I blame it on Tyson, but I guess in a good way. First some back story.I blame it on Tyson, but I guess in a good way. First some back story.
Even after I got my iPhone a couple of weeks back, and downloaded a bunch of the requisite apps, I was a little on the fence about some of the geolocation-powered offerings out there, Gowalla and Foursquare the most notable of them. So I pretty much didn't bother with any of it.
That changed last week thanks to an over-lunch catch-up with the above-named coder. Based on his suggestion that I really should go on Gowalla, I decided to give it a try. And I have to admit it is a little addictive. What I really like about it is that it can potentially open up a new world to you by seeing what's out there that you have no idea about. And since its geopositioned, you can easily find it once someone "pins" it. Don't necessarily like the "big-brother" aspect of it, but since the "real-time" aspect is only shared with friends, it isn't all that bad I guess.
In terms of what I want to do with geolocation as a developer, I don't think geolocation-enabled applications are for everyone, and my excitement for it is further tempered by some of the potential dangers that it creates from a security standpoint, but I do think there is a lot of untapped potential and range of uses for it. With a greater proliferation of HTML 5 browsers that are geolocation-aware, I can see a number of ways I might want to leverage location-specific content deployment in the near future. And the increase of user-hours on mobile (and GPS-equipped) devices makes location-specific targeting that much more viable.
Did I mention that I am getting really into iPhone SDK and mobile application dev?
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