In addition to lists, which will help highlight individual users more, today's update also adds @-mentions and redesigns the news feed to be more about the people. Trover has positioned itself as a "browser" for places, but when you talk to CEO Jason Karas, you hear Trover is learning that people are part of those places. The new version of Trover is still about discovering places, but it provides the authentic flavor that only the local folks can offer.

World-Browsers Feel Like the Future

Trover (available for iPhone and Android) is in a category of apps that matters to me. So-called "browsers for the world" represent the future I dreamed about as a kid, where our devices are not difficult or distracting, they're seamless extensions of and enhancements to our daily lives. Using a smartphone to find cool stuff to see and do is one of the most natural kinds of computing I can imagine. This is what drew me to Trover when it launched.

But since then, another iPhone world-browser has drawn me in. I've been using Localscope, which I think is much closer to a "browser," per se, than Trover is. It's a sleek user interface to aid in locating things.

Localscope searches across virtually all major Web services that share location data, so you can click from Facebook to Twitter to Foursquare to Google Maps (and much more) until you find something interesting. It's got two modes, browsing and searching. It is to the physical world what, say, Chrome is to the Web.

Is Trover a Browser or a Guide?

Discussing Localscope and Trover with Jason Karas the other day, the differences stood out so starkly that I - presumptuous blogger that I am - suggested that Trover might not be a browser after all. It's more like a guide, and today's new features further enhance that side of it.

First of all, Trover makes it easy to share discoveries as well as find things discovered by others. It's a two-way experience. But also, Localscope is designed around efficiency, finding what you're looking for and putting the phone away. Trover is an immersion. You follow people, you find the experts and tastemakers in your area, and you learn to trust their tastes.

Check out Trover and see what's happening in your area. If there isn't much, be a pioneer. That was Karas' word. If you love where you live, and you're proud of it, sharing it on Trover can help new people find those local gems. And if you're somewhere full of great guides, Trover will help you get to know the place.

Going to SXSW? Trover Is.

As a bit of a "coming out party," as Karas called it, Trover is hosting a Discover East Austin Mobile PhotoWalk on Saturday, Feb. 18 as part of South by Southwest. It's hosted by local explorers, and participants will get a sense of the city they're in outside the confines of the huge conference.

SXSWi nominated Trover for a Community Award, and this fun extension of an app into the real world is a great demonstration of why. If you're going to South By, be sure to join the Trover tour.

What kinds of location-based apps do you use, and how do you use them?

But there's another frontier of mobile mapping that matters, and the exploration has just begun. Indoor mapping of big buildings - like airports, convention centers, museums and stores - is the El Dorado of mobile location. Google has begun its expedition inside buildings, and businesses can sign up and offer their floor plans. But there's another option: Use a platform like Meridian and build your own inside map. Which is better for business?

Google launched interior maps in November. It's currently only available on Google Maps for Android. When it launched, it came with a bunch of partners, and it offered any business owner the ability to submit a floor plan for inclusion. After that, the business owner doesn't have to do a thing except submit updated plans if things change. Google handles the rest.

Business owners have enough to think about, so letting a service provider handle all this mapping stuff could be a convenient choice. Google has a vested interest in presenting the most attractive local business listings it can. But are they always the most accurate? In October, Google decided to take responsibility for updating business listings into its own hands, asking owners about changes only after the fact.

If you need fine-grained control over how your business appears online, you might want a more custom solution.

Meridian: Roll Your Own Map

When a location releases an app built with Meridian, it's a grand affair. It announces partners one at a time, such as the launch of the Oregon Convention Center app yesterday. Unlike Google, Meridian is in start-up mode, but it raised $1 million last year on the premise that the best location-based business apps are built by the businesses themselves.

Meridian has offered consumers interior mapping longer than Google has, but only for a few participating locations. That's not a shortcoming, though; Meridian is a platform. For consumers, it's an app that lets them navigate inside favorite museums, stadiums and stores (currently mostly in Meridian's hometown of Portland, Ore.). But for businesses, it's a way to build and control a 3D interior map of their own location and offer a custom-branded app for it.

It has its own Web-based editing tools, so owners can move around contents of the map like store displays or museum exhibits. You can include audio tours or featured products that display prominently for the user. It will even push pertinent information to the customer's device.

