Georg Cockburn

Just a few days ago I posted an article in this blog about Mobile Touchpoints. In it I stated that the online and offline world have mostly stayed separated up till now and that the iPhone is the first device that starts changing that. Today I just stumbled across an interesting article on ReadWriteWeb, in witch Alex Iskold describes some possible iPhone applications witch will now be possible with Apple distributing the iPhone SDK. The article “12 Future Apps For Your iPhone” also mentions that these new apps will start the “blending of the physical and digital worlds”. Here’s an excerpt:

4. Physical Social Networks

Today’s social networks exist on the internet, but mobile technology is going to bring it to the physical world. You will be able to walk into a restaurant, open up your iPhone and see a list of your friends who have been to the place. You can flip through their comments and ratings, share comments on the menu - all from the palm of your hand. Similarly, standing next to a painting in the Louvre, you will be able to instantly find out what your friends thought of it. Looking at this broadly, as we discussed in this post, advances in mobile computing enable us to overlay the digital on top of our physical world.