Though they’d never admit to such a thing, the reasoning should be obvious: The longer you’re at your computer, the more time you’re spending on their sites. The more time your spending on their sites, the more ads you’re being served. The more ads being served, the more money they are earning. No matter why these sites originally started, or what features they add, that is, quite literally, the bottom line. They’d have us strapped to a chair with our eyes taped open like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, if they could. The only difference is that we’d have a contraption on our arms to allow us to click on the ads being shown every so often.

Thankfully, we don’t quite live in that world yet. And there are a couple factors pushing us the opposite way from that. Mobile devices are the biggest one. But even that is still just a screen. You may not be chained to a desk using it, but as plenty of people with an iPhone will tell you, you may end staring at this screen even more than you do a desktop or laptop monitor throughout a day. But there’s another up and coming factor working against our screen slavery: Location.

Social networking has been perhaps the most popular trend on the Internet over the past several years. At first the term was ironic. “Social networking” was anything but social in the traditional sense. But over time, we’ve grown accustomed to the idea that you can do social activities such as play games, collaborate on work, and talk, online. And in fact, many times it’s even more convenient than doing it in person. It’s social, but it’s a different kind of social.

Ever since the term was born, countless people have debated the implications of taking social interactions virtual. At one point or another I’m sure that it has been said that it would be both the downfall of mankind, and the thing that would bring the planet together. The truth is that social networking, while great in many respects, does not fulfill a fundamental human desire: To be in the actual presence of other people.

If you’ll allow me to be embarrassingly obvious for a second: Sitting in a chat room all day, even if all of your friends are in it as well, is not the same as being in the same physical room with them. Even if you all are having great discussions in the chat room, and not saying a word when you’re hanging out with one another, there is just something that’s different. Something that social networking will never be able to replace.

That’s where location comes in. It has the power to be the bridge between social networking and actual social interaction. We’re already seeing the very early signs of this with services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and Google Latitude, to varying degrees.

To the masses, most of these services still either don’t make sense, or are way too creepy. Social networks used to be thought of in the same way. This will change.

The people who do use these services likely have at least one story about a situation where a friend saw where they were, or where they planned to be, and showed up to meet up. Some have many of these stories. And for some of us in cities where these services are popular, this happens just about everyday. And it’s really quite amazing.

Is it annoying if a friend shows up if you want to be alone or don’t want to see them? Of course. But that’s why it’s important that you’re in control of what location information you are sending out. Is it creepy if a stranger shows up to meet you somewhere? Of course, but that’s why privacy settings are so important.

Make no mistake, there are hurdles to location-based services gaining widespread acceptance. But the upside of it far outweighs the downside. And with that the case, these types of services are ripe to take off.

At the core level, using a social network to facilitate actual social interaction just seems to make sense. Though I poked fun at them in the intro of this post, don’t think that Facebook doesn’t recognize this. In some ways they already do this through their popular events offering. But anything they do with location — which it should be no surprise, they are working on — will go far beyond this. When you have a social graph with over 300 million users and you add a realtime location component into the mix, it’s going to change things.

I remember the first time I used sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Friendster (back in the day) to find people that I went to high school with who I hadn’t talked to in years. It was a little weird, but also in some ways exciting. Imagine that transfered into the real world. Maybe you’re in a city with a person you went to high school with, but hadn’t talked to in years. It’s unlikely that the two of you were ever run into each other randomly, but maybe you can get pinged by Facebook location when they’re nearby. Maybe neither of you want to meet, and that’s fine. But maybe you do.

The word we keep hearing over and over again for such situations is “serendipity,” but really it’s not. None of this needs to be left up to chance. It’s simply an extension of social networking into the real world.

Another social network, Twitter, is already in hot pursuit of such functionality. Any day now, the service will turn on its geolocation service which will both allow you to send tweets with your location tacked on, and allow you to pass in location information from other services, like Foursquare. As a service with tens of millions of users, Twitter will be the first massive test of location as an extension of social networking.

It may be a while before users start truly taking advantage of it since it is an opt-in feature. But eventually, I believe we’ll see more and more users opt-in to be able to use third-party clients like Birdfeed which let them choose which tweets to attach their location to and let people know where they are.

And beyond individual user data, this location data will be very interesting as an aggregate. Undoubtedly people will use things like Twitter’s geolocation APIs to make services that can show where people are flocking to in realtime. This is the next step for what services like SocialGreat are doing with location data, showing hot spots in towns. And we already know that Twitter is planning to use the data to tailor its trending topics to show the hot things being tweeted about in specific places.

Social networking up until this point has been great. But it’s also really a bit odd. The core concept is still to gather your friends in a virtual construct, while the companies behind these constructs convince you to hang out in them as much as possible. Instead, they should be using the interesting social data they have to help you connect in other places as well. That’s what makes Facebook Connect is so powerful. But that doesn’t extend to the real world yet. But with location, it could. And that’s exciting.

We’ll be discussing this and other topics at our Realtime CrunchUp this Friday in San Francisco.

[images: MGM and Warner Brothers]

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As a blackberry user, I generally feel a little left out of of the location-based apps world. FourSquare only provides a mobile site for BlackBerry users (but has an Android app). BrightKite has an innovative BlackBerry app, but it’s not nearly as feature-rich as its sister iPhone app. Today, location-based social network Loopt is making a major upgrade to its BlackBerry app.

The new version of the app has one significant feature that even trumps the iPhone app: background location updating. So even when the app isn’t running, your location will be updated in real-time in the background. Loopt’s new app also pulls in local content about restaurants, bars and events from Zagat, Citysearch and the Loopt community, creating a local search engine within the app.And you can rate places you visit as well from the app.

The app is also integrated with Pulse, which is Loopt’s new feature that recommends hot places, hot events, and lets you know what your friends are up to. As we wrote about previously, Pulse is a direct reaction to competitors like Foursquare and Gowalla which are built around that very idea. The feature will also be part of the Loopt 2.0 iPhone app, which should be released shortly.

Loopt for the BlackBerry will also include local coupons from retailers nearby. As we’ve previously covered, location is compelling tool for business models involving things like coupons. Loopt is taking full advantage of this and has struck deals with partners to serve up virtual coupons when users of Loopt are nearby a restaurant. And you can share your updates and location with friends, see where your friends are on maps, view and comment on their updates. Loopt is available for free for the BlackBerry Curve 8900, BlackBerry Bold 9000, and the BlackBerry Tour smartphones on RIM’s App World.

The whole background location update for the BlackBerry is a huge plus since the iPhone does not allow third party apps to run in the background. Loopt recently launched new feature that allows you to get around this obstacle by pinging your phone to get your location with the help of the carrier. But that service costs extra money, which is a huge barrier. Stalqer, a new location based social network built around Facebook, also has found a way to run its app in the background.

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As you can see in the video below, the idea behind AT&T’s system is that you can walk around a city with a phone in your pocket and get alerted when a nearby retailer has a deal for you. Users of Foursquare and soon Loopt will recognize this concept, but AT&T’s idea is a bit different. By using AT&T’s network as the bridge to be constantly updating your location (assuming, of course, you opt-in to such a feature), these retailers are able to push these coupons to your phone via SMS. Currently, something like Foursquare requires that you “check-in” to a place to see that there is a deal there or nearby.

Naturally, this could get very annoying to a consumer if they don’t like the place offering the deal, but customization is the key to this. A user could, for example, say they like Mexican food, and those types of coupons would pop-up when they were in the vicinity.