How Should Businesses Handle Maps?

If you own or work for a business with a building you want mapped for smartphones, think about priorities. Is it better for you to ship off location data to a service provider who will handle it for you, or would you rather have constant control over the experience? Do you just need to be on the map, or would you like to build the app?

Whichever option makes the most sense for you, it's exciting to have such choices. The power of the mobile Web to enhance the world for users and raise the profile of local businesses is only just starting to kick in.

Which location-based services do you use, whether for work or for fun?

45º views act as a transition between the standard top-down view and Google's new Google MapsGL, a full-3D Maps experience powered by WebGL in the browser. That part won't work on certain low-end graphics cards, but for those who can run it, Google Maps gets pretty magical. Google has good reason to push the envelope on 3D maps. Its competitors are working on magical maps of their own.

In addition to the full-3D WebGL views, desktop Google Maps also got a flyover feature for travel routes last year. When you put in travel directions, the map viewer gets a "Play" button that switches to a Google Earth 3D view and flies you from point A to point B. It's not the most useful feature in the world, but it's a nice way to check out the terrain on your route.

Google is even taking 3D mapping indoors. It's sending people with backpack-mounted Street View cameras inside local businesses, so Google can put a panoramic interior view into Google Places results. Google is also building mobile 2D maps inside buildings, including malls, airports, hotels and convention centers. When all these maps combine, Google can take you from a desktop or mobile search, down the street, into the mall, to the store, inside the store, and eventually, it wants to be the way you pay, too.

Sounds like Google has this whole business locked up, right? Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Google has competitors to worry about. There's Microsoft, whose Bing Maps got interior mapping first, but it's still a distant second in terms of market share. Amazon may not have the maps, but it has unparalleled reach into shopping. And Apple has Siri, a mobile assistant that already routes around Google when able, and it has made some intriguing mapping acquisitions.

The missing piece in Google's end-to-end mobile shopping chain is the shopping part, and no Web company does shopping like Amazon. Amazon has released an augmented reality iPhone app that lets customers scan products in a store and buy them (or cheaper alternatives) on Amazon. That's a pretty serious diss to local businesses, but it makes Amazon customers happy. Also, if they're buying through Amazon Flow, they aren't paying with Google Wallet. Amazon also bought a voice recognition company last year, sparking comparisons to Apple's Siri.

For Apple's part, Siri is the piece that threatens Google. Currently, Siri searches the Web using Google when it can't find the answer itself. Apple's iOS Maps app also uses Google for now. But certain features of the Siri beta are telling. When you use Siri to search for a local business, it uses Yelp, not Google. What can we expect from later versions of Siri and iOS? Here's a hint: In November 2011, Apple bought C3 Technologies, a 3D street view and interior mapping company.

What apps, maps and Web services do you use to find your way around?

In its announcement of Explore for the Web, Foursquare says its mission is "adding an 'interesting' layer to the whole world, tailored just for you." Foursquare Explore draws on the check-ins, tips, lists and interests of your friends to put a layer of "interesting" - which is apparently a noun at Foursquare - on a map. This is a challenge to Google Places and Maps, which is racing to add "interesting", but Foursquare's 1.5 billion check-ins give it a strong position.

When Foursquare recommendations launched in March, our Marshall Kirkpatrick called it Foursquare's Google moment. It was a Facebook moment, too; both Google and Facebook are trying desperately to get users to check in to places, so they can monetize the recommendations to users' friends.

Unlike the big kids on the playground, though, Foursquare is a mobile-first company, and that's where all its data comes from. Today's launch of Explore on the Web brings that wealth of information back to the desktop (and tablet).

Mobile-First Makes Desktop-Best

Foursquare has earned 15 million users so far. That's no Facebook. That's not even a Google+. But all the Foursquare users are there to check in and recommend places. That's a strong signal for a service like Explore.

This isn't the first desktop Web feature Foursquare has added lately. In November, the whole Foursquare website got a makeover, setting the stage for today's additional recommendation layer. That month, Foursquare also launched a save-to-Foursquare button for websites, allowing users to save places to their Foursquare to-do lists.

