I myself started to use Gowalla, Foursquare, Brightkite and a variety of others and I have to admit that had very similar feelings to what John had to say.   I also found that it is not what they offer today, but what they could be…

Up until now many location based services were based on Lat/Long and following you on a map.  Google latitude was just this.  Seeing my little face on a map was cute, but having it follow me around all the time somehow just did not make sense ( for me anyway).  Even thought it was system of opt-in, it was designed very much so as a 1x opt-in.  What I find so powerful about Facebook is the ability to always opt-in with a status update.    This is what I believe has become the real power of these services;  the ability to always control your opt-in by checking-in.  Instead of the lat/long trace, an individual can opt-in  ( check-in) to a location and leave notes or syndicate out their status via Twitter, Facebook and any octopus service they are tied into.    The application is the key point of user experience and these services have started to really attract users and build offers with marketers as per their check-in.   Even though I still use Twitter quite a bit via the web interface, I have started to use more services that appeal to me and just push it through Twitter as well.  Having the relationship with the end-user at the Application level and then building relationships with brands and marketers could be the real power here.  Over time as more and more services present themselves that are competitors to Twitter and unless they own the end-user in some sense, their ability for true marketing and managing the sales funnel could become quite difficult to keep control.  Could they end-up as a dump bit-pipe?

We all have been waiting for Twitter to showcase their new advertising business model ( which seems to be delayed), but as a bit-pipe they have pushed a key mass of  the end-user relationships to the developer communities.  It isn’t surprising to me that Fred Wilson ( a lead investor in Twitter) made the announcement today that Twitter is at an inflection point and may start to build and leverage its own applications to enable the “killer app”.  Yes- Twitter has built a very powerful syndication model and a strong loyal gathering , but the ownership of the end-user is something that is very key in balance to attract marketers and advertisers; that direct relationship has traditionally been key for media  and media sales.   However, if they did have the advertising machine, like in the case of Google, then syndication is a very strong balancing act for buffering and building out distribution.  Some how I feel like Twitter has sandwiched themselves in the middle with out the control over the end-user completely, and with no monetization engine just yet.  This is like flying with out flaps on the each wing on either side, so to speak?  You can go fast, but were is your control…

So as Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and others  battle it out for control of the end-user and the unique interface to the local community, twitter may in fact just become just another vertical feed provider  in the growth of real-time conversations and local.

I am excited to see that even with all the GaGa only about iPhone Apps ( understandably so, but) that there are new announcements every day on some of the most practical usage cases of mobile linked to web development and the mobile browser.

As it does make sense to have an application based strategy, there is still a lot to be said about the browsing experience off of the

OpenSource Webkit ( Safari) browser that is used on Android/iPhones/Nokia devices and many more.  As the browser is equivalent to web browsing we experience on PC’s, having a mobile experience that lends itself to the smaller screen size and the user interface of a mobile device is a very smart approach for scaling your existing web/publishing digital strategy to mobile.

I am a very active user of Gmail on both my PC and Device and find that the hardware does not matter anymore. What matters is my seemless ability to connect to the services that I use frequently and email is something that is extemely important for me to have virtually on all the time and extendable in a very usable form from either my PC or my Nokia E71.    I did find it strange that Google has only launched this for iPhone and for Android, when it would make sense to have this for all devices that support webkit from the starting point.  I am sure we will see the announcement for Nokia support in the near future.

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Gmail has announced a new web interface for iPhone and Android platform based mobile web browsers. Built over a new engine, this Gmail Mobile interface closely resembles the Gmail Desktop version. The whole mail browsing, reading and composing experience has become faster, even over weak network connections.

The user interface has been optimized for snazzier inbox, a new ‘floaty bar’ and offline Gmail support. The new floaty bar allows archiving, deleting or more options for the email like Mark as Unread, Add star or Report as Spam. This floaty bar follows as one scrolls down further to select more emails. Navigation and display of threaded email conversations has been simplified and made faster.

Searching specific mails quickly is possible by poking the Magnifier button representing search. More messages can be viewed by hitting ‘Show more messages’ and the page hardly takes half a second to load more emails.

The new Gmail for Mobile is available on Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices with firmware 2.2.1 or higher. All Android-powered phones are supported.

The iPhone OS 3.0 brings landscape keyboard support in the Mail application but it still takes a while to load messages. Scrolling between the messages often results in sore fingers. Also, search emails and labels are still difficult to use. However, the Gmail team has made many Gmail fans happy with the new desktop-like mobile web interface iPhone and Android platform.