Digital nomads by definition move from location to location.
A number of social networks have recently tapped the almost ubiquitous use of GPS technology (which comes standard on iPhones and other smart phones) to create services that let you keep track of your friends (or at least their phones) as they travel about.
On a purely tracking, stalking, watching like Big Brother level, this could get a bit weird, but it does have some potentially practical uses as well. Say you go to a very large conference and want to know where the happening parties are. Or you travel about the country and want to meet up in person with some of your Internet-only connections. Or, let’s say you’re go out mountain climbing and get lost — call up your location aware social network buddies and they can guide you back on track.
A couple of the sites gaining in popularity are Loopt, Whrrl and Brightkite. They all seem to function about the same — you create a profile, plug in your phone info, invite and find some friends and start moving around while logged in. Phone-based applications are available for each, of course, since using the service on your phone is the point, really.
Social business directories are getting into the act as well. Yelp just launched their location-aware application for iPhone users that pulls up business reviews based on you phone’s location. You know, it just might be a good idea to make sure your business is listed and getting some good reviews in the Yelps of the world. This type of business search is only going to get bigger!
And for the developer is all of us, maybe there’s an application you would like to develop that takes advantage of location and positioning. Yahoo, through its FireEagle tool, and Google, through the Google Maps API, have taken all the heavy lifting out of injecting the map-based positioning infrastructure into your own application.
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