Google's Foursquare Moment

Google has been hurriedly adding these kinds of features, too. It acquired Zagat for a reservoir of professional place recommendations, and it's added lots of gee-whiz visual stuff to its desktop Maps interface.

In November, as Foursquare made its key desktop moves, Google started to turn the screws on Yelp, highlighting Google Places recommendations on Google Maps. But this is a very basic interface. It's not much of a threat to Yelp, let alone Foursquare, whose place recommendations are much more detailed.

Your (Fun) Homework Assignment

Reading about the features isn't as fun as actually exploring, so try Foursquare's homework assignment.

At foursquare.com/explore:

• Find a place to go to lunch today that you've never been before (hint: look for the 'I haven't been to yet' checkbox).
• Search for a nice spot to try out tomorrow night (try searching "fun," "romantic," or "Friday").
• Pick a city you've been wanting to visit (Chicago? Paris? Rio?) and look at our personally-tailored top picks for you there, based on your check-ins from your hometown.

Now try the same at maps.google.com. How did the experiences compare? Let us know in the comments.

Co-working is the new normal, and city governments could drive lots of high-tech productivity if they make their latent space available to flexible, remote workers. Palo Alto is an obvious place to start, but every city in the world should start thinking like this.

We like the looks of this. Coffee & Power, another remote working story we're watching, has figured out how to make a win-win out of helping private spaces open up to remote workers. LiquidSpace is doing a civic service by pushing municipal governments to open their doors to co-workers, too.

If you want to learn more about this topic, Phil Shapiro wrote a cool post about co-working in public libraries in PCWorld.

Do you work remotely? Share your experiences in the comments.

Wherever I go, whatever I do, if you or I have the mobile app from Geoloqi running and the new Wikipedia layer turned on, we'll receive push notifications whenever we are in the physical proximity of a place or a thing that has been written about in Wikipedia, the world's largest and richest encyclopedia. Now we will know about the neighborhoods we're in, the buildings we're in front of, the landmarks we visit: beyond old fashioned information placards, but with the infinite knowledge of the Internet. If that's not a Super Power, I don't know what is.

Editor's note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we're re-publishing some of our best posts of 2011. As we look back at the year - and ahead to what next year holds - we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It's not just a best-of list, it's also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2012. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

I should confess: apparently it was my idea. Hah! Portland, Oregon geolocation startup Geoloqi announced today that it has turned on a layer of location data for Wikipedia, enabling users to opt-in to geofenced push notifications for geo-coded encyclopedia entries. The geo-enriched data was acquired from data startup Infochimps and co-founder Amber Case mentioned in the blog post announcing the new feature that it came from conversations the company and I had in its early days. Awesome! I'm sure they would have thought of it otherwise, of course, it's a pretty obvious idea I think.

Below: I will walk a finite but unknown number of steps on the earth before I die. I appreciate an app that offers to help me understand the places I take those steps, as I take them and with the help of knowledge accumulated from other mortal beings unknown to me and all around the world. Except in this case I was biking, Instagramming, Twitter DMing and being Geoloqied all at the same time.

All I have really ever wanted from the Internet is something like this. It is a robot that gently taps my shoulder whenever I am in the presence of a place or a thing for which there is an invisible story written in the sky, collaboratively nurtured by editors all over the world for years, that I can pull down into the illuminated device in my hand.

I can't wait for even more layers to be added to Geoloqi. Hopefully the company will make it easy for anyone to publish datasets to the platform and there will be enough interest that I'll be able to switch on layers of locations of ceramists' studios open to the public and places significant to the history of artisan cheese. Or whatever. You name it.

Rose colored glasses? Give me glasses (no don't, actually, and no brain implant) or give me a mobile app that lets me unobtrusively see slices of reality otherwise invisible but already associated by place with wherever I am. If there are infinite ways of describing a place, then each of those descriptions could be turned into data, associated with other related descriptions and opened up as a new dimension in which to experience standing on earth and freaking out. If flipping between those dimensions is as easy as sliding a mobile app's button from on to off, well then I think we've found a fitting tribute to the ancient salmon that died in the hydroelectric dams used to power all this stuff. (Not really, but I dare you to come up with a better one available yet.)

