason, we don’t typically report on every new patent application that comes through the U.S. PTO, but in this case, we couldn’t help ourselves. The concept behind the location-aware home screen is one we want now. It represents everything a smartphone should be…
Read on at readwriteweb.com

The mobile augmented reality space has really been heating up lately (check out our recent feature on the top 6 AR apps). Today one of the front-runners, Austrian software company Mobilizy, launched a new version of their mobile augmented reality browser Wikitude for GoogleGoogle’s AndroidAndroid platform. For those unfamiliar with the concept, augmented reality refers to the sci-fi-like display of real time digital data superimposed on top of the world around you, typically via your mobile phone’s camera. You point the camera at an object or location and get a resulting display of information related to those things or places. The most interesting update to Mobilizy’s mobile augmented reality offering is the relaunch and full integration of the Wikitude.me platform with the browser. Wikitude.me is a socially-aware geotagging site where you can log in with an existing FacebookFacebook, TwitterTwitter, Google or YahooYahoo! account and add location-based information that other users will be able to access later at that same spot…
Read on at mashable.com

TwitterTwitter plans to launch a location-based feature that reveals the latitude and longitude from which an individual is tweeting, co-founder Biz Stone revealed in a blog post today, signaling that the micromessaging site wants to hop onto the hot location-based services trend (a topic that will be featured at our upcoming Mobilize 09 conference) under way. Twitter users are currently able to read tweets from people they’re following on the site, but the new, opt-in LBS feature will enable the reading of tweets based on location. It will allow Twitter users a way to connect on a local level, offering up an additional layer of desperately needed context…
Read on at gigaom.com

When we first wrote about FoursquareFoursquare back in March it had just hit the web scene at SXSW and was taking the social media community by storm. We instantly saw the potential of a location-based service based on your TwitterTwitter network with an added layer of social gameplay. Now we’re starting to see the app get adopted by more and more of our friends, finding traction in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, San Diego, and several other hyperlocal metro hubs. These breeding grounds of Foursquare activity are creating quite a frenzy, and we thought it appropriate to take a step back and survey the surrounding location-based social networking space as it applies to mobile apps, look forward to the future, and break down the beauty of Foursquare. While no service is likely to achieve the same scale as Twitter in the coming months, Foursquare has all the right ingredients to be one of this year’s big hits… Read on at Mashable.com

I love simple apps. The fact that GeoChirpGeoChirp, the latest in the now quite long line of Twitter/Google Maps mashups, doesn’t even require me to register, is a plus in my book. And the fact that it does one thing – help you search tweets for keywords in a certain geographic area – and does it well, is an even bigger plus. It works like this: on top of the page you have a Google Map; enter any location, and choose a radius below, from 1 to 50 miles. Then, adjust the number of tweets you want to see – from 5 to 25, and type in a keyword. The result is a very useful app, if you know what you’re looking for… Read on at Mashable.com

Mobile Safari joins AndroidAndroid and BlackBerry browsers in getting location awareness with GoogleGoogle, using GPS or Wi-Fi triangulation to figure out what food, stores, or other goodies are nearby when you search. As with its counterparts, the location setting sticks with the browser until you hit update, or it happens to notice you’ve moved locales. Google says it doesn’t pull location data unless you allow it at the prompt – two prompts on an iPod touch, actually – and the location feature can be disabled from the Preferences link at the main Google page… Read on at Lifehacker.com

We on the Google MapsGoogle Maps team are committed to organizing all the local places and businesses that can be found online, from a design shop in New York City, to an architectural bookstore in San Francisco, to a cabaret in London. To show you the range of all this interesting local information, we’ve teamed up with local experts around the world to share some of their favorite places… Read on at Google

New owners of the iPhone 3GS have yet another reason to make iPhone 3G users green with envy with the introduction of the app called Nearest Tube. The makers of the app (acrossair of the UK) call it an “augmented reality” tool for your iPhone, which is a pretty accurate description. Read on at dvice…

In an increasingly mobile world, location-based services (or LBS for short) have undergone rapid growth. Whether it’s new players like Zhiing making their entrance or big players like GoogleGoogle creating LBS social networks like Google Latitude, everyone seems to realize that the location market is a high potential industry. Read on at Mashable…

Mapspread lets users create interactive mapping applications and allows them to manage their geo-data. Details…