Anyone who’s had the iPhone for any length of time knows about the beautiful 3rd party applications, and the way they work with the feature-rich iPhone platform. One of the most astounding API’s available to the iPod Touch or iPhone software is the location service. Using WiFi, GPS, and cellular data, it can pinpoint your location from virtually anywhere.

Obviously, there are already hundreds of applications that utilise this API, but the usage has been very different to predictions. Rather than creating enhanced map, or in-car navigation software, it has been gradually transformed into what could be the single largest social networking device in the world, taking what was originally designed to be a telecommunications device far further than expected. More about that to come in upcoming posts.

One of my favourite implementations of the location API is that inside Twinkle. It uses their servers in combination with Twitter’s API to ‘geo-tag’ the ‘tweet’s’ origin. This allows you to get in touch with those nearby. Although this could pose as a security risk; 1) it can easily be turned off, and simply used as a better client to Twitteriffic; and 2) if you plan to work maliciously, wouldn’t broadcasting your location be the last thing you’d want?

I have met so many people around the area using the tool, and have had discussions regarding a multitude of topics, including cake; chips and curry sauce; and occasionally those that aren’t food-related. Anybody with an iPhone-powered device should definitely give it a try.