Speaking of power, Geoloqi says that the next step will be to fix its still troubled relationship with your phone's juice. Persistent location tracking is hard work on that little battery but the company thinks it's come up with a good technology solution for optimization. Case said today in her blog post that the solution would be implemented soon and made available to developers of other apps struggling with the problem.

Now go forth into the world and see it annotated with the shared knowledge of everyone who has contributed to Wikipedia. I am so excited about it!

ReadWriteWeb gets tips about new consumer-facing location apps every day. We like the futuristic whiz-bang idea of augmented reality, so we tend to write these up every once in a while. But geolocation apps have not yet caught on in consumers' minds. That's because most offerings focus on monetizing location, leaving the user interface as an afterthought. Today, I think that changed. I found Localscope, the first location app I've ever used that I think I'll use every day.

A Browser For the World Around You

Localscope is currently available for iPhone and webOS only. This is actually the launch of version 2.0; the app has been around for almost a year. Version 1 helped users find things nearby using publicly available geo data. It was a nice interface, but not a unique offering. Version 2.0 is much more than that. It's a browser for the world around you.

The app has three views: gallery, map and augmented reality. None of these interfaces is new to the market, although Localscope's UI design is striking.

But here's the difference: while a photo discovery app like Trover or a business finding app like Yelp can show you its own content through these same kinds of views, that's all it has. Localscope lets you toggle between whichever location-enabled service you want to find something nearby.

Localscope has both a search mode and a discover mode. When you choose a mode, it goes straight into the view you last used, and a scrolling list of services appears across the bottom. They include Panoramio, Google's map-based photo network, Instagram, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Google and Bing, as well as the open-source service Wikimapia. Siloed services like Yelp are conspicuously absent.

Find What You're Looking For

The app will grab full location info, usually from Google, when you choose a place. But you don't have to search for a restaurant; you can just go find neat spots people have photographed on Instagram or tweeted about. That's the kind of exploration that drew me to Trover, but Trover is its own network, while Localscope searches across a bunch of different, more popular ones.

The best touch is the compass, though. You don't have to hold your phone up in the goofy augmented reality position. The app uses the phone's compass, and it displays the direction of the object you're looking for everywhere, even in the list view, using a floating compass icon. You can start walking right away. It never takes more than two or three taps to find something that interests you and start looking for it.

This is what I've been waiting for, a location app that isn't about gathering data from me, but about showing it to me. And having access to so many services means that the exact thing I'm looking for is bound to be in here somewhere, never more than a few slides and taps - and then a short walk - away.

Localscope is available in the iTunes Store for $1.99.

Among mobile-first social services, Foursquare is arguably the biggest right now, but the geolocation check-in app is on track to be surpassed soon, despite being a year older than Instagram and being available on every major mobile platform and having a highly functional Web-based UI.

As SocialFresh writer Jason Keath points out, Instagram also benefits from the fact that its core functionality - taking, sharing and viewing photographs - are things we've done since the advent of consumer photography. Sharing our precise physical location with a network of others is an activity that's not quite as firmly embedded in our lives already.

Instagram For Android: Still in the Pipeline

Instagram's most recent project was a significant overhaul to the app's underlying functionality that went live in September. The company has long promised that the two items next on their list are a Web interface and and Android app.

It's that application for Android, which CEO Kevin Systrom recently confirmed they're currently building, that stands to send the service's user adoption rate through the roof. As beloved as the iPhone is, iOS still makes up a smaller share of the market than Android, which has itself ballooned pretty quickly. If the current buzz around the iOS version carries over across platforms, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect Instagram's user base to double within a year or so.

The company's other top priority, a Web-based UI for the service, should also help attract users. Right now, people see Instagram shots posted to Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter all the time. When they click through, however, all they see is the photo itself, some basic information about the user who posted it and a link inviting them to download the iPhone app. For those who are unfamiliar with the service, there's very little detail about what Instagram is and why they should care about it. One way to get that idea across would be to offer the ability to explore more images from within the desktop browser.

When It Comes To Apps, Geosocial Is Not Geolocation

The study also differentiates geosocial apps (LBSNs) from the broader picture of geolocation mobile apps, a category that includes apps for navigation, map viewing, local search and local daily deals. Geosocial apps are far more powerful because they provide information about location and the user's social graph.

