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Forkly is a beautiful new iPhone app that helps you discover new restaurants you might like and recommends dishes once you're at restaurants, based on your individual taste. Built by former leaders of location based social network Brightkite, Forkly has been talked about in the tech press for almost a year but it just launched quietly tonight. It looks good.

It looks a lot like FoodSpotting, but with more and better social hooks: influencer scores, embeddable widgets for food bloggers and a prominent news feed of food photos from your friends.

The mobile social network Brightkite announced back in September that it would be focusing more on its group texting feature, but today the company announced that it will be officially dropping the check-in function altogether from its service. One of the earliest companies in the location-based social network trend, Brightkite calls today's announcement to move away from check-in to focus on messaging "the next stage of our evolution."

One of the leading trends this year has been check-in apps. Typically mobile apps, they allow you to announce that you're at a place or doing something. The excitement started with the location check-in apps: Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Google Latitude and others. But over the past year the practice of "checking in" has expanded to many other 'things' beyond location. You can now check in to TV shows, movies, books, food, events, and more.

Below we list some example check-in apps, so that you can check out this phenomenon yourself!

Advertisers have long talked about the mystical possibilities of using real-time location data to target customers. The technology existed; most cell phones have a GPS receiver in case of emergency. But real-time location data was off-limits to advertisers until Web-centric phones introduced people to the concept of sharing their location in exchange for utility. Soon, along came apps like Foursquare and Gowalla, which essentially trick users into sharing their real-time location with advertisers. Suddenly, location-aware marketing is red hot.

"It's huge and it's increasing," said Michael Becker, a director at the Mobile Marketing Association. "Location is going to play an increasingly critical role in enabling successful consumer engagement through and with the mobile phone."

Location-based mobile applications, also now being called "check-in services" to differentiate themselves from other geo-aware apps like Google Maps, are the hottest new social applications on the mobile scene today. The lineup includes game-based applications like Foursquare and MyTown, which each provide points, credits and/or badges for "checking in" (registering your physical presence) with a particular venue. There are also dedicated shopping-related check-in services like Shopkick, which rewards retail customers with discounts and deals for patronizing select establishments.

But almost all of the check-in apps integrate some form of mobile advertising. After months of experimentation with various formats, marketers are starting to discover what strategies actually work.

What's worse, for marketers hoping to tap into a diverse and savvy audience of shoppers, diners, and other local consumers, the details on audience make-up are disappointing. According to Forrester, LBS users are 80% male and 70% are aged 19-35.

So should marketers stay away for now until these services mature? Absolutely not. And here's why.

Technology entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has just invested in a video company that can identify how many people are in a specific location at a particular time. While currently the technology is used for analyzing "traffic patterns" and "security," writes Cuban on a blog post announcing the deal, the next step is adding facial recognition software for the purpose of check-ins using location-based software, he says.

"Rather than someone checking into a specific application, we would already know you are there," Cuban explains. That prospect is either incredible or downright scary, depending on how you feel about privacy.

With a number of location-based social networking applications currently available, and no clear winner as of yet, a micro-industry for universal check-in applications has sprung up, with several mobile apps available for the early adopter set. We've looked at a couple of these in the past, including the mobile Web application developed by the Brighkite team, Check.in, and GeoLorean, a check-in aggregator that features Check.in's functionality.

Today, we're experimenting with a third: the oddly named, but feature-rich "Footfeed."

Services like Foursquare, Gowalla and others make it easy to post your physical location to the Web - but what makes people want to do that at all?

Fifteen-month-old Foursquare is adding 100,000 new users every week, and Facebook has made it clear that location is a feature it is preparing to offer soon. What's the motivation for users to register where they are in the offline world online? We asked some users of these services and found that they had varied and interesting answers.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been using Check.in, the browser-based "check in" application that registers your current location with a variety of location-based social networking applications, including Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Whrrl and TriOut. The app was cooked up by the Brightkite team in an effort to simplify the process of using multiple services such as these, an ongoing frustration among LBS (location-based-services) early adopters.

So how did it fare? Not bad at all, if I do say so myself.