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Last time, Apple changed the game by remaking mobile phones. With iPad, it’s a brand new game: a chance to create a new computing product category basically from scratch.

With iPhone, Apple turned the US mobile market upside-down. A hardware manufacturer was able to assert more pressure than ever before over a mobile carrier. Mobile application developers were able to access device functionality more easily, and got a (relatively) straightforward marketplace in which to do business. Regular people simply got a powerful device that was easy to use, with a great mobile browser and a huge selection of useful and entertaining apps. Apple quickly took the majority share of mobile pageviews, compared to competing operating systems, even while those other OSes had more devices in people’s hands. Not only did this mean Apple had yet another winner (remember iPod vs. previous MP3 players) on its hands; it meant every OS-maker, device manufacturer, and carrier had to change their game plan.

For Socialight, the iPhone meant getting great apps into a store and available to millions of people became a lot simpler. It also made location-based services finally work. The 3G iPhone has GPS, Wifi, and cell-ID positioning. That trifecta meant we could usually get a good fix whether the user was indoors, on a city street, or out in the country. That was never the case before.

When I first saw the iPad, I thought, “What’s the big deal? It’s just a huge iPhone.” Well, that is pretty much exactly what it is. It sorta kinda shares a form factor with “tablet PCs”, but in reality, it’s not much like them, with touch interfaces slapped onto old operating systems and the hardware modded to sew things together. By adding a new form-factor with a 10″ screen to an interface, OS, and set of 140,000 apps designed with touch in mind from the start, Apple created a new category.

Why? Because of a wide open field ripe for new use cases. The use cases are just starting to be developed and the public hasn’t yet started testing them. Just like Twitter, with their simple API and dead-simple web presence, enabled a plethora of applications Twitter’s founders never dreamed of, Apple created a simpler, more accessible platform and will now let the community create what the service, or in this case product/service, will become.

By enlarging an iPhone’s 3.5″ screen to 10″, the ways to use the thing expand wildly. It becomes a device for multiple people to use at the same time. You can monitor a data visualization or video stream from across the room. You no longer have to squint at maps; they become big and beautiful and, in the car, can finally replace those accordion-fold ones stashed in the glovebox.

At first, I was unimpressed, but over the past couple of weeks since Apple’s announcement introducing the device, the ways iPad could be used started coming to me. Jobs demoed by sitting in a minimilist, black, comfy chair. But that’s like the blank slate from which to start.

What about:

• …the family, sitting together on the couch, watching cable on the living room’s 42″ screen while interacting with related content on the 10″ iPad. Maybe they’re watching Anthony Bourdain on (Socialight customer) Travel Channel and exploring big maps and pictures of the places he’s visiting tonight in Prague. Or maybe they’re seeing if they can beat the tv contestants at Jeopardy;
• …the group of friends, hanging out in a booth at the bar swiping through photos from last night’s party;
• …the road trip “navigator”, sitting in the passenger seat of the car, figuring out where to stop next on the 3G, GPS-enabled iPad. The location of the car is a breathing blue dot on the 10″ map (a completely different experience than a map on the iPhone’s 3.5″ screen, not to mention the old accordion fold). The navigator taps a marker and a beautiful, big panoramic photo taken from the scenic overlook a few miles ahead fills the screen. It’s worth a stop;
• …the breakout group of 4 elementary school students sitting at a classroom table, playing an educational game on an iPad (which had better be enclosed in a kid-proof case), all interacting at the same time on the multi-touch screen.

Today, we don’t know what will work and what won’t. We don’t yet know what the successful usage models will be because they haven’t been tried. We’ll only know in a year, after the developers get lots of new stuff on the device and after people get their paws on it.

So, yeah, I wasn’t so excited for this thing right after Jobs’ latest song and dance, but I am now. Let the fan-boy jokes begin.

Back when we started Socialight in 2005, it was totally unlike anything else out there. The world took note. Our cellphones were still clunky and we were still surprised when we saw a map on the web, but Socialight grew into a special community where people gather to tell stories about the places that mean something to them. It’s a great community, but it’s limited since it’s only one community.

Since then, the world has changed. Not only do we now expect our cell phones to have GPS and cameras, but a lot of people and companies have realized that tying stories to maps can be entertaining, useful, and profitable.

We’re about to launch something even more transformative than our first release. It gives you a whole lot of what you’ve been asking for, but probably not in the way you expected. We think it can change the way people, communities, and companies interact in the real world. CODENAME: ZSA ZSA

Everything happens somewhere and we’re creatures of the shared places where we live, work, and travel. But in real life, we each experience those same shared places differently. We want to learn about the world through the communities of people and sources we trust. But when we’re exploring the world with virtual tools, there’s no way to cut through the noise and just see, hear, and play how we want.

Socialight crafted Zsa Zsa to change that. Each community needs to be able to share what it wants to share in the way it wants to share it. Soon, people, companies, and existing communities will get the tools to do just that.

So why are we calling it “Zsa Zsa”? You’ll have to figure that one out for yourself!

I’m going to be speaking with a fantastic panel on Monday at the 2008 YPulse National Mashup. The panel, organized by the furiously talented Alli Mooney from Fleishman Hillard focuses on “What’s Next in The Mobile Youth Space”. The other mobile futurists on the panel include John Poisson from Tiny Pictures, Mei Lin Ng from Mig33 and Stephen Saiz from Disney Mobile.

The conference will be held at the Nikko Hotel in downtown San Francisco, one of my favourite spots for relaxing in the city, so if you’re interesting in hearing about how mobile social communication is evolving – swing on by.