Social networks do offer location features, but location is just baked in. A few examples include Facebook Places, Google+ check-ins, Twitter posts with locations, Apple's Find My Friends app and the nearly dead Google Latitude. Location, however, is not central to Facebook and Twitter in the way it is to Foursquare and SCVNGR.

Geosocial apps also let you share your location out to your social networks, but many prefer to keep location where it's best used - in the location-based social network. Says Loopt: "There is a level of privacy people enjoy on geosocial apps."

Who Is Actually Using Geolocation Apps?

Forrester finds that people using geolocation apps are influential, connected and young.
Three-fourths of geolocation app users range from ages 23 to 45. Forty-three percent are Gen Y (ages 23-31) and 18% are Gen Z (ages 18-22). Gen X users are using geolocation apps less this year; in 2010, 42% said they used them versus only 32% this year. Not surprisingly, only 1% of seniors ages 67 and older used geolocation apps in 2011.

There is some good news for marketers. Geosocial apps are edging closer to mainstream American demographics. In 2010, users were only 22% female, and the average user's household income was $105,000. This year 37% of geosocial app users are female, and the average user's household income has dropped to $92,000.

This is a key move for Google's mobile business, which up until now could only take you to the front door of the place for which you were searching. Google Maps on the desktop recently got 3D photo tours of small locations, an extension of Street View, but this is a bigger step. When Google Maps goes inside, Google can take you all the way from searching for something to holding it in your hand, advertising and data-gathering all the way.

This is currently only available on the native Android version of Google Maps, but that's where it makes the most sense. At your desk, a photo tour is all you need. This location-based technology is a mobile innovation for once you're actually there. Google Maps is now an end-to-end service, and that means Google has your eyeballs every step of the way.

Maps & Mobile Platforms

Location services are the heart of any mobile platform, and mapping is the most fundamental interface for them. Naturally, Android users (with the latest versions of everything) will get this powerful new service straight from Google. What about other mobile platforms?

The iPhone uses Google for mapping, too, at least for now. Based on the way Apple and Google are butting heads on mobile and location tools, that partnership can't be long for this world. When iPhone 4S users ask Siri about local businesses, she skips Google and goes to Yelp, even though Google is likely to be the place a user would go first if given the choice. Apple is clearly trying to squeeze Google out of this picture. It recently bought a 3D mapping company of its own. This stand-off is why Google Maps and Siri were head to head in our Top 10 Consumer Web Products of 2011.

Interestingly, Bing Maps got interior mapping on its mobile Web version this August, but it didn't make much of a splash.

Mapping The Inside World

Interiors are the last frontier of location services, and Google is looking to annex it. It's the next big thing for Google's business.

This is interesting news for startups working on this problem. Meridian, a Portland, Ore.-based company, just took $1 million in funding to make interior mapping into a platform. It provides its partner businesses with an interface to turn a 3D map of their building into an interactive, standalone application. That's a competing vision for how mapping the inside world should work.

How will Apple's mobile location interface be different? What will Bing Maps do? It's go-time for location services right now, and Google has a very strong hand.

Read more about Google Maps 6.0 for Android on the Google LatLong blog.

How do you use your mobile devices to navigate the inside world?

The HipGeo iPhone app launched in September. It tracks your travels and plots your photos, comments and saved locations to the map, giving you an animated diary of your day. Today's API release gives developers a starting point to build those kinds of features into their own apps. "We give developers the ability to add a 'where' to their 'when' without having to build the technology on their own," says HipGeo CEO Scott Daniel.

Between this and the new location-based superpowers from Geoloqi, the future of location services looks much more interesting than "check-ins." Now that HipGeo is an extensible platform we can't wait to see what new kinds of location-based storytelling developers come up with.

You can grab HipGeo from the iTunes Store, and you can get the new API and widgets from hipgeo.com/developer.

What kinds of location-based apps would you like to see in the future?

Meridian's platform also allows third parties to build their own branded applications on the technology, and this is the potential that spurred the new investment. Drew Bernard of the Oregon Angel Fund says that Meridian's ability to provide a range of business verticals with a ready-to-go mobile navigation platform will be a major time and cost saver for businesses who want to develop their own applications.

