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Originally posted at LAist.com

Location technologies are transforming how we experience, navigate, and ultimately better our world. From the global to the local, here are #10Ways geolocation is a positive force for good.

Social media has changed the world. It has revolutionized communications on a global scale, and the transformation continues with every status update, blog post, and video stream. The global citizenry has become a global network.

Since becoming widely adopted just a couple years ago, social media has supercharged social action, cause marketing, and social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the true value hasn’t been the technology itself but how we’ve used it. Today, a second wave of innovation is defining a new era and setting the stage for change over the coming decade.

Mobile technologies will extend the global online network to anyone with a mobile device while enabling countless local networks to form in the real world. We’ve decentralized media production and distribution. We’re doing the same for energy. And we’ll continue this trend for social networking, social action, and commerce.

The combined forces of smartphones, mobile broadband, and location-aware applications will connect us in more meaningful ways to the people, organizations, events, information, and companies that matter most to us—namely, those within a physical proximity of where we live and where we are. Can location-based services (LBS) change the world? Here are #10Ways:

1. Checking in for Good: If Gowalla and Foursquare have taught us anything, it’s that people respond to simple incentives. By offering badges, mayorships, and other intangible rewards, millions of people are checking in to the places they go. Apps like Whrrl take this a step further and enable like-minded “societies” to form on a local basis. The next step is for these apps to add greater purpose by encouraging more meaningful checkins and offering corresponding badges and stamps, thus mapping the cause universe. Or for a dedicated app to be developed that rewards conscious consumption, social responsibility, and civic engagement. Yes, the CauseWorld app features a cause element, but it’s not about cause-worthy places.

2. Eating Locally: Sustainability demands that we source our food as close to its point of production as possible. Many so-called locavores subscribe to the 100-mile diet, which requires that one “eat nothing—or almost nothing—but sustenance drawn from within 100 miles of their home.” Given the difficulty of accessing and verifying this information in order to live by this standard, there’s a geo-powered Locavore app. It gives you info on in-season foods, those coming in-season, farmer’s markets, and links to recipes. This rather simple app is clearly just the start. In time, location-aware apps will guide us not only to the grocery store or farmer’s market but through them. All the while identifying foods based on our particular diet or sensibility.

3. Political Organizing: In the next presidential election, politics will not only be local but location-enabled. We saw the power of social media in Obama’s 2008 landslide victory. In 2012, location-based apps and technologies will play a central role in how campaigns are organized, managed, and ultimately won. Much of this will be visible through mobile apps and location-aware browsers. Activists and volunteers will be more empowered. Voters will be more engaged in the moment, right down to casting their votes. Behind the scenes, though, we’ll see massive new sets of data available to campaigns for targeting, empowerment, and optimization. The party, candidate, and/or cause that has the best handle on geolocation will have a measurable advantage. (The Elections app will soon be updated for 2010.)

4. Finding Green Businesses: The web has effectively replaced the paper Yellow Pages as a way to find local businesses and services. However, this “stationary web” experience is quickly being supplanted by the mobile web and mobile applications, which give us access to this information when we most need it. The Yelp and Around Me apps are popular ways to find restaurants, coffee shops, or hotels wherever you are, but what about green-rated businesses? Greenopia has transformed its printed, local guides into a dynamic, nationwide mobile application that lets you find local, green-rated businesses in any category. No more paper and a much better experience. The Green Map app is another that facilitates discovery and connects us to local green environments.

5. Traveling More Efficiently: We’ve had access to GPS navigation systems and static traffic information for some time, but only now are we seeing the full potential of these technologies. With access to more detailed traffic information that is specific to your route and updated in real time, we can minimize congestion and maximize traffic flow (as much as physically possible). The new turn-by-turn MapQuest 4 Mobile app is a good start, as you can get traffic alerts specific to the route you program. However, user-generated information from apps like Trapster and Waze can crowdsource more specific details, such as whether to avoid an intersection due to a toxic chemical spill. Or, if you want to avoid automobiles altogether, Google Maps makes it easy to use public transportation and take a bike.

