For those of us who have a hard time deciding what to eat or where to dine out, Urbanspoon has made a slot machine/roulette application (complete with 'pull' slot machine sound effects) to help us make a decision on where to eat. The application will determine your location from the GPS feature (which is still a pretty marked and powerful feature to the iPhone 3G that invariably raises privacy issues) and you can select he criteria you want, i.e., neighborhood, cuisine and price. And, for some inexplicable reason, you literally shake the phone to activate the selection feature. The wheels spin and your restaurant is selected (Alternatively, you can push the button too). It's a kind of Magic 8 Ball effect. Strange, but amusing.
Urbanspoon with its gourmet result.
(Credit: Kevin Ho)All sounds good in theory, but in actual application, it's a little, well, beta. "California cuisine" encompasses a sweeping and surprisingly large number of restaurants. Also, the $$$ price guide is a bit off with some joints being way above and some being way below. And, in terms of content, well, given that San Francisco's Mission District is home to many Top 100 Restaurants, Burger King was definitely a surprise result.
Loopt has an appealing application that allows you to track your friends and allows them to track you on a graphic map. It's kind of like a GPS-sonar radar that I've just discovered on the iPhone 3G. But, is this application really more like an electronic leash? Will your significant other track you? Will moms and dads track their children this year? Yes, Loopt has an extensive privacy policy that discourages/prohibits kids under 14 years old from using the service, but even one of my most 'public' friends (both online and in off-line) was actually hesitant about installing Loopt on his iPhone 3G. Disclosing your location to a third-party seemed to bother him greatly. The thought is that if you're near a store that is having a special you may get an SMS-text bulletin or coupon. The ultimate direct-marketer's dream once Loopt obtains some demographic information. Your movement patterns are one thing, but add-in your physical location, shopping patterns, travel patterns... You've become a human cookie.
To me, it's not necessarily the third-parties I'd be concerned about, but would disclosing your location to first-parties, i.e. your friends and family, be the best thing? We are all entitled to privacy of course. (Well, penumbras of privacy under the Constitution). Some choose to have Dick Cheney-like undisclosed location privacy, while others have Martha Stewart ankle-tracker privacy. But, balancing privacy requires takes a certain amount of prudence (or sanity perhaps) that will evolve as the line between public and private blurs even more. At least, at this point, Loopt allows you to opt out and only updates your location when the application is launched. What happens then you can't opt out any more? That'll throw all of us for a loop. (Sorry for the pun).
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