An iPhone case and wallet made from recycled plastic bottles.

For consumers wary of cocooning their precious iPhones in bamboo, TRTLBOT has a perfectly sustainable solution: an iPhone case plus ID/credit card holder crafted from recycled plastic bottles.

Made in the USA (designed in Los Angeles, sourced from Indiana and manufactured in Santa Ana, Calif.), it is compatible with all 4 and 4S models. It can hold up to three credit cards, though its open-backed design might make it more suitable for storing gym membership cards versus flashing your AMEX.

Available at TRTLBOT for $29.95.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

Combining the natural strength of bamboo with the modernity of your favorite mobile device, this throwback design is sustainable and cool.

An interview with the founder of a hot new green fashion finder app.

As any stylish eco dresser will tell you, it’s all about access. From finding the perfectly cut organic cotton tee, recycled leather boot or that vintage tea dress that makes a modern statement, putting together a unique low impact look is hard. We rely on tips from those style savvy friends who keep an ear to the ground for new designers, sport lines we’ve never heard of and the scoop on that secret vintage store in town that isn’t overpicked and -priced.

And let’s face it, when it comes to nabbing the best items, relations between pals can get decidedly unfriendly. Ever conveniently forgot the location of your favorite eco store when someone asks where you got that incredible recycled jacket? Or felt a sharp pang of jealousy at a friend’s beautiful vintage find?

Thanks to a new smart phone app launched in the San Francisco Bay Area last week, you’ll have access to all the latest insider information right at your very own fingertips. GreenGlamGo is a mobile social platform that offers the ability to search for green beauty products, sustainable fashion and vintage, handmade items from the retailers who stock them.

GreeGlamGo co-founder, Clarissa Nicola, answers a few questions and shows us how simple it is to keep our shopping sustainable and our shopping relationships civil.

What is GreenGlamGo and how do I get it?

It is for consumers who want access to green fashion, vintage, handmade items, Made in the USA, green bridal, and green beauty products. It is also for green brands and etailers who want to participate on a mobile application platform. We wanted to expand the playing field for consumers beyond online. We created a platform using flash lite 4 and adobe on Nokia phones so their products can be browsed easily and quickly.

What personal challenge inspired the creation of GreenGlamGo?

I have been in the fashion industry for 20 years now, and produced  over 2000 fashion shows and trend presentations for consumers and merchants. After my 10th season of telling customers to buy yet another new pair of black pants for their wardrobe, I stopped and thought “Really?  Do these people really need to buy another pair of black pants? How many pairs of black pants does one person need?”.  I looked at my own closet and realized I had about 20 different pairs, all in different shapes and fit and lengths. Then, I thought of the other basics, like white blouses, t-shirts, and I couldn’t help but think of the impact I was making by motivating people to buy more and inferring that what they had wasn’t enough.

Can you give us a run-thru of the process of say, finding a local fashion designer producing sustainable hats?

We  have four main categories: Handmade, Fashion, Bridal, Beauty. If a user clicks on Handmade, then Hats on the top navigation, they can easily find hats. If they want Bridal hats, they click Bridal first, then hats.

Tell us why you decided to include a handmade section, which doesn’t necessarily feature green designers?

We realize the importance of handmade as it keeps production out of factories, which greatly impact the environment.  With sites like Etsy, we felt it was visually cluttered and hard to navigate. We wanted to feature the best of handmade and to raise that bar by keeping it easy to find within the 4 main categories.

Why do you think it’s so hard to find green and locally produced items?

It is hard because they’re not accessible. No one knows where to find these things. People will buy green if it’s easy and they aren’t inconvenienced. The price has to be right, too. While it can be expensive, we built this platform to give small green businesses a chance to go global and expand their playing field. The more people know about what’s out there, the more accessible it is, and the more prices will go down.

How do you plan to promote GreenGlamGo to communities outside of SF, LA and NYC where it’s so much harder to find sustainably made fashion and beauty?

We partnered with Nokia as Nokia smart phones have a stronger market over the iPhone world wide. Their phones are purchased the most in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia, and Latin America. That is one of the reasons why we went with them. Everyone goes to iPhone first with their app because they dominate the smart phone market in the US. We’re looking to reach as many potential green consumers as possible.

The battle between telecoms Verizon Wireless and AT&T is more heated than ever, especially with the release of the new Verizon iPhone. Everybody is talking about which iPhone is better – and we already know who has wider coverage and more reliable service (Verizon, without question). But which company is delivering knockout punches in the sustainability department?

