As you can see from my graphic above, people set their locations to a variety of different uses. Some people are very specific and providing city, state and zip for their location. Others just provide a city. Some people put the name of a business in their location. In many cases if you use twitter from your iPhone it will grab your GPS coordinates and use that to specify your location.

Regardless of what you set your location to, realize there’s a very valid use for being accurate with that location. I will frequently look for people to follow based on their location. I want to hear from people that live in the same city as I do. It’s a way to keep tabs on what’s going on around me.

The other use is that sometimes people could be looking for knowledgeable users in specific industries or a variety of skill sets. You could be losing business opportunities by not being identified as located in the city people may be searching for some help.

Post from: EveryJoe

Using Twitter Location – Where Are You?

What would really be helpful is to be reminded of something you needed to do when you were at a specific location, regardless of what time it was. For instance, the next time I’m around the corner of 71st and I-465, I need to pick up my dry cleaning.

This type of alarm system could be implemented with the technology we have already at our disposal. Phones with GPS in them, cars with GPS or handheld GPS receivers.

The other potential application would be to use the cellular network itself to set reminders. For instance, you could set a reminder on your phone to occur the next time it was within range and of the same cell tower you’re hitting at the moment for your signal.

The other perhaps useful feature there would be to have two phones, synch with each other. The next time they’re within range of each other, announce the reminder to both parties, or perhaps even immediately initiate a call between the two phones.  The application of this would be, “Next time I’m with Mark remind me that I owe him $20 for lunch last week.”

Image: flickr user brucebeh and Google Local map underlay

Post from: EveryJoe

Location Based Alarms and Notifications