6. Scanning for Ethical Products: With online shopping, we’ve become accustomed to reading reviews and making comparisons before we buy. This can now be done in the physical world through games like MyTown and services like Stikybits. By scanning a product barcode using a smartphone camera, you can unlock a treasure of additional information (not to mention deals) that can help with your purchase. This might include where it was produced, how far it traveled, the reputation of the manufacturer, chemical contents, carbon footprint, or the full lifecycle analysis. Location-aware applications can also transform commerce itself by giving us better access to local inventories and locally-produced goods. Whether it’s fruits and vegetables or books and electronics, if something can be found within blocks of your current location, it makes no sense to ship it from afar.

7. Networking Neighborhoods: One of the hottest categories in geolocation is neighborhood networking. The vision for many of these apps is to strengthen the very fabric of our communities. With DeHood, you can keep track of what’s happening in your neighborhood, share your favorite places, and grease the wheels for actually meeting people. After all, if you’ve made contact through the app, it’s a lot easier to say “Hello” in the real world. Blasterous is another that lets you share information locally, whereas BlockChalk does this on an anonymous basis. Finally, NeighborGoods uses your street address to facilitate one-to-one borrowing and trading of useful stuff. In the end, making connections with your neighbors can lead to safer, more productive, and more sustainable communities.

8. Tracking Environmental Disasters: The size and scope of environmental disasters appears to be growing. In 2008, we had the Tennessee coal ash spill, which was billed as “the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States.” And that was before we realized it was three times bigger than originally estimated. More recently, the BP oil spill set daily records for “largest environmental disaster in the U.S. ever.” In each case, geolocation technologies can be used by engaged citizens to monitor and track the effects. They can be used by response teams to coordinate containment and cleanup efforts. Ultimately, these technologies can be used to accurately measure the size and impact of a disaster in order to better understand its damages and costs.

9. Viewing the World Through an Eco Lens: Augmented reality (AR) follows geolocation as one of the hot trends in mobile technology. It enables you to view the world through a smartphone camera (or similar device) and see layers of geo-specific content or information. One of the most popular apps is Layar, an augmented reality browser/platform that lets you choose specific data layers or experiences. The potential for green- and cause-related content is tremendous. You might view green-rated businesses, LEED-certified buildings, or virtual GHG emissions as they enter the atmosphere. Combined with smart meter technology, you could see the most efficient and inefficient homes around you in real time. And for the cynics among us, you could view our mountains, forests, rivers, and oceans as they once were…before the effects of climate change and so many environmental disasters.

10. Capturing the Moment: Better access to information about what’s happening around us—right now—can dramatically improve quality of life. This sense of “geospatial awareness” is possible through today’s smartphones, whereby a piece of content or information—a moment—is captured and preserved based on the unique time and place in which it occurred. It is essentially to document spacetime. Protests, natural disasters, sporting events, parties, political crises…real-time information about anything happening anywhere at any time, as well as the history of what happened. This will take several years and a number of different applications to realize. In the end, though, it will revolutionize how we access and consume content. It will complete the democratization and decentralization of news and information…based on time and location.

Cautionary note: Privacy is the single biggest issue in the LBS industry. It’s important to understand what information you are sharing with regard to your location and with whom.

Author’s note: We’ll be hosting geolocation events for Social Media Week in Los Angeles this September. This is the third in Max Gladwell‘s #10Ways series of distributed blog posts. It was published simultaneously on as many as 300 blogs.

I still have two devices (a Blackberry and a Sierra Wireless Laptop Connect 3G USB card) on AT&T that I would add up to about $200 in ETFs so it’s just not practical to switch. Not for the Evo. The Evo is less than perfect.

1) It is too big to function as a phone. I feel like I’m walking around with a mini-iPad and STILL

2) I can’t type as effectively with a virtual keyboard as I can with the Blackberry Bold’s physical QWERTY.

3) The battery life is unconscionable. Completely unacceptable and unheard of. This is simply not a portable device — it must always be plugged in or on its way to being plugged in. A two battery approach MIGHT get you through the entire day with minimal internet and app use. NOTE: The software update pushed out this week has improved battery life quite a bit (relatively speaking). I was lucky to download it OTA before it was halted.