Obviously, a system like this could be very lucrative for retailers and restaurants who want to entice the impulse buy or just increased foot traffic in stores. It could also be lucrative for AT&T if they were to strike deal with these retailers to serve these up — or even just charge SMS fees.

This is just a proof of concept at this point, but you can probably bet something like this is coming soon. And the next logical step after that is the Minority Report system. “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness right about now!”

[image: Dreamworks & 20th Century Fox]

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Previously, Loopt was more of a passive service — you started it up on some device and it kept track of where you were. Other users could see where you were if they opened the app too, but generally it wasn’t about pinging your friends to let them know where you are and what you were doing. But Pulse makes Loopt much more of an active service. It recommends hot places, hot events, and lets you know what your friends are up to.

This new feature is already live on Loopt’s website, but as we alluded to back in May, this will also be a part of the Loopt 2.0 iPhone app, which should be released shortly. But things have even changed since then. As you can see in the screenshots, a key feature of this new Loopt is the idea of the “Check In.” Obviously, this is a direct reaction to competitors like Foursquare and Gowalla which are built around that very idea. This is a key part of the new Loopt as checking in helps it recommend things for your friends to do.

But Loopt is also using other data to recommend places. It has a partnership with Zagat to get restaurant information and pulls data from sources like Citysearch to further its recommendations. All of this data has allowed Loopt to create what founder Sam Altman refers to as a “local search engine.”

And this is altering Loopt’s business as well. As we’ve previously covered, location is a potentially powerful tool for business models involving things like coupons. Foursquare is starting to delve into this, but it isn’t yet making money from it. This new version of Loopt is taking full advantage of this. The company has already struck deals with partners such as Jack In The Box to serve up virtual coupons when users of Loopt are nearby a restaurant.

Fans of Loopt will still recognize many of the features of the service, but everything has been improved, Altman says. One thing not included however is Mix, Loopt’s service that helped users potentially find dates. That was spun off into its own app last month.

Loopt also offers some things that Foursquare doesn’t such as the ability to see where all your friends are checked in on an actual map (rather than just a list of where they are). And you can also see not only that friends are at a particular place, but how others have rated it (with a smiley face or a frowning face). This allows you to see if a restaurant is not good, for example.

The iPhone is proving to be a boon for location-based services, but it also has a very big weakness: Third-party apps cannot run in the background. This is one reason why the previous version of Loopt didn’t work well on the device; it kept track of your location, but only when you had it open. Loopt recently launched a new feature that allows you to get around this by pinging your phone to get your location with the help of the carrier. But that service costs extra money, a huge barrier. Moving to the concept of check-ins seems like a better way to keep people using your application.

So can Loopt take on the younger location-based upstarts with its new features? We’ll see, but Loopt has a couple of big advantages: 1) It works on over 100 mobile devices (Foursquare, for example, works on only a few right now — but any phone can access its mobile website). 2) Apple seems to love Loopt. They’ve included it in commercials, and routinely feature it in the App Store.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

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Foursquare and Loopt have put location-based social networks on the map, and have potentially created a viable business model as well. Now there’s a new kid on the block, called Stalqer, which best described as a Foursquare on steroids. The iPhone app, which will be free, should hit the app store in the next few hours.

In theory, Stalqer is very similar to Foursquare in that it tracks your and your friends’ locations and broadcasts this information via the application and through push notifications. But one of the key differentiators is the fact that Stalqer updates the location in the background, which Foursquare, and most other apps, don’t do at the moment. This is because the device does not allow third party apps to run in the background. But Stalqer has found a way to record your location without you having to actually open up the application. So how does Stalqer do it?

The app sets up an email account which operates in the background, and collects large amount of data out of the POP or IMAP handshake relevant to location, primarily via the IP address. Stalqer’s founder Mick Johnson also tells me that the app contains iPhone configuration profiles that make it easy to install an email account pointing to Stalqer’s servers on the user’s iPhone. So when the phone checks for mail, the app gets a location point, which Johnson says happens on average, every 15 minutes.

Loopt has also found a work-around the whole background update issue by partnering with other companies in the mobile industry for an “Always-On Location Service (which costs users $3.99 per month).

In addition to background functionality, Stalqer lets you import your Facebook friends, via Facebook Connect, to the app. If your friends have made their general location public via Facebook, The app then syncs your friends with your iPhone contacts and will then show you where your friends are. So, Stalqer will basically pull any public information about your friend (i.e. what city they live in) and show where the friends is on your application, if if they haven’t downloaded the app. At the moment, you cannot see anyone on Stalqer who is not your friend on Facebook.

You can see your friends’ locations via a list format and on a detailed, high quality map. Similar to FourSquare, you can check into listed locations rather then just the app recording your location via an IP address. Stalqer has close to a half million bars and restaurants listed in the U.S and you can add locations as well. Stalqer will steadily add non-U.S. locations in the future. The app is actually missing one of the key gaming aspects of FourSquare—the ability to collect badges or mayorships. Since the app operates in conjunction with an email account and your address book, it allows you to conduct a conversation with your Stalqer friends within the app. The app also features an augmented reality view of your friends’ locations. And while Slaqer is only available for the iPhone, Johnson is hoping to roll out versions for the Blackberry and Android in the future.

So for me, the key issue with this app is privacy. The background location technology is certainly innovative but I really feel strange about Facebook friends knowing where I am at all times, even if I have not started up the app on my phone. Privacy has been an issue with Foursquare and I suspect that it will become an issue for Stalqer.

But Johnson says that Stalqer has very powerful security settings that let you specify whether you want your location broadcasted and you can also indicate specific friends who can see your check-ins. Plus you can make sure the app only shows your greater surround area (i.e. San Francisco) vs. your exact location within the city. And you can make customer lists with close family and friends who can see your detailed whereabouts.

At the moment, Stalqer isn’t monetizing the app because Johnson is waiting to see if the app will gain popularity. And Johnson adds that Stalqer is aimed towards a younger crowd (which is apparent from it’s demo video), who may not be as concerned with the privacy issues.

Stalqer seems to be focused exclusively on broadcasting background location and tapping into your social graph via Facebook whereas Foursquare’s new app includes gaming, Twitter integration and a few more bells and whistles. But Foursquare is addictive and Stalqer could be too, if you really want to stalk your Facebook friends. Of course, Facebook is rumored to be launching their own location based technologies, so it should be interesting to see how that effects Stalqer.

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GraffitiGeo launched in August, when I described it as a ‘Foursquare meets Yelp, with a dash of augmented reality’. The service invites users to review local restaurants and other venues in a manner that’s similar to Yelp, but encourages them to leave very brief descriptions (or just thumbs up/thumbs down) instead of the longer reviews you’ll find on other sites. Alongside these reviews there’s also a gaming element similar to foursquare that rewards players with points whenever they leave a comment. There’s also a system that lets you earn more points if you team up with your friends.

Loopt CEO Sam Altman says that he came across GraffitiGeo while the product will still early on in the Y Combinator program (Loopt is a YC alum), and that he took notice of the app’s feature set which paralleled some of the areas Loopt is interested in as well. In particular, he says Loopt has been exploring location-based social gaming, local reviews, and augmented reality (which is another area GraffitiGeo has experimented in), so the company seemed like a good fit. He says he was also impressed with the team, which he describes as “super smart” — founders Nikhil Pandit, Teng Siong Ong, and Jared Tame are all joining Loopt as part of the deal. Altman wouldn’t comment on it, but there’s one final GraffitiGeo feature that Loopt is likely very interested in: a platform for local business advertising.

