Apple Announces Tricorder

A tricorder from the original Star Trek series

I always thought they were so cool. In fact, when I was a kid, I wanted one for Christmas. This little tiny thing (well not so tiny by today's standards) called a tricorder that Spock or Riker (for you youngins) would wave around, would tell them everything they needed to know about their surroundings. The seeming impossibility of it all made it sound all the more cool.

Location aware, developer friendly phones are finally here

Well the impossible is becoming possible. Or at least part of it is becoming possible, in the form of GPS (or pseudo GPS) enabled phones and location-based services. Yesterday, Apple announced a new feature of the iPhone that will allow it to determine your location by triangulating from cell phone towers and wifi signals. While the iPhone is not GPS equipped, this pseudo GPS is good enough. All that is left is for Apple to make location awareness accessible via its coming software development kit (SDK) so developers can get jiggy with it.

Additionally, this year the market will be flooded with phones compatible with Google's Android phone operating system. All of these phones will presumably have GPS or pseudo GPS functionality, and their whole purpose is open developer access.

And yes boys and girls, I know GPS-equipped handsets have been around a while. I am ignoring all those old school turds here because they *all* suck.

Now on to the software

Once you've got the hardware, its all about the software baby! And that, I promise you, will come. This despite every sincere effort by the major carriers to keep us in the technological dark ages. In the not too distant future, it will be possible to use your phone to seamlessly find out almost anything you want to know about the environment around you. For example, theaters nearby showing movies you're likely to like, restaurants in the neighborhood your friends like, apartments in the area that are within your price range, etc. should all be findable in a New York minute. In fact the best applications will *alert* you when you are around something you might find of interest.

Location-based services are a revolution that will profoundly change the landscape of our culture in the way that cell phones and the Internet already have. It is obvious, and yet at the same time surprising, that there is almost no piece of knowledge about anything that cannot be easily found by Googling it. I *feel* smarter when I am within a few feet of Internet access. When you marry that instant information access (and its power) to location awareness and pocket accessibility, something indistinguishable from magic begins to emerge.

Changing what it means to *be* somewhere

Being able to find everything you might want to know about the area around you right now, has the ability to change the way we think about *being* somewhere. Because the more you can, in real time, know about where you are, the more significant it is to be there.

And yet, so far, there are few signs that the tech punditry has really picked up on what all of this means. The iPhone story was upstaged at Steve Jobs' keynote yesterday at MacWorld by some lightweight, but essentially innovation free MacBook. It was the the epitome of "incrementalism." And outside the tech blogosphere, the Android thing has been a big yawner. And so the import of all of this is really sneaking up on us. A few years from now, not having location-based services will be as much a sign that you are a troglodyte as is not having a cell phone or an Internet connection is today.

Mark my words, the tricorder *is* coming and you're gonna friggin' want one! Beam me up Scotty!