Here’s how each company stacks up, based on sustainability information found on their websites and in their most recent sustainability reports.

Verizon was the first telecom company to establish efficiency standards in 2008, and in early 2010, the company announced a comprehensive sustainability strategy that includes the addition of 1,600 alternative energy vehicles to its fleet, employee education programs and progress on smart grid deployment.

Eco-options:

• Refurbished phones available directly through the VerizonWireless.com website. Through its HopeLine program, Verizon collected over 1 million phones in 2009 and refurbished 927,000 of them, donating 23,000 to domestic violence organizations. Verizon has collected more than 8 million phones since the program began in 2001. Verizon offers postage-paid labels to easily recycle phones and accessories.
• Currently offering both the Samsung Intensity II and the Motorola Citrus, two phones with notable green features.

Sustainable operations:

• Reduced its overall carbon dioxide emissions by more than 793 million pounds and improved its rate of emissions per millions of dollars in revenue to 60.2 metric tons in 2009.
• Reduced energy consumption in its facilities by 84 million kilowatt hours in 2009 through temperature monitoring and energy-efficient lighting.
• Named to Newsweek’s Global Green 100 in 2010, ranking at number 45.
• Reached number 61 in last year’s Maplecroft Climate Innovation Index, which lists the 100 top performing companies in the U.S. for their climate-related innovation and carbon-management programs.
• Collected 500,000 PCs and other electronics for recycling or resale, and recycled 26 million pounds of material from cable removed from its network in 2009 alone.
• Donates money to the American Forests’ Global Re-Leaf Program each time a customer opts for paperless billing. The partnership resulted in over 70,000 newly planted trees in 2009.
• Forty-nine Verizon Wireless stores have been awarded the EPA’s Energy Star for energy efficiency and environmental protection.

Green research & development:

• Set the global telecom industry’s first energy-efficiency standards in 2008, pushing vendors of its networking equipment to reduce power consumption of these products by 20%.
• Launched a demonstration facility in Columbia, Maryland in 2009 where it showcases the green features of its passive optical network (PON) technology. This networking technology could support high bandwidth services like 3DTV among as many as 1,000 users per network using 75% less power and 80% less space than ethernet solutions.
• Received the Groundbreaker Award from the Clean Economy Network Education Fund in 2011 for developing broadband, wireless and global IP network technology that enables more sustainable business practices.
• Teaming up with Motorola for a trial of eco-friendly set-top boxes for FiOS TV customers, which will use less energy and come in 75% recycled packaging.

AT&T has many green initiatives in the works including big plans to spend $565 million on 15,000 alternative fuel vehicles through 2018, which is expected to cut the company’s greenhouse gas emissions dramatically. Most of these sustainability goals were announced in 2009, with progress updates expected in 2011.

Eco-options:

• Sells refurbished phones directly through the ATT.com website, and offers postage-paid labels to mail in old phones and accessories for recycling.
• ZERO Charger, an Energy Star USB wall charger that is compatible with many devices, makes it easy to slay ‘vampire’ energy consumption.
• Currently offering the Samsung Evergreen, a cell phone made from 70% post-consumer plastic with a box made from 80% recycled paper.

Sustainable operations:

• Reports a ‘slight decrease’ in 2009 carbon dioxide emissions over 2008 levels based on incomplete data. AT&T does not yet fully disclose its carbon performance figures.
• Named to Newsweek’s Global Green 100 in 2010, ranking at number 57.
• Reduced its energy intensity by 23.8 percent over 2008 levels, mostly by analyzing energy performance at its 500 largest energy-consuming facilities.
• Stepped up use of alternative energy, including the installation of two large-scale solar power plants, powering an Austin facility with 10% wind power and the addition of 3,700 solar panels to a facility in San Ramon, California.
• Kept 72.1 million pounds of network scrap material out of landfills through reuse, resale and recycling.
• Announced a new waste-reduction strategy that asks suppliers to provide slimmer packaging that uses fewer materials by the end of 2011

Green research & development:

• Formed the AT&T Business Sustainability Advisory Council to help businesses make smarter sustainability choices and investments.
• Established an initiative to analyze the energy consumption of software in its data centers, which may help IT leaders design greener data centers in the future.
• Developed the Global Media Environmental Module (GMEM), a design that compresses the footprint of Information and Communication Technology equipment, reducing required space by 40 percent and lowering cooling energy needs by 40 percent.
• Made “Machine Learning” software available at no charge to nonprofit and research organizations that aid in conservation efforts around the world.

