Patent suggests location-based social networking for iPhone

Awesome... now can we please get Latitude?

...Oh right... Steve and Eric hate each other....

Next headline: Nokia sues Apple again.

I just looked on my Nokia N97 and there was a button that said "Share Location" and you can use it to share your location.

Go new zealand. Keep on appearing randomly in screenshots.... and some major films with giant blue aliens and small men with hairy feet.

My sincerest condolences at being stuck in Palmerston North

I like the "internet tethering"...nice tease for those of us stuck with AT&T.

Think of pictochat on nds, but this time you can find people to actually play the games with you via a browser.

Surprise no one has mentioned Google Latitude here. You can see your friends location real time as well as your own on a Google Map (as long as they are logged into the Google Latitude web page as well at the same time). Works great with the iPhone.

Wowsers! Next thing you know they'll add an accuracy setting in the event that you don't want someone to know EXACTLY where you are standing...

Nothing about this feature is very ingenious or "magical." Other apps have been sharing this info for a long time now. Apple is finally adding functionality that should have been built-in in the first place.

It surprises me that this wasn't added when the GPS functionality was added to the iPhone line.

It's a great idea, but may be limited by service area of the mobile provider. Turning on Data Roaming is a scary thought. It just points to the fact that the providers need to rethink their packages.

This is an interesting insight into a possible future extension of built-in iPhone functionality, but how can anyone seriously consider this idea something that can be patented? There are hundreds of location sharing communications applications already in the market.

It just points to how ridiculous the whole patent mess has become. A system originally designed to protect the poor inventor against commercial exploitation is now the tool of big businesses and clever lawyers.

Nowadays patents are wielded as financial weapons by mega-rich organisations who receive licence fees for doing nothing and are well rewarded despite their inability to bring useful products to market. These wealthy companies take every opportunity to gouge into each other's profits in long drawn out legal disputes that act against the very progress and innovation that patents are supposed to foster.

We desperately need to rethink the patent process to rule out the mentality of greed that seeks to copyright the human DNA sequence or collect licence fees from the bleeding obvious. Otherwise before too long some bright spark will think its an original idea to patent breathing or walking:

"In this patent application we will show how placing one foot in front of the other can be an effective means of making forward progress for humans in an upright position..."

I'm not suggesting Apple is necessarily entirely at fault here. I'm proposing that the whole patent system is rotten and open to abuse.

For all I know Apple may not be intending to exercise any of its patents. It may be simply seeking to protect itself so that it is able to countersue whenever the folks at Nokia run out of energy and ideas and fall back on the lazy person's excuse of patent infringement to cover for their increasingly obsolescent products and dwindling market share.