GPS
Just over a year ago I ordered my first GPS (not sure what GPS is?) receiver from The GPS Store (their service and price was excellent, their website wasn’t and still isn’t). It’s a USB device that looks very much like a mouse with lights on it. My reason for ordering was that I’d just received a copy of Microsoft’s Streets and Trips and I wanted to know how useful it would be with a GPS receiver and my laptop. It is not an overstatement to say that it has changed the way I travel by car. The GPS refreshes once a second and shows a car icon of where you are on the map. With Streets and Trips you can zoom in and out from a world view to a street level view. Combine that with Streets and Trips route creating features and you literally cannot become lost. Take the above mentioned trip. We flew into the Ottawa airport, rented a car, threw the GPS receiver in the back window, opened the pre-made Streets and Trips map to our hotel and drove straight there.

Streets and Trips allows you to search for nearby locations based on type. Search for all Italian restaurants within a 4 mile radius, etc. The technology here that is important is the GPS, not the software. Being able to know to a 5 decimal point certainty your longitude and latitude will prove to be very important.

Wifi (wireless Internet connection)
On the same trip to Ottawa I discovered the value of open Wifi (not sure what wifi is?). Our hotel didn’t have high speed in the room so we took to the streets thinking that if we looked hard enough we could find one open wifi access point. To our utter amazement we found three or four per block. We ended up sipping a caramel lattes at a Starbucks checking our email and working on the corporate intranet (note: wifi point was not in Starbucks but nearby). Wifi will become more pervasive and will be an integral component of things to come.

Software/web systems that allows individual user inputted data to be accessed by all users.
An example of this would be Epinions or Amazon’s review feature. More often than not user Joe Blow’s data is more accurate than the marketing hype. A restaurant won’t tell you if their chowder is actually a can of chunky soup, a customer will gladly tell you that and more. This isn’t limited to opinions or reviews. It also just pertains to pure data entry. There is a new café here, a new stop light there, a new product here, etc... The problem with Streets and Trips for example is that the only updatable information is the “construction information”. If I want new information on restaurants or bank machines I need to buy the new version which only comes out once a year. That’s not very timely if I have a hankering for Chinese food in Tupelo Arkansas on a Monday night at eleven.

So, how will these individual pieces come together? Here are a few examples:

• You are deciding where to eat while visiting a city on the other side of the continent. You whip out your computing device (PDA/laptop/etc). You bring up your mapping software, it automagically knows where you are VIA the built in GPS receiver. You search for all restaurants within a one kilometer radius (you’re on foot). It brings back a list of twenty five restaurants; there are probably no missing restaurants as the info has been added by residents like you who have inputted/corrected all of their favorite spots in their local area. You aren’t in the mood for Chinese, Italian or Pizza, it’s down to five. You then read reviews of each restaurant. You choose the British Pub because of the glowing reviews. Upon choosing your device shows you the quickest route to get there. When you arrive you dig deeper into the reviews and actually sort them by menu item. You choose the Bangers and Mashed because 9/10 people loved it. You add your review and maybe add the restaurant to your favorites.
  
  
• You are driving down the highway 30 KMs over the speed limit, your laptop & GPS receiver are working together to show your location on the map. All of the sudden a warning pops up “Police Speed Trap Ahead – slow down”. A user had just gone by on the other side of the highway spotted the trap and uploaded it to the mapping information directory. The system then warned all users heading towards the trap and only told the ones who were speeding to slow down. Once you’re threw the speed trap an accident shows up ahead on your map (inputted by the 911 system) the software then automagically routes you around it. The system is smart enough to not send everyone the same way though. It spreads out the congestion. The mapping software then tells you there is rain ahead, entered by a user who had just driven into it.
  
  
• Bored? You’re sitting downtown in a park on a Saturday morning and decide you want to get together with some friends. You pull out your device and it lets you know where your friends are (if they have chosen to show it) and what they are up to.
  
  
• You’re driving home and a few minutes before the bank your device beeps to remind you of the checks you need to deposit.

These are just a few examples (some grandiose, others pretty reasonable) of what could be possible when these basic technologies come together and are more widely used. Feel free to post your speculation of what is possible with these given technologies. I know these are just the tip of the iceberg.