VERDICT: VICTORY FOR VERIZON

This is a close race, with both companies in the midst of big changes that have not yet produced measurable results. But in terms of sustainability facts and figures, AT&T has a lot more “we will” and “we plan” in areas where Verizon can say “we accomplished” – for now.

Image: PopSciBlog

The electric blue is kind of cool. White’s got the Apple look going for it. Black is still the new black. No comment on the sea foam green.

The iPhone 4 accessory wagon continues its quick ramp-up with this new solar-powered battery charger/case available from SimeniBiz. (Read: “Direct Wholesale from China.”) It comes in not-exactly-rainbow colors, but its non-toxic, protective soft silicone sheath is “environmentally friendly” – whatever that means these days. I’m also digging on their marketing line: “Free solar power.” Um, okay. Thanks!

The “high-power” solar panel on the base of the case and built-in 1500 mAh Li battery is where you store the electric stuff. I know, mAh is a “what’s that?” term for me too, but 1,500 of ‘em is a pretty healthy storage capacity; enough to “top off” your charged phone, says EnviroGadget. This is a good thing for those of us who get all nervous when the percentage charged icon falls below 98 percent.

The deal is that its battery charges when it’s left in the sun, with or without the phone in it. It can also be charged with an AC adapter, car charger, or USB charger via a 5-pin cable. The “dash” is simple enough for me, with three light indicators for capacity - 25, 50 and 100 percent - and an ON/OFF switch. Yep. Can do.

Yet more news from the what’s-on-your-smartphone front: For those of you who moved lightening quick on the iPhone4, Trunket‘s got you covered with some salvaged American Rosewood.

These grainy veneers come in six colors, ranging from “sea blue” to “blood red” to “jet black.” The overlays are “designed to sustain years of wear and tear and should acquire a natural, aged patina over time.” The stains are fade resistant and, here’s the part I kind of like, to “rejuvenate your overlay and keep it looking fresh for years to come,” you’re encouraged to do some “occasional buffing.” Nice.

Putting it on is simple: Wipe the phone clean with a provided alcohol pad, make sure the phone is dry and doesn’t have goop or dirt on it, remove the protective film from the back of the Trunket and just stick it on. Although it’s removable, they don’t encourage a bunch of on again, off again action. But, then, who ever does?

Each Trunket cover is made from real wood and is pretty much a “rescue.” ”We acquired a large inventory of aged veneers from a luxury car customization company that was in the process of winding down its operations as the owners decided to retire,” explains Trunket co-founder Jay Chowdhury. He notes, too that his process has “kept sustainability in mind in the selection of treatments, finishes and packaging materials.”

The company, by the way, is a member of the Arbor Day Foundation, and will allocate $1 from each sale towards the goal of replanting 50 trees per month in areas of need starting October.

So put this option in your what’s-an-iPhone-to-wear pocket, along with this one and this one and, oh, yes, all of these and “¦

Granted, Apple’s iPhones boast some sustainable attributes: PVC-free handsets, headphones and USB cables, bromine-free printed circuit board, mercury-free LCD display, arsenic-free display glass, mostly recycled packaging, and a power adapter which outperforms the strictest global energy efficiency standards, you’d be hard pressed to find a die-hard environmentalist toting an iPhone around on their planet-saving endeavors. Calling Jane Goodall? (Alas! Even the famous conservationist sells a chimpanzee laden iPhone cover on her site!)

So, given our technologically inclined culture and need to stay connected via various electronic devices, it would be nearly impossible to go without. You can help assuage your gadget wielding guilt by outfitting your iPhone with an innovative new cover from bioserie that is made from plants!

Bioserie’s iPhone cover is made from a blend of biodegradable, bioplastic materials which are derived entirely from plants that are annually renewable and sustainably harvested. A minimum of 90 percent Ingeo biopolymer – which is made in the U.S. – comprises these covers, allowing you to disconnect your association with cases made from petrochemicals. Ingeo has the lowest carbon footprint of any commercially available plastic, releasing far less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with its production (in comparison to oil based plastic), and it is industrially compostable.

