Neighbourhood watch

Loads of web based and mobile communi-content services have integrated location as a default part of the service eg. Flickr, Jaiku, Dopplr, Wayn, Gypsii, ZoneTag, Shozu, GMaps, BuddyPing, Twibble, Twinkle - the list is long... one thing they all lack is context.



Geo-locating content and communication (either at creation or consumption) is being further refined by some newish location mashups, or lashups :)



Wikinear from developer Simon Willison shows you a a list of the five Wikipedia pages that are geographically closest to your current location. It's faster and more convenient than going to wikipedia directly on your mobile and typing in your location.



You'll need a Fire Eagle login, then point your mobile web browser to http://wikinear.com



Wikinear uses Yahoo's Fire Eagle platform to get your location (Twitter is also integrated into Fire Eagle via Firebot to set your location directly via a tweet).



Twitterlocal is another service that filters tweets that are happening nearby within a 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 20 mile radius (as per previous post for Twinkle). Note there's a high noise-to-signal ratio!



How long before we see hyper-local, time-limited spontaneous advertising / marketing pushed through these types of platforms with access from your mobile (ie. I "follow" the provider costa50bucks coffee in a specific location and the discount code is redeemable only at that outlet) - the rudimentary **context** being provided here is they know I'm "local" and "might" be interested in a temporary discount.











































Maybe it's already already happening...



One last service that's also filtering down more locally is TwitterVision which has been updated to allow localisation per country... here's the UK public timeline.