4) 4G. I knew this was somewhat of a gimmick to begin with. Sprint’s data network is shifting over to WiMax — more powerful towers that blanked larger areas with higher data speeds. Sprint purchased the existing towers and networks built by Clearwire and others to get going on this. The 4G system is very limited in LA. I’ve experienced it in and near downtown as well as in parts of West Hollywood. It is nice to get download speeds of 4MB down (and up to 1MB up) from a cellular connection (in reality, this is a wireless connection transmitted to a WiMax receptor in the phone). But truth be told, I regularly get 2-3 Mbps down in the same areas with AT&T 3G (note: not tested with iPhone).

But… ANDROID FTW! I am in love with the Android platform and the variety of applications made available on it — mostly for FREE. Similar to the iPhone platform, it is very easy to download and upgrade (as well as uninstall) third-party applications. This is not the case on Blackberry.

Do I feel like I’m stuck on AT&T? Yes and no. I don’t want to blow $500 bucks to switch (and buy the new phone). I’d rather wait for AT&T to get a top notch Android phone (hopefully by the end of the year). The service isn’t THAT bad and truth be told… I make very few calls.

On the other hand, I have already used over 3.2Gb of data on the Evo over the course of this 3 week trial. While it is likely easier and cheaper to use tons of bandwidth on an Android phone than an iPhone, it’s still likely that I’d go over the 2Gb limit that AT&T is apparently enforcing (although I’m not certain if that is just for iPhone owners or for all data plans). I’m going to miss Android but it doesn’t pay for me to switch off of AT&T right now – perhaps I’ll pick up the Samsung “Captivate” Galaxy S when it is released (supposedly in July) – assuming it isn’t too overloaded with AT&T bloatware and allows third-party apps including Swype.

I’ve posted an update to this post, My Life with the HTC EVO.

That said, stay tuned for my review of the many Android apps I’ve tried (ALL FREE!) on the HTC Evo 4G

For a list of the final 101 apps that I ended up keeping on the phone (before wiping and returning it) for a grand total of FREE, see below:

netzoo’s Apps on the PC36100 (Sprint HTC Evo)

Phone: PC36100
101 total, 101 free (100%), 0 paid (0%), 98MB total size, $0 total price

• Waze: Community GPS navigation
• AndroZip File Manager
• TWiT.tv by Mediafly
• Spare Parts
• Kindle for Android
• GTasks
• Hollywood Bowl
• Chompin
• Camera 360
• FxCamera
• SwiFTP FTP Server
• HuffingtonPost.com
• Movies
• Bump
• Advanced Task Killer
• AppAware Market and Twitter
• NPR News
• TripIt – Travel Organizer
• Facebook for Android
• ESPN ScoreCenter
• RemoteDroid
• Google Maps
• PhoneFlicks-Netflix Android
• Scanner Radio
• AT&T Mark the Spot
• Robotic Guitarist Free
• Google Sky Map
• Aldiko Book Reader
• Listen
• Android Beer Guide
• Urbanspoon
• Google Translate
• Places Directory
• Live Scores
• Text-To-Speech Extended
• Seesmic for Twitter
• Finance
• Foursquare
• NewsRob (Google Reader / RSS)
• Vuvuzela
• HomePipe Free
• Congress
• fring – free video calls, IM
• 1CAST Video News
• AP Mobile
• BBC News
• AppBrain App Market
• Dropbox
• AndFTP
• DroidiIn Lite
• cab4me
• Brightkite
• Pandora Radio
• BeyondPod Podcast Manager
• Billboard100
• Layar Reality Browser
• Chicago’s WGN Radio 720
• Opera Mini 5 browser
• TechCrunch
• Audiobooks
• FCC Mobile Broadband Test
• TED Mobile
• Adobe® Reader®
• Thomson Reuters News Pro
• doubleTwist Player
• Site Shot
• Quake Alert!
• ASTRO File Manager
• Android Central Widget
• Live Earth
• Mobile GA for Android
• Analytics Widget
• EarthAlbum Photo Travel
• PicSay – Photo Editor
• Photoshop.com Mobile
• Barcode Scanner
• Kayak Flight and Hotel Search
• Ustream Viewer
• Ustream Broadcaster
• New Scientist (beta)
• NYTimes
• WeatherBug
• XkcdViewer
• Evernote
• Google Buzz widget
• ABC7 – Los Angeles News & More
• Google Goggles
• Amazon.com
• Discovery Channel
• TV.com
• MySpace Mobile
• Shazam
• ttTumblr
• WordPress
• Yelp
• Meebo IM
• Last.fm – Personal Radio
• Google Earth
• Mint.com Personal Finance
• Speedtest.net Speed Test
• Google Voice