Using easy editing tools, partners can update and move around any kind of content within the map. Using Meridian's platform for an in-store app, even non-technical staff can update the content of their mobile app, providing in-person customers with an up-to-date experience.

Using the interior mapping and directions as a base, partners can add their own key functionality, like audio tours or featured book titles, and end up with a unique, branded app thanks to the Meridian platform.

Meridian has no specific announcements about new partners today, but the types of upcoming venues include retail stores, convention centers, transit systems, museums and stadiums.

All third parties have to do is send Meridian the drawings of their space, and Meridian builds it into a map, adding additional data such as routing lines and place marks as well as GPS coordinates and location data from Cisco Systems, a key partner that helps Meridian provide a seamless experience to mobile users. "It's very, very quick for us to build out a location," Meridian CEO Kiyo Kubo says. "We just help [partners] get their content onto the platform, and they're able to do quite a bit of the work themselves."

Via the editing tools provided to partners, Meridian can integrate with a partner's inventory management system. For example, with flagship partner Powell's City of Books, store staff are able to easily change out the books featured in the application, which Kubo says they do all the time.

Picking Up Where Google Leaves Off

Consumer-focused location services are everywhere these days, and interior location apps are a key part. Inside, after all, is where the sale happens. While maps of the outside world are the domain of the big search providers, like Google and Bing, the insides of businesses have no one-size-fits-all solution.

Both Bing and Google are trying; Bing is mapping the insides of malls, and Google is sending backpack-sized Street View cameras into restaurants and putting 3D photo tours into search results.

But "they only get you in the door," Kubo says, while Meridian works "from door to door," from the moment customers enter until the moment they check out. The search companies can only offer cookie-cutter solutions for interior location services, and Kubo says they don't serve businesses well.

While Google is seizing control of local business information to make sure it's optimized for Google search, Meridian does the opposite, letting third-party developers and business owners endlessly customize the content of their Meridian-based apps.

The Future Is Now

How's the user experience? Well, about eight months ago, soon after Meridian became available, I went to Powell's City of Books to test it out and live-tweeted the experience. I never imagined such a seamless, futuristic experience was already possible. Not only did I interact live with the Meridian team, I also talked to William Gibson, who wrote the foreword to the book I was looking for. Meridian led me straight from the door to the book without missing a step. Check out my Meridian experience on Storify.

Wherever I go, whatever I do, if you or I have the mobile app from Geoloqi running and the new Wikipedia layer turned on, we'll receive push notifications whenever we are in the physical proximity of a place or a thing that has been written about in Wikipedia, the world's largest and richest encyclopedia. Now we will know about the neighborhoods we're in, the buildings we're in front of, the landmarks we visit: beyond old fashioned information placards, but with the infinite knowledge of the Internet. If that's not a Super Power, I don't know what is.

Below: I will walk a finite but unknown number of steps on the earth before I die. I appreciate an app that offers to help me understand the places I take those steps, as I take them and with the help of knowledge accumulated from other mortal beings unknown to me and all around the world. Except in this case I was biking, Instagramming, Twitter DMing and being Geoloqied all at the same time.

All I have really ever wanted from the Internet is something like this. It is a robot that gently taps my shoulder whenever I am in the presence of a place or a thing for which there is an invisible story written in the sky, collaboratively nurtured by editors all over the world for years, that I can pull down into the illuminated device in my hand.

I can't wait for even more layers to be added to Geoloqi. Hopefully the company will make it easy for anyone to publish datasets to the platform and there will be enough interest that I'll be able to switch on layers of locations of ceramists' studios open to the public and places significant to the history of artisan cheese. Or whatever. You name it.

Rose colored glasses? Give me glasses (no don't, actually, and no brain implant) or give me a mobile app that lets me unobtrusively see slices of reality otherwise invisible but already associated by place with wherever I am. If there are infinite ways of describing a place, then each of those descriptions could be turned into data, associated with other related descriptions and opened up as a new dimension in which to experience standing on earth and freaking out. If flipping between those dimensions is as easy as sliding a mobile app's button from on to off, well then I think we've found a fitting tribute to the ancient salmon that died in the hydroelectric dams used to power all this stuff. (Not really, but I dare you to come up with a better one available yet.)