Let’s talk design aesthetic details. Bioserie covers are available in the following hues: white, green, orange, red, lavender and black. They feature a textured surface which provides an ergonomic grip, and the cover is sturdy and supportive, to protect against scratches and impact. I use a Bioserie cover on my iPhone, in green of course, and my favorite feature is the four tiny ridges that discreetly jut out from the front of the cover to protect the screen from damage when it’s in a face down position. I also like that it is lightweight (weighing only 14 grams) so it doesn’t add bulkiness to my iPhone, and that it leaves all of the controls easily accessible.

Bioserie will be expanding their collection by launching iPhone 4 and iPad accessories in mid-August.

Bioserie iPhone 3G/3GS covers cost $34.95, and Bioserie also makes covers for the iPod Touch and the iPod Nano.

The saying “there’s an app for everything” has become part of our cultural vernacular, and while some apps serve great purposes and provide handy information, the one I’m referring to in this post should have never been created, as it reduces parenting to dismissive gadgetry. Sadly, now you can use your iPhone to monitor your baby’s “cry-it-out” sessions. Adding insult to injury (such as the possible ensuing brain damage that the cry-it-out method may cause a child), the app bears the blasé title: “Ciao Baby.” How can any parent think it’s okay to give their baby the kiss off in such an insensitive manner?

In case you’re not familiar with what letting a baby “cry-it-out” means, it is a sleep-training concept that was introduced by pediatrician Richard Ferber, in which babies between four to six months old must learn to self-soothe in order to fall asleep. This often takes hours upon hours of screaming, crying and hysteria that sometimes culminates in vomiting and convulsions and may affect a child’s psyche by producing “lifelong emotional scars” and abandonment issues.

And “Ciao Baby” can help you achieve all of the above! Since the CIO method means that parents must put their baby in their crib awake, and then periodically check back in on them after certain increments of time, patting their back but not picking them up or – god forbid cuddling or holding them, the Ciao Baby app times and logs a baby’s outbursts and keeps track of the “time until next settle.” Wow.

Renown pediatrician Dr. Sears advises against letting a baby cry-it-out, imploring parents to “consider baby’s cry as signaling a need – communication rather than manipulation.” For those of you reading this who think their babies only had to cry-it-out for a week before getting the picture, Dr. Sears suggests that they simply became apathetic, they didn’t learn what you were trying to teach them. What a great first lesson to teach a child about life: fight for your needs, and then give up, knowing the one person who is supposed to care for you has turned his or her back on you.

I am certain that there are many parents out there who would staunchly support the CIO method, and have successfully and guiltlessly let their babies “cry-it-out,” achieving the end result of a baby who slept through the night at any early age and is perfectly well-adjusted. But as an advocate of attachment parenting, I deplore this practice with every fiber of my being. It is fundamentally wrong and unnatural to let your child suffer in order to achieve a convenient end for yourself. I’ve known parents who have shut their baby away in their crib so they could enjoy a movie, dinner or a glass of wine in the other room “in peace,” yet their child is screaming bloody murder within earshot and they are unfazed. And if you aren’t hard-wired to respond to your child when he is in need, why bother having a child in the first place?

Proponents (parents who use) the CIO method will argue that if it’s practiced responsibly and done correctly, that letting your baby wail their lungs out and go ignored is perfectly fine. But these are just excuses to make a parent feel better about not tending to their child’s primal need to be held and comforted. Or, these excuses resemble regurgitated theories from doctors and books that parents advise for information as they stray away from what feels right for them instinctively.

What would the world become if we simply said “ciao” to those in need and timed their cries for help on our iPhones? I shudder to think anyone is buying this app to help them better monitor their neglect.

You know it’s true. You might forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on, but you would never, ever leave your smartphone at home. This fact could work in your favor next time you head out to a concert or event and leave behind everything you need for the evening - except your tickets, because they’ll be on, yep, your smartphone! (Oh, and how much do you hate Ticketmaster? More on that later”¦)

Twicketer is a new paperless ticketing service (can you say save like a billion trees?) that uses what TriplePundit is calling “a scam proof system” for on-phone ticket sales and downloading. The process is simple enough: Event promoters create an account on Twicketer, set up an event and are given a URL that can be used in promotions anywhere online: via email, websites, Facebook, Twitter, wherever. (Twicketer refers to its service as “social ticketing,” by the way.)

To get your paperless ticket, you just click on the URL and you’re taken to a website that accepts PayPal or credit cards in exchange for a for-your-use-only link where you’ll “accept” your ticket to your phone. (You can buy multiples if you like, and distribute them to your friends’ phones, as well.) Security at the event checks your phone “like an ID card.” With a couple of taps you verify your ticket with the system’s servers and voila, the velvet rope’s undone. The service can also be used for coupons and vouchers.