Altman wouldn’t get into specifics as far as how GraffitiGeo’s features will be integrated with Loopt, but he says we’ll be seeing some changes very soon. He says he’s excited to see what happens with GraffitiGeo, which has around 20,000 total users, when parts of it are built into Loopt, which adds 20,000 in a single day.

Coincidentally, GraffitiGeo released a much improved new iPhone application today on the App Store. You can grab it here. At this point it isn’t clear if Loopt will keep GraffitiGeo as a separate application indefinitely, or if it will be rolled into Loopt, but there are no immediate plans to combine the services.

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GraffitiGEO, which launched just a couple of months ago, combines mobile social networking with reviews and games. It’s somewhat similar to the surging foursquare, which has stolen some of the oxygen from the first generation mobile social networks like Loopt.

GraffitiGEO is also preparing to launch an augmented reality application that we previewed in August and that we suspect will launch shortly. Both GraffitiGEO apps fill holes in Loopt’s product lineup, so the acquisition makes a lot of sense. Here’s the video of the application that we included in that post:

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At TechCrunch, we’ve always been big fans of mobile social networks, particularly on the iPhone. In fact, Loopt, one of the first location-based iPhone apps and social networks to gain popularity, was offered a feature, called Mix, that acts as a social compass that allows people to connect with and learn about others around them. Mix turned out to be such a popular feature that Loopt is breaking the feature out into its own free iPhone app.

Loopt is basically a social-mapping app that allows you to discover the world around you on your mobile phone. Mix was the part of the app that let you meet new people (who also have the app) nearby. You see a list of people, profiles/interests, their latest status, ranked by their approximate distance to you and can message the people who you find compelling. While Mix can be used for any type of connection with users, Loopt’s co-founder and CEO Sam Altman says the feature is primarily used for dating and love connections.

The new app, called “Loopt Mix,” has much of the same functionality as the feature integrated with the Loopt app, including the ability to browse profiles of people near you, to post photos and status updates about yourself and to message people around you. The app lets you use “likes,” similar to Facebook, to indicate your preference for someone; status update, and also includes the ability to filter search within the app. And Mix now includes real-time, in-app chat with push notifications.

Altman tells us that location-based dating apps are the future of mobile networking and believes that Mix is doing this better and more efficiently than the competition, which includes Match.com’s iPhone app. And of course, Mix and Loopt both face competition from Foursquare, which has a slightly different take on location-based social graphing. On a separate note, Altman also told me the next version of Loopt’s app will include e-commerce within the app, thanks to Apple’s recent allowance for in-app commerce for free apps.

Loopt also recently introduced a new technology for background location on the iPhone which could be a huge win for the startup.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the app.

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Beginning today, Loopt is rolling out a trial for background location on the iPhone. Yes, you read that right.

If you’ve been following the iPhone at all over the past couple of years, you’re undoubtedly asking yourself how this is possible, since the device does not allow third party apps to run in the background. Has Apple changed its mind about background apps? Not yet. Instead, Loopt is partnering with other companies in the mobile industry for what it’s calling “Always-On Location Service.”

Loopt co-founders Sam Altman and Alok Deshpande would not disclose the names of any of these partners, noting that the system set up to make this happen is very “complex” and involves a number of players. But at least one of them has to be AT&T, which is, of course, the network the iPhone runs on. Loopt, which seems to be particularly good at carrier relationships, has cut deals with AT&T in the past.

What this means is that these guys have gotten around the iPhone’s limitation by keeping a pipeline open on AT&T’s side that is constantly sending your location data to Loopt. This doesn’t require any app to be running on your iPhone — not even Loopt — and the location data will be sent even when you’re on a call or surfing the web on your iPhone. Most importantly, because there is no app required to do this, it doesn’t drain your battery life, Altman tells us.

So what does Apple think about all of this? Altman refused to comment on that, but given the cordial relationship Loopt has had with Apple (being featured both at WWDC last year and in an iPhone commercial), it seems likely that the two sides at least talked about this before Loopt pulled the trigger. That said, because no application is actually involved in this process, it looks like Loopt has essentially found a loophole around Apple on this one.

Privacy will undoubtedly be a major concern with such a feature. But Altman notes that you have to go to a website to actually sign up for this, and you can turn it off or on at anytime on that site or via an SMS message. And he believes some of privacy concerns will fade as people get used to such services. “The future of location-based services is always-on,” he says.

I agree, this seems like a huge win for Loopt (well, if users are okay with paying for the service, more on that below). I’ll be using it a lot more now because first of all, I don’t actually have to open the app to update — but more importantly, none of my contacts will either. So oddly, I probably will be opening the app itself more now too because of that. And eventually, you could see such background location functionality playing a roll in advertising on the iPhone.

They way this will work is that you will be able to receive alerts (emails or text messages) when people or places of interest are nearby to your current location. Loopt can also now build what it calls a “Life Graph” for you — basically, keep a log of where you’ve been. Again, this will be opt-in.

Altman would not comment on if its competitors like Whrrl or Brightkite could also strike similar deals, but Deshpande confirms that no one else is offering this (at least not yet). And Loopt is getting ready to come out with a version 2.0 of its iPhone app that should take on other competitors like Foursquare.

As it seems clear that AT&T is the key factor in making something like this happen, it’s nice to see them doing something innovative to actually help their iPhone customers get a feature that many of us have long wanted. Assuming it works well, it might even be enough to make us forget the whole months-late MMS thing.

But this good news has a price. $3.99 a month, to be specific, which users can sign up for on this site. Initially, Loopt is going to limit the trial to 5,000 testers.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

[photo: flickr/Rev Dan Catt]

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The screenshot we received appears to show what Loopt is going for with this new version. The second button in the toolbar is now “Places,” something which didn’t exist before. A source close to the company says this is a big part of the new version. We hear this could help the company offer more monetizable features, such as coupons.

Another thing we’re hearing is that the focus with Loopt 2.0 will be on something called the “life graph.” Basically this takes your social graph, and lays it on top of the places you go to give you suggestions on what to do. If this sounds familiar, it’s what Foursquare, the new service from the creators of Dodgeball (acquired by Google in 2005) has been working on. Another competitor, Whrrl, launched in the App Store last year with more of a focus on places, but recently revamped its offering to focus around social stories.

The new version of Loopt is apparently still being worked on, but should be out this summer, we hear.

One thing to note, is that it appears that one of the largest hurdle will remain for Loopt on the iPhone, as apps still cannot run in the background. That’s vital for something like a location-based network that thrives off of knowing where you are. But perhaps the company has something interesting planned for the upcoming Push Notification feature of the iPhone 3.0 software due this summer.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

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In the nascent world of mobile social networking, there are the big dogs (Facebook and MySpace) and everyone who wants to be a big dog. Two of the puppies just got bigger. Limbo is buying Brightkite, which all the tech kids are raving about, in a nearly all-stock transaction. It will change its name to Brightkite in a re-branding move, and gain Brightkite’s engineering team and product smarts. Limbo CEO Jonathon Linner will remain as CEO, while Brightkite founders Martin May and Brady Becker will take over product management and design.

Meanwhile, Limbo brings a lot of cash to the table, having just raised a previously undisclosed $9 million round of financing in January, 2009. Nexit Ventrures was the lead, and existing investors Azure Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and New Enterprise Associates also participated. Brightkite, meanwhile, started out as a TechStars startup and was funded with just $1 million in angel money. This marks the third exit from TechStars’s Class of 2007—the other two being SocialThing to AOL and IntenseDebate to Automattic.