Speaking of power, Geoloqi says that the next step will be to fix its still troubled relationship with your phone's juice. Persistent location tracking is hard work on that little battery but the company thinks it's come up with a good technology solution for optimization. Case said today in her blog post that the solution would be implemented soon and made available to developers of other apps struggling with the problem.

Now go forth into the world and see it annotated with the shared knowledge of everyone who has contributed to Wikipedia. I am so excited about it!

Location data produced by modern technology like GPS and cell phones can today be accessed by law enforcement agents without probably cause and a warrant, but Oregon Senator Ron Wyden has introduced legislation that would change that.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) this week welcomed U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R- Ill.) as a cosponsor of the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act (GPS), making the joint announcement at a Retro Tech Fair sponsored by the Center for Democracy in Technology commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The new Act would require law enforcement to get a warrant before accessing historical or real-time location data about an individual from a technology provider or device, except in cases of national security, theft or fraud.

Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office, said, "As we live more and more of our lives online, it's crucial that our information and communications receive vigorous constitutional protections. We have seen how rapidly technology has outpaced our privacy rights and Sen. Wyden and Kirk's bill is a good first step toward rectifying that disparity."

Ryan Radia of the Competitive Enterprise Institute put it like this: "The reforms proposed in the GPS Act would benefit American businesses that offer innovative mobile ecosystems and the consumers who enjoy these platforms. If the burgeoning mobile marketplace is to realize its full potential, firms must have the freedom to offer robust privacy assurances to their users. The GPS Act would mark a major step forward in that direction."

Aaron Parecki, co-founder of Portland, Oregon's Geoloqi, one of the most interesting new location tracking startups online, said that the passage of the act would be a relief to him as a technology startup. "It's great because it requires law enforcement to get a warrant so that we don't have to worry about being pressured into giving out our users' location data," he told ReadWriteWeb.

Data and location are both potential software development platforms with incredible, world-changing potential. They need to feel safe enough for users to engage with and for companies to trade in, if we're ever going to see that innovative potential realized.

"Most of the apps out there today that are location-specific are delivering lists of content back to the user," says CEO Jason Karas. "We feel that exploring a space is not really done best through lists, that it's done through information that's organized in a spatial way. You can literally stroll around with our UI and take in the neighborhood just like you would when you're walking around."

Trover has been available on iPhone since July, and anyone can browse discoveries on a big screen at Trover.com. "The app hasn't changed much in its functionality since we launched in July," says Karas, "but we've been working like crazy getting Android online because our community is asking for it. They want to share with friends who aren't iPhone users."

Trover reports that over 100,000 users in 160 countries have downloaded the iPhone app, and its next goal is to grow to scale with Android. "It's such a social application," says Karas, "and the ability for more folks to use it is what really gets the flywheel spinning."

Social Is Just A Vector

As the iPhone app has gained traction, Trover has attracted a certain kind of user base. Karas calls them "hyperlocal influencers." These are users with very specific tastes and expertise who gain a following on Trover based around their interests.

But while following others is one way to discover things on Trover, one of the app's distinguishing features is its emphasis on the content itself rather than the users who created it. While other apps in the space like Yelp or Foursquare emphasize friends and personal achievements in order to drive participation, Trover just treats the social Web as "a vector" to help more users discover the real-world places shared on the network.

"We are a social network for sharing discoveries," Karas says, "but what we're sharing is not 'me and where I am.' What we're sharing is something that I've found."

Next Steps: Keywords, Tablets and Kitchen Tables

Karas says that keyword-based browsing is coming to Trover in the next few weeks. Currently, Trover use centers around spatial browsing, using the map interface to see whatever is around. Keyword browsing will allow users to filter for certain kinds of discoveries, like sushi or graffiti art.

After getting Trover onto all smartphones, Karas looks forward building to native tablet apps for iPad and Android. These will be more focused on the browsing aspect of Trover, "like when you're sitting in your living room or at the kitchen table," Karas says. "It will be more like the experience you see on Trover.com today where the images are sized according to their popularity."

"We think that the handset is the primary tool that you should use to go capture these discoveries," Karas says, "but why not also let people explore their neighborhood, or even another country, from the comfort of their computer?"

Download Trover for Android or iPhone today (it's free), or explore existing discoveries straight from Trover.com