The technology was developed by Twicketer’s parent company, Screen Ticket, which has developed something called “On Device Verification,” a patent-pending feature that makes it possible to redeem coupons and tickets without the use of scanners or any other hardware. This is great news for folks putting on events (or redeeming coupons) as everything’s done directly on your web-enabled phone, which also provides real-time statistics about conversion rates, usage and other info that marketers get all excited about. The technology also boasts a seven-ways-from-Sunday, you-so-can’t-f-with-it security system.

Twicketer is now in beta, but is looking like a damn good idea. The service can already deliver mobile tickets to more than 200 countries through hundreds of mobile carriers and is prefect for events both big and small. And here’s a big kicker: the service charge is only 99 cents a ticket! Setting aside for a moment the fact that we all love using our smartphones for doing, well, pretty much everything, consider the service charges and general hassles Ticketmaster, et al., have been killing you with for, oh, how many years now? Wouldn’t it be nice to stick it to the Ticketmaster man? By the way, a quick Google of “Why does Ticketmaster suck so bad?” is some great fun. (Oops! Does the link I provided for Ticketmaster just now take you to ticketmastersucks.org? Did I do that?!)

Image: micahtaylor

This post was written by Rob Reed. He is the founder of MomentFeed, a location-based marketing, strategy, and technology firm.

Location technologies are transforming how we experience, navigate, and ultimately better our world. From the global to the local, here are #10Ways geolocation is a positive force for good.

Social media has changed the world. It has revolutionized communications on a global scale, and the transformation continues with every status update, blog post, and video stream. The global citizenry has become a global network.

Since becoming widely adopted just a couple years ago, social media has supercharged social action, cause marketing, and social entrepreneurship. Indeed, the true value hasn’t been the technology itself but how we’ve used it. Today, a second wave of innovation is defining a new era and setting the stage for change over the coming decade.

Mobile technologies will extend the global online network to anyone with a mobile device while enabling countless local networks to form in the real world. We’ve decentralized media production and distribution. We’re doing the same for energy. And we’ll continue this trend for social networking, social action, and commerce.

The combined forces of smartphones, mobile broadband, and location-aware applications will connect us in more meaningful ways to the people, organizations, events, information, and companies that matter most to us—namely, those within a physical proximity of where we live and where we are. Can location-based services (LBS) change the world? Here are #10Ways:

1. Checking in for Good: If Gowalla and Foursquare have taught us anything, it’s that people respond to simple incentives. By offering badges, mayorships, and other intangible rewards, millions of people are checking in to the places they go. Apps like Whrrl take this a step further and enable like-minded “societies” to form on a local basis. The next step is for these apps to add greater purpose by encouraging more meaningful checkins and offering corresponding badges and stamps, thus mapping the cause universe. Or for a dedicated app to be developed that rewards conscious consumption, social responsibility, and civic engagement. Yes, the CauseWorld app features a cause element, but it’s not about cause-worthy places.

2. Eating Locally: Sustainability demands that we source our food as close to its point of production as possible. Many so-called locavores subscribe to the 100-mile diet, which requires that one “eat nothing – or almost nothing – but sustenance drawn from within 100 miles of their home.” Given the difficulty of accessing and verifying this information in order to live by this standard, there’s a geo-powered Locavore app. It gives you info on in-season foods, those coming in-season, farmer’s markets, and links to recipes. This rather simple app is clearly just the start. In time, location-aware apps will guide us not only to the grocery store or farmer’s market but through them. All the while identifying foods based on our particular diet or sensibility.

3. Political Organizing: In the next presidential election, politics will not only be local but location-enabled. We saw the power of social media in Obama’s 2008 landslide victory. In 2012, location-based apps and technologies will play a central role in how campaigns are organized, managed, and ultimately won. Much of this will be visible through mobile apps and location-aware browsers. Activists and volunteers will be more empowered. Voters will be more engaged in the moment, right down to casting their votes. Behind the scenes, though, we’ll see massive new sets of data available to campaigns for targeting, empowerment, and optimization. The party, candidate, and/or cause that has the best handle on geolocation will have a measurable advantage. (The Elections app will soon be updated for 2010.)