Riding high on the news of their acquisition by Nokia for $8.1 billion, NAVTEQ is explaining the future of the location services industry with more clarity than I’ve ever heard from them before. I’ve been attending NAVTEQ-sponsored events for 3 years now, but this morning at their NAVTEQ Connections 2007 meeting in San Francisco, I’m finally hearing a vision that truly resonates, and I’m hearing it loud and clear.

Here’s what caught my attention during Winston Guillory’s (SVP, Consumer and Enterprise Sales) keynote:

• The end-user will have an important role as a source of data. It’s no longer just about getting content to the consumer; users collecting location-based content is an important piece of the puzzle and that’s a big part of why the Nokia marriage makes sense.
• Valuable content changes over time. This isn’t by any means a new realization, but today, it’s finally realistic to build products incorporating live location-based content streams.
• Pedestrian consumption is a huge growth area. Last year, NAVTEQ announced a renewed focus on pedestrian routing. Now they’re starting to talk seriously about pedestrian consumption of content not just for routing, but live content, filtered through the sources you trust, delivered to you when you’re in the city. I think that with the growing growing proportion of the world’s population that’s urban and the growing mobile youth market, this sector will continue to gain in importance.

Yahoo’s Pipes is a visual mashup tool for RSS, GeoRSS and now KML feeds. Pipes has a super slick interface that lets you drag and drop feeds onto each other and their latest release from today adds support for extracting location from GeoRSS or KML feeds. What this means is that any Pipe that contains GeoData is automatically displayed using a Yahoo Map and that you can also get the output for any pipe as KML – which lets anyone make mashups with geographical and then view them in Google Earth. I made a pipe that searches for pictures on Flickr based on the content of Sticky Notes from Socialight. If you want to, you can even check out what it looks like in Google Earth.

We’re really excited that the Pipes team used Socialight in one of their examples – but the others rock too – check them out on the official Pipes blog or in Brady Forrest’s post on the O’Reilly Radar.

I love hearing about the innovative ways people are using social software. Humans are, by nature, social beings so when we hook up special software to enhance our social proclivities, we can work together to do amazing things. While we’re here at Socialight using social software to connect messages and pictures to place, people to place, people to people, and sometimes even place to place, there are people out there using social software for all kinds of new stuff.

Recently, I listened to this podcast about an initiative out of New York Law School called The Peer to Patent Project aiming to fix the US patent office review process. Many consider the process broken since there are multi-year backlogs of applications pending review. As a result many patents that shouldn’t be granted are, and those that should usually take years to get through the process. Peer to Patent, which has financial backing from the likes of GE and IBM, seems like a brilliant use of social software. It also could have huge positive effects on innovation and business. Essentially, the project’s aim is to design and pilot an online system for peer review of patents with integrated social reputation, collaborative filtering, and information visualization tools.

At Socialight, we’re harnessing the power of social software, and using some of the same social tools, for another new application: location-based communication. Our goal is to give people a tool for learning and communicating about, and through, place. Social software makes this work since we inhabit the same spaces as many other people but often care more about what the people we trust, like our friends and people with common interests, have to say about those places. It helps us figure out what gets shown to different people in different places. Without the filter, you’d be inundated with lots of stuff, much of which likely uninteresting to you. On Socialight, especially on our mobile interfaces, we first show you the content that’s coming from the Contacts you’ve made and the Channels you’ve joined. We also use the feedback – like ratings and comments – that you add to Sticky Notes to help figure out what others might like to see. If you haven’t already signed up and invited some Contacts to join you, we hope you give it a whirl soon and explore. Then let us know what you think.

As an early holiday gift, we’ve launched an all-new version of Socialight!

During the past few months, we’ve explored the dreams we have for Socialight and the suggestions and comments you’ve made and have done a comprehensive overhaul that we’re quite excited about. Here’s a quick overview of some of the changes:

• a brand new logo and web site design, and even a new name for our place-based messages – Sticky Notes. StickyShadows, RIP. Word.
• more ways to access Socialight while mobile – new mobile web (WAP) and text messaging (SMS) interfaces let you find and create Sticky Notes anytime, anywhere. http://socialight.com/help/mobile
• more ways to connect with other people – message users directly, post on users’ pages and invite contacts through easy address book importing.
• enhance the networks and content you’ve already got by importing GeoRSS feeds from sites like Flickr to share content from specific places. If you have your own site like a blog or a MySpace page, you can also embed Socialight widgets right there.
• tools for publishers (even you!) to create opt-in channels. WCities and Movie Locations Guide are already programming Socialight channels, with many more coming soon.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback on anything, positive or negative. Don’t hesitate to reach out.

We hope you enjoy the upgrade!

With our happily provided permission Penelope from London Metropolitan University created this wonderful animation on Socialight: The Future of Conversation. <blush> Thanks, Penelope!

Brady Forrest just posted a podcast on O’Reilly Radar with me in which we discuss where some of the ideas for Socialight originated (23centstories shoutout!), as well as what we’re working on now and what you can look forward to in the next version. (MP3)

If you’re anywhere near San Jose next week – come say hi and meet me at the Where 2.0 Conference.

Sometimes it’s not all about mobile phones and maps for the Socialight team. Our own superstar intern, Jury Hahn, shows off The Seven Deadly Meals, her latest project at NYU’s ITP Spring Show, featured first on the latest Cool Hunting video. Congratulations, jury!