The combined company will employ 35 people and boast two million active users. That should keep it in the running with other growing mobile social networks such as Loopt, which has more than one million active users, Mig33, which may have 10 million or more and MocoSpace, which has 3.5 million active users. The enlarged engineering team should help Limbo/Brightkite push out new features at a faster pace and keep up with the front pack.

Both Limbo and Brightkite have iPhone apps, and both use Facebook Connect to plug into people’s existing social network. Here is how we described the Brightkite app when it first came out:

The app allows users to syndicate their current location to their friends, meet nearby Brightkite users, and lifestream with the equivalent of geo-encoded Tweets. The application is tied to Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, which allows users to manage their location from a number of other services. The site also uses databases to automatically associate POI’s and cross streets with GPS locations, so user positions aren’t simply displayed as coordinates.

Meanwhile, Limbo is more centered around the activities of the people around you and connecting with them that way. We included Limbo in this roundup, where we concluded it could do a better job with locating the exact position of friends on a map. Brightkite’s Fire Eagle implementation should help with that.

Something tells me this is just the beginning of the consolidation in mobile social networking.

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We criticized being included in the lawsuit because we are nothing more than a search filter on Loopt. And the Earthcomber founder appeared to include us out of spite for not giving them as much press as they wanted. From my earlier post:

I called Earthcomber President Jim Brady this morning to verify the lawsuit. At first he wouldn’t answer – all he did was try to explain how he’s been wronged by Loopt. When pressed he did confirm that the lawsuit was filed, but quickly added that he didn’t really mean to press it with us. He wants to go to court with Loopt, but is willing to quickly work something out with us to make this go away, he told me, hinting that he’d like to partner with us. He also said he’s been desperately trying to get me on the phone but hasn’t been able to, so he decided to sue us instead.

The problem with using a lawsuit as a negotiating tactic is that you can’t put the cat back in the bag. The door is open, and it has to play out. In other words, suing someone to get them to return your calls is not exactly a sign of brilliance.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail on the specifics of the patent claims, other than that they are absurd, since our lawyers have asked me not to. But I will say this – adding TechCrunch to a lawsuit based on the fact that we are a search filter (see image to left) in a product seems a little absurd to me. I’ve asked our attorneys to spend whatever it takes to kill this lawsuit, and to find a way to counter sue this guy into the stone age.

Did Earthcomber also sue iMeem, RockTheVote and NRDC, the other filtered search options? No. Because that doesn’t get them all this free press.

I’m just glad the whole thing is over, we have better things to focus on than this.

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You can get Loopt for free on the iPhone (and there is a TechCrunch version), the Blackberry and Android as well.

We’re big believers that mobile is the future of social networking. Loopt and a handful of other brave startups are pushing the envelope on mobile social networks while the big guys, Facebook and MySpace, sit on the sidelines.

A big reason they’re hesitant – privacy concerns. Both companies have had their run ins with the press and state attorneys general. Mobile social network is all about location, and finding people around you. That’s not where Facebook and MySpace want to go right now.

That leaves room for Loopt and others to grab market share. These services allow users to update their location and share it with others. People who are on the network can contact you, if you choose, just because of where you are even if they don’t know you.

One feature that hasn’t hit the iPhone yet is auto-updating of location. But it appears to be on AT&T’s general rollout on other phones. I’d expect to see it released soon on the iPhone as well. That means that, theoretically, your friends can find out where you are (if the feature is turned on) on demand. yes, there are big privacy issues there, but it’s also the future.

Disclosure: Loopt is in the middle of a patent litigation suit, and the plaintiff in that case dragged us into the middle of the fight.

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A sale in this economic environment is extremely unlikely, so we’re guessing they’re looking to add to the $13.3 million they’ve already raised from Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates. The valuation on this round is likely to be north of $250 million, say our sources.

Allen & Co. Managing Director Dave Wehner is the guy pitching the deal, say our sources. He’s tends to get results – representing Bebo in their $850 million sale to AOL, Powerset in their $100 millionish sale to Microsoft, Stubhub in their $310 million sale to eBay and (we believe) Ning in their half billion dollar valuation financing round. Among others.

Disclosure: Loopt offers a TechCrunch branded version of the service here.

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Facebook and MySpace have great mobile apps. At least, they’re great if you’re satisfied with a subset of the features you get on their normal websites. But they don’t yet take advantage of location/presence features on the iPhone and other platforms. We said this summer that they ignore location at their peril, and we still believe it.

Loopt, one of a handful of location-aware iPhone social networks (and the one we are partnered with), is currently (meaning over the recent period, undefined by Apple) the 20th most popular free iPhone application, and is being downloaded more often than both Facebook and MySpace. Facebook is no. 25, and MySpace is no. 43. This is despite the fact that MySpace and Facebook heavily promote their iPhone apps to their 100 million plus users. Loopt doesn’t have that deep base of existing users to market to. All time, Loopt is the fourth most popular iPhone social networks after Facebook, MySpace and AIM.

But they do have Apple’s support. Last week Apple ran a Loopt iPhone television ad, which is shown above. That resulted in a big part of the surge in downloads, Loopt says.

Loopt won’t say how many iPhone downloads they have, but a source says they have tens of thousands of daily downloads across all their mobile platforms (including iPhone, RIM and other platforms).

Our version of Loopt is here.

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But today, based on the calls I’ve received from CNET and the San Jose Mercury News, we’ve actually been sued. Earthcomber, the holder of a very shaky mobile patent, first sued Loopt last week, and yesterday added us in an amended complaint. They didn’t even bother with making nasty threats before they filed the complaint. They just sent it into the court and started making calls to the press.

I called Earthcomber President Jim Brady this morning to verify the lawsuit. At first he wouldn’t answer – all he did was try to explain how he’s been wronged by Loopt. When pressed he did confirm that the lawsuit was filed, but quickly added that he didn’t really mean to press it with us. He wants to go to court with Loopt, but is willing to quickly work something out with us to make this go away, he told me, hinting that he’d like to partner with us. He also said he’s been desperately trying to get me on the phone but hasn’t been able to, so he decided to sue us instead.

The problem with using a lawsuit as a negotiating tactic is that you can’t put the cat back in the bag. The door is open, and it has to play out. In other words, suing someone to get them to return your calls is not exactly a sign of brilliance.

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail on the specifics of the patent claims, other than that they are absurd, since our lawyers have asked me not to. But I will say this – adding TechCrunch to a lawsuit based on the fact that we are a search filter (see image to left) in a product seems a little absurd to me. I’ve asked our attorneys to spend whatever it takes to kill this lawsuit, and to find a way to counter sue this guy into the stone age.

Did Earthcomber also sue iMeem, RockTheVote and NRDC, the other filtered search options? No. Because that doesn’t get them all this free press.

We will not be bullied, and people who file frivolous lawsuits need to be put down. I would rather run TechCrunch into the ground and go out of business than let this guy win.

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A scantly known startup out of Chicago called Earthcomber has filed a patent infringement suit against Loopt, a location-based social network.

The suit claims that Loopt has infringed an Earthcomber patent, filed in June 2003 and issued in July 2006, that outlines “a system and method for locating and notifying a user of a person, place or thing having attributes matching the user’s stated preferences.”

The Earthcomber web application, which we haven’t reviewed here before but has been covered on Webware, is available on a variety of mobile devices (iPhone, Blackberry, WAP, etc) and helps you find nearby places of interests. You can also use it to share your current location with friends, although not using any GPS or triangulation – you actually have to enter your ZIP code or current intersection manually. Update: It appears as though GPS is available on some supported devices, just not all.

