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Location is baked in to just about everything that developers do these days. All the major original equipment manufacturers use the Global Positioning System as a primary means of tracking a smartphones location, but GPS may not be the best source of location data for developers. In steps Loc-Aid, a location as a service provider that aggregates data from the carriers and pushes it to developers through an API.

San Francisco-based Loc-Aid has a huge network and a vast array of partners. You probably have not heard of it. Part of that is because a lot of Loc-Aid's clients do not want you to know where they get their location data. Loc-Aid is now ready to step out of the shadows and become a go-to resource for developers looking to add location data to their mobile applications.

Trover, a photo-driven app for exploring places, has launched out of private beta. Trover lets users share location-tagged photos and browse them by time and location.

Though Trover is a photo-sharing app, it is organized for exploration, not just for browsing images. Don't think Instagram; Trover's roots within Seattle-based travel startup Travelpost are apparent. Trover shows what's around you to help you explore the place.

Groupon drives disloyalty, says Geoff Lewis, CEO of TopGuest. "Deep discounting is not a sustainable customer retention strategy for the long term," he explains. With his company's new program TopGuest Apex, the goal is to do the opposite of Groupon: instead driving large groups of new customers to a merchant, create personalized loyalty programs that reward customers for repeat visits to their favorite merchants.

Until now, TopGuest's business model involved awarding points (e.g. hotel points and other travel rewards) for checking in at one of the company's 15,000 partner places, mainly hotels and airports. But TopGuest Apex will reward users with points for checking in to their favorite local businesses.

Hilton HHonors points for going to the gym and Starbucks? Exactly.

Singapore-based developer Ridzuan Ashim spotted NFC support for tag reading in the Android application for Google Plus, the new social networking service launched into private beta only days ago. NFC, short for near field communication, is a wireless technology that enables data exchanges over short distances. The technology is currently present in a small subset of phones, including some Nokia devices, Google's own Samsung-built Nexus S, variants of the Samsung Galaxy S II and others.

But what is NFC doing in the Google Plus app?

EggDrop is a new mobile application for buying and selling goods in real-time with those in your local community. The idea is to improve upon the mobile commerce experience by using the technology that ships on modern smartphones. The app lets you use the camera for posting photos of items for sale, filter searches by location and receive push notifications to stay informed about the items you're watching, buying or selling.

In addition, EggDrop introduces an interesting pricing model - the "falling price auction." This enables so-called "frictionless" transactions that work without any haggling, bargaining, deals or discounts. It's as if eBay has been re-imagined for the mobile, social, location-based age.

This morning, another new startup launched a mobile social networking application where location is the primary feature and friends comes second. Banjo, which shows you all the people nearby upon first launch, is one of many similar services now arriving to fill a void in the social networking space. These services are identifying the disposable, the elastic and the ephemeral social networking that occurs  - or could occur, given the right technology - when tied to a particular location at a particular point in time.

But does Banjo have the winning formula? What about the others? And will anyone really use these services?

The most important thing you need to know about Banjo, the Palo Alto-based startup launching its new mobile app today, is that it's not another social network. "Banjo is a social discovery service," explains CEO Damien Patton. "It's a layer on top." What he means is that you don't have to build a community on Banjo, you don't have to add or remove friends - in fact, you don't even have to create a profile to use it.

Instead, Banjo, when launched, shows you the people around you. It's a social network based on who's present at any given location.

According to social media software maker Wildfire, the top 10 spots for Facebook check-ins include several airports, Disneyland, Times Square NYC and, um...Facebook headquarters. That's right. Out of Facebook's nearly 700 million users around the world, the offices of Facebook are seeing enough check-ins to make the company's top 10. What does that mean for Facebook Places? Is the service not seeing the adoption Facebook would like?

Location-based media company JiWire has released a new report detailing the mobile shopping trends among the "on-the-go" audience, which JiWire defines as people using tablets, smartphones or laptops away from their home or workplace. According to the study, 79% of these users are becoming more comfortable making purchases on their mobile devices, even for big ticket items over $1,000.

It also found that these consumers are heavily engaged with local deals services like Groupon and LivingSocial, for example, and had a high demand for tablet computers.

A Microsoft employee was spotted testing what appears to be a new check-in service on Windows Phone, according to his Twitter updates from an app called "Windows Phone(viaWindowsLive)INT." The app's name, when clicked in Twitter, simply redirects you to the main Windows Phone 7 website. It's also mapped to a test version of the Windows Live Messenger service, according to AllFacebook's Facebook app tracking service. The "INT" likely means "internal."

This news is notable not only for the checkin component, but also because, currently, Microsoft does not have a Windows Live Messenger client for its Windows Phone mobile operating system. It only has an official app for iPhone, and officially sanctioned thapps for Windows Phone and Android.