View this app list on AppBrain

The Sprint Free Guarantee:

We love and believe in our products and services. We’re confident you will too. That’s why, as a new customer — or an existing customer adding a new line of service — we’ll give you 30 days to try us for free.

If for any reason you’re not happy and want to cancel service, just call us to deactivate your service, go to the original place of purchase to return your undamaged phone or mobile broadband card, and we’ll:

• Refund monthly charges incurred as part of your service plan*
• Refund the activation fee
• Refund the purchase price of your device
• Waive the Early Termination Fee
• Waive the restocking fee
• Refund taxes and Sprint surcharges associated with the above charges

*You’ll be responsible for extras like usage not included in your plan, premium content, 3rd-party billing, international charges, and any taxes and Sprint surcharges associated with such extras.

Just one more thing we give you that our competitors don’t. And one more reason why there’s never been a better time to give us a try.

So yeah, you get to record video — on Apple’s iMovie software which will run you $4.99. It’s about time. recording video has been a native function of nearly all semi-smart and even some stupid-phones since before the original iPhone was announced in 2007. But somehow, this is a revolution.

The only thing relevant to me — which I demonstrate in the video below (shot and livestreamed via the Qik app on the HTC Evo) — is that AT&T is so desperate to lock customers up for another 2 years that it is offering nearly everyone new contracts on the spot (meaning new, subsidized phones). Dial *639# from your phone wait a couple minutes and you’ll likely get the same plea message from AT&T:

As a valued customer we can offer you an upgrade with a new 2-yr commitment and an $18 upgrade fee.

Yes, I can re-up as well, despite never having owned an iPhone — now if only AT&T has a killer Android phone I might consider extending my contract. Of course — I used to take advantage of this shortcut-to-upgrade for $18 quite frequently, first when it was freely allowed as an employee of USC and later when I worked for WMG. Although Sprint’s service has been very good in the few days that I’ve been testing the Evo — much better than 5 years ago when I tested phones from all carriers and found that not one could make calls from my house. Sprint is also matching the corporate discount I received for years from AT&T.

Anyway, as I typically say about overly dramatic Apple releases: WHATEVER. But there is one more thing: FaceTime?!? WHATEVER Get yours June 24th. Or get a phone that runs Android, don’t be restricted by Apple, impress your friends, and be happy.

Tested out American Airlines’ new mobile boarding pass option on my flight from LAX to ORD for Thanksgiving. It worked out, but I was glad that the airport wasn’t busy. I recommend carrying a printed boarding pass for backup while they work out the kinks.

At the checkpoint, it was scanned no problem — in fact the guy tried to spread-zoom my screen iPhone style. Heh. He gave me a laminated green slip of paper with a number on it. Mine was “59” My first green card! After passing through the scanner, the TSA woman (who was obviously new on the job) didn’t know what to do and called for a supervisor who in turn snapped at her for turning her back on the human walk-through scanner. “I’ve seen people run through these before,” he warned.

At the gate, American’s scanners didn’t quite pick up the code, but they were able to check me thru by matching the info on the image on my phone with that in the database.

And then the obvious “joke” about someday soon we’ll all just have barcodes embedded into our foreheads. Maybe we already do.

iPhone Trends June 2008 – Get more Information Technology

iPhone 3G Original iPhone and iPod Touch Feature Chart – Get more Information Technology