Overall, it’s a pretty weak offering when compared to the other location-aware mobile services out there (on the iPhone and elsewhere). So the suit may very well be just a desperate attempt to get the company some attention.

The suit appears to be aimed primarily at Loopt’s new Mix feature, which can be used to find people in your area that match particular criteria (only women between 24-28 who also enjoy imeem, for example).

Disclosure: We are promoting a co-branded community on Loopt. The company should therefore be considered a sponsor of ours.

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Loopt has now launched all of those features, and they’ve built a special version of the service just for TechCrunch. Once you’ve added the application to your iPhone you can see where your friends are and what they are up to. And you can also meet TechCrunch Loopt members who are near you even if they aren’t your friend yet.

Sign up here, or do a search for LooptTC on iTunes (links to iTunes apps currently don’t work).

The meet feature is called Mix and is shown in the video below. Once you turn it on it will show you other users who are around you, and some basic information about them. You can message those users (and you can also block anyone who’s being annoying).

This will really come in handy at TechCrunch meetups and events. The network will show you which of your friends are nearby if you are having trouble finding them. And as you meet new people you can see a little bit about them on your phone (picture, name, where they work, etc.). If you connect, you can add them as a friend.

The application will show you other users who are nearby (up to 15 miles away). And we’ve added one special feature as well – all users will see my profile and location wherever I am in the world, even if its on the other side of the world. Right now, for example, I’m in Anacortes, WA hanging out at my parents home.

If you are already a Loopt member, you can still join the TechCrunch network in the Mix settings.

To date the big social networks have ignored location awareness on mobile devices, probably over privacy concerns, which I believe is their Achilles Heel. Look for that to change as this new crop of mobile social networks gets traction.

Disclosure: Just to be 100% clear, this should be considered a sponsorship and will be noted in future Loopt coverage.

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We’ve been bullish about location-based social networks for quite awhile now, especially since Apple announced that it would open up the iPhone to developers. And with two significant developments in this space just this week (more on that below), we thought it would be a good time to take a step back and look at the options currently available through the Apple App Store.

What makes a “location-based” social network different than a normal one? At least as things stand today, location-based social networks run primarily on smartphones that have the ability to determine a user’s current location, usually by leveraging GPS or cellular tower triangulation. The social network then uses your location to reveal nearby friends and places of interest. See our Location Technologies Primer for additional information.

Currently there are six major location-based social networks available for the iPhone (click on the comparison chart to the right). All of them tell you how far away other members are from you, with most focused on helping you find your friends but some designed primarily for discovering strangers. A few of them chart the location of your friends’ on an interactive map (something I actually think all of them should do). They provide a wide range of privacy settings, but all will stop reporting your location when you simply close the application (Apple has yet to release its push notification system that will let these apps constantly report your location in the background). They also vary widely in how precisely they identify the locations of other members, although all but one of them work anywhere in the United States.

After testing this entire batch, I’ve come to the conclusion that none of them is quite ready to achieve mainstream usage. I believe most, if not all, of the following things must happen before location-based social networking becomes the new “killer app”:

• They need powerful notification systems that actively inform you when someone of interest is nearby. Such a system could be set up manually by individually indicating which friends are “of interest”. But it would be even better for the system to learn from your interactions (messages, pokes, wall posts, etc) and affiliations (profile information, common friends, groups) and automatically identify certain people you’d like to meet up with.
• These applications absolutely need to update your location while the phone is sitting in your pocket. Right now it demands too much from users to open the application whenever they want to inform friends where they are. Serendipitous encounters would be far more common with a fully foolproof and automated location-updating system.
• When inviting friends to a service, you need the ability to determine which of your friends actually have a supported phone. Otherwise you’re just spamming a large number of people who matter to you and with very little yield.
• These apps need to get more stable; they crash way too much.
• We need more hooks into web applications so we can share our location and location-based activities not only with other mobile users but with the web at large.
• Those apps that let you see and meet strangers nearby need to highlight both friends of friends and those who share common interests and affiliations.

These are weaknesses shared by all of the current iPhone location-based social networking apps, each of which we cover briefly below.

The Veteran – Loopt

Perhaps the most well-known of these companies, Loopt has been working for years to get its technology on a variety of phones (the iPhone being just the latest and most functional of them). It is also perhaps the most developed of the batch, and the most generic. Use it primarily to see on a map where your friends are located nearby. Restaurant and other local reviews are secondary, having been brought into the app through a partnership with Yelp. Get directions to other users, view their latest status updates (which are often accommodated with photos taken on-location), and ping them when they haven’t updated their location for awhile.

The Mountain View-based company has ventured into the matchmaking business this week by adding a new feature called “Mix” that shows you, for the first time on Loopt, strangers in your vicinity. You can see all of the people nearby who have turned on the Mix feature, and you can filter by types (age, gender, tags, dating status, community) as well. This is Loopt’s attempt to help people hook up at bars (an idea that gets thrown around by many entrepreneurs and has always puzzled me). But if it takes off, it may have even greater sociological effects than Loopt’s core friend-finding capabilities.

The New Kid On The Block – Moximity

Launching into private beta just this week, Moximity is a new location-based social network out of Austin, Texas that wants to help you find both your friends and local establishments. Taking Paul Bragiel’s marketing advice, Moximity is rolling out one geographical region at a time, starting with Austin itself. Everything is local – the restaurant listings, the users, and even the advertisements (yes, this is the only one of these networks actually monetizing on the iPhone right now).

One major quality that sets Moximity apart is the way it handles user accounts. When you join and start configuring, you don’t make “Moximity friends”. Rather, the service pulls in your contacts from Facebook (and later, other sites as well) and lets you track those of your existing friends who also use Moximity. When you post a status message, it also gets pushed out to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Moximity would benefit from an interactive map that uses pins to show where your friends are located. However, unlike Loopt, which gives you the precise street address of your friends, Moximity always matches you with particular places (restaurants, stores, etc) so individual pins for users might not be appropriate. Co-founder Bryan Jones says some breed of mapping functionality will be included in the next release.

If you live in Austin, you can get into the service immediately by emailing your name and zip code here.

The Bezos, T-Mobile and iFund-Backed Contender – Whrrl

The best-funded of the bunch is a Seattle startup named Pelago with an app called Whrrl that centers around identifying and reviewing nearby establishments of all types. Locating friends takes a bit of a back seat to the idea that you should share Yelp-like reviews with the people you know.

The information about places is comprehensive. You can find cuisine types, prices, hours, phone numbers, websites, street addresses, ratings and reviews. While you can view the (5-star) ratings and reviews from every member, you’re encouraged to focus on those of your friends. When you view a friend’s profile, for example, their reviews are displayed prominently. That said, you can “fan” strangers if you like their tastes (although apparently only through Whrrl’s thoroughly developed web app).

Whrrl also identifies events that are going on in your area. The combination of event and place information is great but I get the feeling that this app will have to depart a bit from its “reviews” roots to become a widely embraced service. More generic social features (such as walls and notifications) are needed to get me to use Whrll when not looking to share or gather opinions.

Pelago has raised its funds from the iFund, Jeff Bezos, and T-Mobile (among others).