4. Finding Green Businesses: The web has effectively replaced the paper Yellow Pages as a way to find local businesses and services. However, this “stationary web” experience is quickly being supplanted by the mobile web and mobile applications, which give us access to this information when we most need it. The Yelp and Around Me apps are popular ways to find restaurants, coffee shops, or hotels wherever you are, but what about green-rated businesses? Greenopia has transformed its printed, local guides into a dynamic, nationwide mobile application that lets you find local, green-rated businesses in any category. No more paper and a much better experience. The Green Map app is another that facilitates discovery and connects us to local green environments.

5. Traveling More Efficiently: We’ve had access to GPS navigation systems and static traffic information for some time, but only now are we seeing the full potential of these technologies. With access to more detailed traffic information that is specific to your route and updated in real time, we can minimize congestion and maximize traffic flow (as much as physically possible). The new turn-by-turn MapQuest 4 Mobile app is a good start, as you can get traffic alerts specific to the route you program. However, user-generated information from apps like Trapster and Waze can crowdsource more specific details, such as whether to avoid an intersection due to a toxic chemical spill. Or, if you want to avoid automobiles altogether, Google Maps makes it easy to use public transportation and take a bike.

6. Scanning for Ethical Products: With online shopping, we’ve become accustomed to reading reviews and making comparisons before we buy. This can now be done in the physical world through games like MyTown and services like Stikybits. By scanning a product barcode using a smartphone camera, you can unlock a treasure of additional information (not to mention deals) that can help with your purchase. This might include where it was produced, how far it traveled, the reputation of the manufacturer, chemical contents, carbon footprint, or the full lifecycle analysis. Location-aware applications can also transform commerce itself by giving us better access to local inventories and locally-produced goods. Whether it’s fruits and vegetables or books and electronics, if something can be found within blocks of your current location, it makes no sense to ship it from afar.

7. Networking Neighborhoods: One of the hottest categories in geolocation is neighborhood networking. The vision for many of these apps is to strengthen the very fabric of our communities. With DeHood, you can keep track of what’s happening in your neighborhood, share your favorite places, and grease the wheels for actually meeting people. After all, if you’ve made contact through the app, it’s a lot easier to say “Hello” in the real world. Blasterous is another that lets you share information locally, whereas BlockChalk does this on an anonymous basis. Finally, NeighborGoods uses your street address to facilitate one-to-one borrowing and trading of useful stuff. In the end, making connections with your neighbors can lead to safer, more productive, and more sustainable communities.

8. Tracking Environmental Disasters: The size and scope of environmental disasters appears to be growing. In 2008, we had the Tennessee coal ash spill, which was billed as “the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States.” And that was before we realized it was three times bigger than originally estimated. More recently, the BP oil spill set daily records for “largest environmental disaster in the U.S. ever.” In each case, geolocation technologies can be used by engaged citizens to monitor and track the effects. They can be used by response teams to coordinate containment and cleanup efforts. Ultimately, these technologies can be used to accurately measure the size and impact of a disaster in order to better understand its damages and costs.

9. Viewing the World Through an Eco Lens: Augmented reality (AR) follows geolocation as one of the hot trends in mobile technology. It enables you to view the world through a smartphone camera (or similar device) and see layers of geo-specific content or information. One of the most popular apps is Layar, an augmented reality browser/platform that lets you choose specific data layers or experiences. The potential for green- and cause-related content is tremendous. You might view green-rated businesses, LEED-certified buildings, or virtual GHG emissions as they enter the atmosphere. Combined with smart meter technology, you could see the most efficient and inefficient homes around you in real time. And for the cynics among us, you could view our mountains, forests, rivers, and oceans as they once were…before the effects of climate change and so many environmental disasters.

10. Capturing the Moment: Better access to information about what’s happening around us—right now—can dramatically improve quality of life. This sense of “geospatial awareness” is possible through today’s smartphones, whereby a piece of content or information a moment is captured and preserved based on the unique time and place in which it occurred. It is essentially to document spacetime. Protests, natural disasters, sporting events, parties, political crises – real-time information about anything happening anywhere at any time, as well as the history of what happened. This will take several years and a number of different applications to realize. In the end, though, it will revolutionize how we access and consume content. It will complete the democratization and decentralization of news and information – based on time and location.

Cautionary note: Privacy is the single biggest issue in the LBS industry. It’s important to understand what information you are sharing with regard to your location and with whom.

Author’s note: We’ll be hosting geolocation events for Social Media Week in Los Angeles this September. This is the third in Max Gladwell‘s #10Ways series of distributed blog posts. It was published simultaneously on as many as 300 blogs.