Just Another Mobile Monday....Location is everything?

Amazing what a bit of surfing at lunchtime can do....following on from my earlier post about Mobile TV Virgins, there is this excellent summary of a thread running on Mobile Monday London's Yahoo group of the issues surrounding mobile location based services. to quote:

So in summary then it seems that the issues with LBS are:
- It is typically too expensive to request a location, thus business
cases are
unviable.
- There is little comprehensive location aware data, leading to user
frustration
- The "Find me the nearest" use case is unlikely to take off
- There are no common standard APIs from the operators which increases
costs,
either through more complex code, or the use of aggregators.
- Chicken and egg situation with low usage = low awareness == low
usage.
- This also means that users need to be educated and reminded that
such a service
is available.

On the up side:
- friend finder type services are popular with their user base
- A-GPS provides a better location, and should be available on local
device APIs, removing
some of the costs(?) from the business case.
- good apparently for walking your dog
- Mapping and transport are "low hanging fruit".

Personally I like the idea of having a location aware access to
sources like wikipedia
and the like (eg wikimapia) that will access content based on where
your "pointing" your
phone. If this could become fast and reliable, it may become
indispensable.
Lastly I also like the idea of being able to 'tag' a place and send
details in a message,
this, as Jan and others pointed out, has several good use cases.
Reminds me a bit of the application that, uploads pictures to a web
site. However when
it does it also sends any bluetooth device tags it finds, as
"context". So you can see
if anyone else took pictures. To also send the geotag makes sense,
and there are a plethora
of sites, now, that let you upload photo/info about places.

Thanks to Steve Devo...

Like Steve, I am interested in the way a Mobile could be part of an immersive environment, where different layers of relevant data (history, shopping, transport...) appear on your phone as you move

But its sad how that cost thing always seems to come into Planet Mobile stuff.

Better beware though, Google is already trialling location based services based on IP address, and it can't be too hard to do it via WiFi cell.....