The Schmorgesborg – uLocate’s “Where”

Where is an iPhone app developed by a Boston-based startup called uLocate that has received a considerable amount of funding (at least $15.5 million) over the last several years. It has everything but the kitchen sink. Along the bottom of the app is a dock-like menu that shows a variety of sub-applications, each meant to help you find something in your area:

• Buddy Beacon: find nearby friends
• GasBuddy: find nearby gas stations with low prices
• Starbucks: find nearby Starbucks franchises
• Quibblo: see location-based poll results in your area
• HeyWhatsThat: identify mountain peaks in your vicinity
• The Skymap: learn about the stars and constellations in the sky above you
• Zipcar: find pickup points for Zipcar rentals
• Yelp: find nearby places listed and reviewed on Yelp
• Eventful: learn about nearby events and their venues

The UI needs a bit of work (too many popups) but regardless, this app is handy for quickly finding the nearest of some particular thing on an interactive map (coffee, friendship, wheels, etc).

The Categorizer – Limbo

Limbo is provided by a company that seems to have undergone quite a few transformations over the years. We reviewed the company in May 2006 when it was a bizarre auction service based on text messaging. Back then it was located at 41414.com and you can still see that ancestry in the current logo (just look at the reflection).

The app is, at its heart, more focused on locating strangers and learning about what they’re doing than any of the aforementioned apps. All users are categorized by four types: Members, Contacts, Friends, and Faves. You can opt to share your location with each or all of them, with “Members” being everyone you don’t know, “Contacts” being people pulled in from your phone’s address book, “Friends” being people more important to you, and “Faves” being the most important people to you.

Users are further categorized based on their current “activity” (or status). They are either socializing, eating, playing, chilling, working, feeling, or enjoying a bit of “me time”. You can view users by their particular categories on a “What” page that displays the categories in a grid.

Limbo neither shows you your friends’ locations on a map nor gives you their exact locations (just their general regions, e.g. San Francisco). Both would make this app a lot more useful.

The Wall – Zintin

Zintin has gone even further in the direction of helping you communicate with strangers nearby, rather than helping you find your preexisting friends. Users in the vicinity are displayed in all-inclusive list along with their current status messages. When you select a particular user’s name, it takes you to their Wall, where short notes, photos, and scribbles can be posted by any user.

The Wall is the central, and pretty much only important, feature provided by Zintin (so-called “bulletin boards” are also provided but they’re essentially Walls for particular regions). If you find someone with particularly cool stuff on their Wall, you can request to exchange your contact information and meet them. But most people will just use the app to see what kind of juvenile stuff others around them have decided to share. If you’ve turned on the “allow mature content” setting, then that content is primarily explicit material, so be warned.

Zintin, which has been in development by a few Stanford CS grad students since late 2007, is mostly a curiosity at this point. However, the scribble feature, with which you can make quick doodles and post them for others, should make its way into other apps.

The Elephants In The Room – Facebook and MySpace

Neither of the big American social networks have added location-aware services yet, but they’re coming. Expect them to eclipse several if not all of these services after learning from them.

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The applications are pretty good mobile versions of the standard experience. MySpace, which we reviewed last week, provides users with most key features of the service, and they’ve added some nice touches like the ability to upload photos from the iPhone camera. You can download the application here (and add me as a friend).

Facebook’s iPhone app is clearly better. They had a bit of a head start with their web app last year that was at the time the finest example of an iPhone-specific website. The new iPhone app was created by the same guy – Joe Hewitt – and includes deeper integration with the phone. Tap on a friend’s name and call them. Or use the included Facebook chat application and skip those text messages. One big problem with Facebook on the iPhone – it takes forever to load and the application crawls, just like the web version.

Location? Hello?

But both MySpace and Facebook miss the real opportunity to drive usage growth on the iPhone – location awareness. The reason? Privacy concerns. The lost opportunity? Huge potential user growth and connections.

Social networks today rely on friends of friends or real world connections to drive growth. But a handful of iPhone-only social networks actually help drive new connections in the real world. And the backbone of those applications is location awareness.

I’ve written about this opportunity repeatedly in the last year. In February I speculated on the demand for an iPhone-only social network to drive real world social interactions: “I think an iPhone-only social network…would be a huge hit…if it had presence awareness and was able to tell you both where your friends are and what they are up to. And also let you meet new people around you who were open to it.”

In April I saw a demo of the new product Loopt was building for the iPhone. It had all the features I suggested, and more.

Users of these new social networks can choose to notify other users when they are physically close to them, and show a picture, first or full name, and basic profile information. If you’re both in the same bar or at the same conference, you can browse and filter other users to find a date or do a business deal.

And you know how awkward it is when you run into someone that you sort of know but have forgotten their name or what they do? Your phone can see them coming and alert you. That means you can have richer conversations with people you are acquainted with but don’t know very well.

These new social networks can help you meet new people, remember details of the people you already know, and find your friends when they’re nearby.

MySpace and Facebook are sitting on the sidelines while these new networks try to get a foothold. And it’s all because of privacy concerns and fear of litigation.

Privacy (and those pesky Attorneys General)

The media loves nothing more than to talk about sexual predators lurking around the big social networks. Both MySpace and Facebook have had to make big changes to their privacy policies, particularly how they set up accounts for minors. So when the product guys say “hey, let’s add a feature so that any MySpace user can see the basic profiles of any other MySpace users near them,” the lawyers freak out.

Certainly privacy rights need to be considered, and Loopt has already had some problems with unintended invites going out (although this hasn’t happened to me and I’ve been using it since launch). But they can be addressed by allowing users to opt out of showing others their location, or only showing it to certain types of people (by age range, sex, friends of friends, etc.). And minors can be permanently segmented from older age groups as well.

To be fair, both MySpace and Facebook have said they will eventually roll out location based services to help users meet each other. It’s unlikely any of the early networks will get an insurmountable lead on the new platform anytime soon, so they can take their time with their lawyers to make them comfortable. But if they wait too long, or release overly-restrictive products, that may change.

We’ll have more to say on this shortly – our goal is to have iPhone users at our meetups and conferences be able to network with each other, swap contact information, and meet new people. Hopefully by our big August Capital party on July 25, TechCrunch readers will be using their iPhones for a little social networking.

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All of us iPhone fanatics are just getting our hands on the new apps, but I’ve already found one that I’m sure to consider indispensable within the next few months: Facebook’s new app.

Why is it so compelling? Because it almost eliminates the need to maintain a separate contacts list on my phone. While Facebook’s web app for the iPhone was cool enough, the native app basically transforms Facebook into a mobile directory with rich information about your friends.

If you’re even semi-serious about using Facebook to keep track of your friends, you may never have to click the “Phone” icon to dial them up. Just hit the Facebook icon and move over to the “Friends” tab. You’ll see all of your Facebook friends laid out, and when you click on their names, their contact info appears in the iPhone’s customary user interface.

Tap a friend’s phone number to call them (or hit their email address to write). The only time this method falls through is when a friend has decided not to enter the requisite contact info into their profile (something unnecessarily cautious, in my opinion, if you’ve set up your privacy settings correctly).

This application has the potential to eliminate the need for two other native iPhone features as well: SMS and Email. The app comes with Facebook Chat baked right in so you can send instant messages to friends who are currently online (either at their computers or on their phones). As soon as Facebook figures out a way to keep you “online” and available for chat even when the app is closed – and hooks Chat to the new push notification service so you’re aware of messages as they come in – I’ll be one step closer to saving that extra $10 per month I pay AT&T to let me send ludicrously overpriced text messages. Facebook should be working on a Chat-to-SMS (or Message-to-SMS) conversion feature that can be used to message with my friends who don’t own iPhones, or any other email-equipped smartphone.

As for email, Facebook’s messaging system is also built right into the app making it unnecessary to send lengthy messages through email (who wants to keep track of friends’ email addresses anyway when you can look them up by name?).

Joe Hewitt has also suggested on Facebook’s blog that the application will also become location-aware within the next few months:

The first version of Facebook for iPhone is just a glimpse of the future. For instance, the iPhone has the ability to find where you are located, and we are looking for ways to let you opt-in to share your location and discover nearby friends. We’re developing this and several other exciting new features that we’ll release in the coming months.

Looks like Loopt and all of the other location-based social networks are going to get a run for their money by the biggest player in town.

I have no fear that Facebook will thrive in the iPhone 2.0 world given this strong start. It’ll just need to find a way to get its developers involved since the platform is noticeably absent from the first version of this app.

Learn how to install the new iPhone software (which works on both the old and new models) here. Cross your fingers that you won’t lose any data during the update (I had no problems, however). Also check out the new MySpace iPhone app which, while quite functional, doesn’t replace the contacts list or provide chat.

Update: If you want to take a screenshot of an iPhone app, follow the instructions here.

Update 2: It looks like Facebook’s iPhone app doesn’t know how to properly render messages with quotations in them. Hopefully such obvious bugs will be worked out over the next few days.

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We’ve been gathering videos and overviews of many of the applications and have held them until now. We received demo vidoes for dozens of applications, ranging from basic games to complex GPS-enabled social networking applications. Below are some of our favorites.

Among the apps that we didn’t include below (primarily because of their simplicity) are Recorder (a voice recorder), Movies (movie showtimes), and iMaze (a basic maze game).

Social Networking On The iPhone:

The iPhone, with cult-like users and location aware technology, is the perfect social networking device. Earlier this year we speculated that someone would emerge with a killer social networking app for the iPhone. It turns out that there are lots of contenders.

Loopt

Loopt – We’ve been tracking Loopt’s efforts around their iPhone application for months now. In April we posted early screen shots of the app without saying who had built it. Think of Loopt as a simple social network to find local businesses, message friends and send status updates with where you are (using the iPhones location technology). And a key difference with Loopt and many of the other networks below: you can meet new people who are nearby, if they choose to share that information. If everyone used this, you could see who’s single in a bar before you approach them (and flirt with them by phone first), and know the first name and job of everyone at that cocktail hour at the tech conference. We’re big fans of Loopt, and will have more news on them later today. For now, download the free application here.

Limbo

Limbo – Limbo is another geo-aware social network that behaves like a mashup of Twitter, Loopt, and Whrrl. One of the app’s most compelling features is its grid-like diagram that visually groups your friends according to what they’re doing (for example, all of your friends that are Out Drinking will be lumped together, even if they aren’t necessarily drinking in the same place). The app accomplishes this feat by forcing users to select from a predefined hierarchal list of activities (while this might sound restrictive, the list is pretty comprehensive). This categorization allows users to see what they’re friends are up to without having to sift through each of their messages.

On the geo-positioning front, Limbo allows users to interact users who are within a close radius (about a quarter mile), in a manner that is similar to Loopt. You can download the app here for free.

MySpace

MySpace – The MySpace iPhone app is everything you’d expect from a multi-billion dollar company: the app integrates seamlessly with the massive social network, allowing users to add friends, exchange messages, upload photos, and do just about anything else they could do from their computers at home. They aren’t yet integrating with the location features, but expect that in the near future. If you are a MySpace user, you’ll be using this constantly. You can download the app here for free.

Shozu

ShoZu – The ShoZu iPhone app allows users to interact with a number of social websites, including YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, and a number of others. Users can upload photos to these services, comment on other users’ profiles, and send status updates, depending on the site involved. You can download the app here for free.

Utilities and Reference:

The introduction of the iPhone app store has effectively made the iPhone the ultimate utility belt. We’re seeing no shortage of apps that aim to make life easier for users, and while many of them are a little too simplistic (how many tip calculators do we really need?), others will be godsends for some people, serving up the latest sports news, on-demand drink recipes, and restaurant recommendations.

Save Benjis

Save Benjis – Save Benjis is a shopping tool that will look up a product’s price according to its model number. Using model numbers instead of product names helps take the guesswork out of pricing comparisons (for example, it would be much easier to compare two computers with their model numbers versus a name like “MacBook Pro”). The app integrates the Safari web browser, so users can browse and purchase goods on a website from their phone if they find a better price. You can download the app here for free.

Pocket Express

Pocket Express – Pocket Express is a news and information service that is available for a number of smart phones. The app allows users to browse through news articles written by the Associated Press on topics that include politics, science, and world news. Users can also browse through sports scores, weather reports, and movie information. You can download the app here for free.

Urbanspoon

Urbanspoon – Urbanspoon brings a fun (and gimmicky) solution to choosing a restaurant for dinner. After using the phone’s GPS to detect restaurants in the area, Urbanspoon presents you with a slot machine-like listing of cuisine types and price. To activate the slot machine, you give the phone a hard shake (the accelerometers inside the phone will measure the movement). The dials will spin around a few times, and you’ll be presented with a suggested restaurant (you can shake again if you’re not satisfied). You can download the app here for free.

Cocktails

Cocktails – Cocktails is a well designed reference for “potent potables” that will put traditional bar-tending guides to shame. Users can browse through a large index of drinks, search by ingredient or drink name, and label drinks as favorites for future reference. The app also includes information about the type of serving glass to use, as well as the date that each recipe was created (there are often multiple recipes available for each drink). You can download the app here for $9.99.

ForeFlight

ForeFlight – ForeFlight is an iPhone app that is aimed towards pilots (both recreational and professional) rather than your average consumer. The app allows users to find nearby airports, maps, diagrams of airports, and lookup of plane information by tail number. The app also includes the A/FD, the Airport and Facilities Directory, which includes location data like field and approach information and location data on hotels. You can download the app here for a whopping $69.99 (the highest price in the store).

Audio and Video

App providers will make use of the 3G iPhone’s speedy network with streaming audio and video apps that will allow users to consume a near-limitless amount of content without having to sync up with their computers. Unfortunately, the iPhone is still unable to record video, so all media uploading will be limited to photos for now.

Kyte Mobile Producer

Kyte Mobile Producer – Kyte’s Mobile Producer is a mobile image uploading app. Users can upload the images they take from their iPhones directy to Kyte Channels that they’ve embedded in their blogs or onto their Facebook profile through Kyte’s facebook app. Users can also compile their images into slideshows, complete with captions and polls, which can also be played through the their Kyte Channels online. You can download the app here for free.

mdialog

mdialog – mdialog’s iPhone app allows users to browse through content that have been uploaded to the video site. The app is reminiscent of YouTube, allowing users to share and bookmark their favorite channels, leave comments, and browse through a “What’s New Section”. Users can also attach polls to their videos. You can download the app here for free.

Pandora Radio

Pandora Radio, our flat out favorite application so far, is an audio app that streams music to the iPhone over Wi-Fi, 3G, or Edge. Pandora is a popular music service that creates a “Music Genome” to analyze music a user likes and then recommend new artists. Users can enter the name of an artist or song they like, and Pandora will generate a streaming playlist, even if they haven’t created a profile. You can try out the app here for free.

Update: Here is a late addition:

Jott

Jott – Self-dubbed “the notepad you’ve always dreamed of,” the Jott iPhone app records your voice and turns it into text. You can add items to specific lists and cross them off once you don’t need to worry about them any longer. Additionally, all of your notes are backed up online. You can try out the app here for free.

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Mobile social network Loopt is making a big push this summer.

CEO Sam Altman already took stage at last week’s Stevenote prior to the unveiling of iPhone 3G. He was there to present the friend tracking software Loopt has been developing in time for the iPhone App Store launch on July 11th.

But while Altman describes Loopt’s iPhone version as the company’s best ever, he’s not overlooking the fact that many smartphone consumers still prefer the BlackBerry (and may even go for the BlackBerry Bold over the new iPhone). So Loopt is releasing software for BlackBerry devices as well, available here.

As with the iPhone, the BlackBerry software is free of charge. But unlike the iPhone, it will work on a variety of networks: Sprint, Alltel, T-Mobile, and AT&T.

See here for a full list of supported phones. Competitors include Whrrl, Brightkite, Zyb, and several others.

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As Apple gears up for the launch of its 3G iPhone, outside developers and startups are finally going to get to sell or give away their own applications that run natively on the phone (as opposed to being optimized for the Safari browser, as are most legal, third-party apps today). These apps, which are built on the iPhone SDK announced last March, will be distributed through the upcoming iPhone App Store (which apparently won’t launch for a few weeks). These apps will have some limitations (you can only run one app at a time and VOIP services only work via WiFi, for instance), but they will also bring a lot of innovation to the iPhone.

We’ve been tracking some of these announcements as companies prepare to unveil their new iPhone apps. They are listed below. There is a good chance more will be announced on stage during Steve Jobs’ keynote today. We will update as we learn more. Please let us know which ones we missed in comments.

Zenbe Lists: Webmail service Zenbe (reviewed here) is testing the iPhone development environment with a to-do list application that can be used to keep track of your chores and collaborate with friends and coworkers. Create task lists, check off items, and sync them with your contacts. Lists can be sent to your friends via email and accessed through the browser when sitting at a desktop computer. The Lists application won’t be integrated with Zenbe’s main email app, at least to start.

Super Monkey Ball: It took Sega two weeks to create a version of its popular video game for the iPhone. It will cost $9.99 at the iPhone App Store. Players use the built-in accelerometer to move the character.

The Associated Press: New app will retrieve local news based on your location. Also links every iPhone with the app to the AP so citizen journalists can send in photos taken on their iPhones of breaking events, as well as text commentary.

Six Apart (TypePad): Blogging from you iPhone? An iPhone announcement from Six Apart is expected today. More details as we get them. Update: Six Apart’s iPhone app lets you blog from your iPhone and add photos taken with the phone’s camera. It makes it easy to create micro-blog posts around a photo by adding a title, category and text. This app will be free for Typepad users. See how Six Apart CEO Chris Alden tried valiantly not to answer Mike’s questions on video when he was cornered right before the Apple keynote:

Pangea Software (Enigmo and Croman Rally): Two games for the iPhone that will cost $9.99 each. Enigmo is a touch-based puzzle game where you move drops of water around with your finger. Croman Rally is a race game with Flinstone-style cars that players control with the iPhone’s accelerometer.

Cow Music: Built by a single developer, Mark terry, in his time, the app is called Band. It lets you play virtual instruments on the iphone and create music. Instruments include piano, drums, guitars. You play the instruments by banging (lightly) on the iPhone.

MLB.com’s At Bat: Shows stats and video highlights of baseball games.

Modality: An anatomy app for medical students. The app is filled with anatomy drawings and images linked to Google and Wikipedia for more detailed information.

MIMvista: Another tool for doctors to view CT scans and PET scans on their iPhones.

Digital Legends Entertainment: Another game that took two days to port to the iPhone. Will be available in September.

SlingPlayer Mobile: You will soon be able to watch TV on your iPhone. Just like a Slingbox that let’s you access your TV from anywhere around the world, Sling Media is creating a version of its SlingPlayer Mobile app for the iPhone. That means theoretically you could watch all the channels you have at home on your iPhone, as long as the Internet connection is strong enough to stream the video.

Loopt: The social mobile network is expected to announce an iPhone version of its app. Loopt shows you where your friends are based on GPS and other location-tracking technologies. Loopt is already available on many Sprint and Verizon phones. With the iPhone, it will add AT&T to its roster.

Phanfare: Take pictures on your iPhone, add captions, and share them as slideshows on the Web. Phanfare is launching its iPhone version today.

Whrrl: Another mobile social network geared at sharing opinions and reviews of local establishments with your friends. The company behind Whrrl, Pelago, was is part of Kleiner Perkins’ iFund. (Read our review here).

Citysense: Nightlife tracker. Let’s you see the city’s hot spots by showing heat maps of where people are via their cell phones and other signal-emitting mobile devices. Only available in San Francisco for now. A demo app for Sense Networks.

iCall: VOIP on your iPhone. We covered it here.

Glide 3.0: It’s your desktop on your iPhone.

eBay: We’re not sure what eBay has up its sleeve either, but Mike caught up with an eBay executive at the Moscone center who sounded like had something to hide:

Update: Turns out eBay developed an auctions app for the iPhone. From Mike’s liveblog notes: “They’re showing home screen with search, avatar and a number of navigation items.”

Kooaba: Point your iPhone camera at a movie poster and get movie details and show times Cool visual-recognition app

:

Update 2: Some winners of the Apple Design Awards for best iPhone Apps include:

Remember the Milk: Take your to-do list with you.

AOL Radio: Web radio that tunes in to local CBS stations.

Enigmo by Pangea Software: Water drop game (see above)

Twitterific: Twitter app.

Omnifocus: Location-aware task management. “Pick up the dry cleaning, it’s around the corner.”

MIM by MIMVista: Healthcare app (see above)

AP Mobile News Network. This was a runner up. Location-aware news. (see above)

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Last November, we reviewed the first product from Seattle-based startup Pelago – a mobile mapping service called Whrrl meant for sharing reviews of places and events with friends.

Whrrl feels very much like a dormant technology that, like other mobile apps, has the potential to explode after the new iPhone – both in terms of software and hardware – gets unleashed next month.

In its current form, Whrrl works only on the BlackBerry Pearl and Curve. It therefore struggles to foster the social network it so dearly needs to become useful to more than a small group of early adopters. But it’s clear that Pelago has placed its future in the hands of RIM’s rude archenemy, Apple, which has much greater appeal to the consumer market. When Kleiner Perkins launched its so-called “iFund” for the financing of iPhone apps in March, the venture capital firm reclassified its previous $5.6 million investment in Pelago as the first iFund investment.

Now Pelago has raised an additional $15 million from Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile Venture Fund, Reliance, and DAG Ventures (among former investors) in preparation for international expansion once the iPhone’s second coming arrives. According to CEO Jeff Holden, Pelago will unveil some major functionality in the next couple of months (including Loopt-like friend tracking). And he says that the iPhone is “extremely important” to its plans, suggesting that this functionality will center around that device (despite upcoming support for a variety of feature phones as well).

The startup wants to position itself internationally before foreign companies take the big ideas behind its new functionality and run with them. An alliance with Deustsche Telekom is meant to help Pelago lockdown Europe, and Reliance should help in India.

Holden says he wants ultimately for Whrrl to become the “indispensable mobile companion”. That’s a high hope and one surely shared by other mobile developers who are clammoring to build ontop the iPhone platform. This sizable round of strategic funding will at least give Pelago the reserves it needs to establish itself as a major next-gen mobile developer.

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