Slightly Off Topic: An iPhone, an iPad and a Mac Air walk into a bar ...

So, I'm sitting at a conference last week and I look over at the guy next to me and lined up in front of him are an iPhone, iPad and a Mac Book. On the one hand, I'm fairly elated because I own some Apple stock  and I'm wondering if there is an iPod in his pocket. On the other I'm wondering if there is really a need for all three devices at once and just what can I do to get this guy some therapy.

I'm sure this may be even something you've begun to wonder as well. If I've got a phone and a laptop, do I really need a tablet as well? I don't know about you but I don't need another portable device just to answer email and play Apache Sim 3D (I can do that on my iPhone). Two is just fine for me; one in my pocket and one in my backpack. That's about all the room I have anyway.

Without a doubt, the tablet form factor is ideal for certain applications: Data gathering in the field, going lightweight for quick demos, and visualizing map-related data for meetings and presentations (although  this one is a bit dubious because a laptop could suffice just as easily).

Certainly, you need a communication device (phone) and a work device (take your pick, tablet or laptop). Would you give up your laptop for a tablet? How much do you think they are interchangeable? Have you moved everything to the cloud yet? You see where I'm going here.

The funniest thing I've seen so far is someone standing up to grab a quick photo and pointing their tablet device. It just looks so clunky! I mean, they do, still make nice digital cameras for that type of thing. Certainly, for my purposes, the 8 megapixel camera that comes with my iPhone 4S is sufficient for my needs in covering events. I leave my 10 megapixel Nikon home for family affairs.

Eventually I'll get a tablet but not before I can identify a true, personal or professional use that renders the other two devices as less than ideal.  But for now, I'm good.

Update 2: Apple and Google Speak to Senate Subcommittee About Location Tracking Today (webcast)

But wait, there are more privacy hearing scheduled! This one with the Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance Subcommittee.

A Senate Commerce subcommittee has scheduled a 10am hearing on mobile privacy for May 19, titled "Consumer Privacy and Protection in the Mobile Marketplace."

Among those invited to testify are Bret Taylor, chief technology officer at Facebook, Catherine Novelli, vice president of worldwide government affairs at Apple, and Alan Davidson, director of public policy at Google.

There's no word yet on who has accepted this invitation.

- PC Mag

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Apple Looking for Seven Location Developers for iOS

There are seven positions for iOS Location Technologies software engineers (no details on what that role is, exactly) among the more than two dozen iOS development positions announced this week.

- Apple Insider

Apple Applies for Trademark on “Places” in Europe, China

Per Patently Apple the applications request a trademark in four distinct classes including: computer hardware, education, application service provider (software) and social networking. It's not clear if this is related to the "Ping" social network for music that hasn't yet seemed to take off.

- Patently Apple

LBS Tidbits

VentureBeat loves The Cartographer, a new app for iPhone.

Mobile maps have never looked this good on the iPhone. The Cartographer is a new app ($3.99 on the iTunes Store) that brings support for custom Google Maps, as well as the ability to download maps for use offline, all in a slick vintage user interface.

iPad version coming soon!

- VentureBeat

MapQuest and Yelp Inc. are fighting back against Google’s big local play using technology from Yext Inc. “The new, $99/month offering lets businesses add tags which include marketing messages alongside the company’s listings across more than a dozen sites, including CityGrid, Yelp, MapQuest and Yellowbook.”

- Media Buyer Planner

TechCrunch thinks a single open POI database will appear in 2011.

Open Places Database: Every mobile app, it seems, taps into the geo capabilities of phones to pinpoint your exact location and show you what is around you. (Incidentally, that is another example of a context-aware app). But there is a lot of duplication going on, with everyone from Google to Facebook to Foursquare creating their own database of places. It would make much more sense if there was an open places database that any company could both pull from and contribute to. While we are not there yet, we are making progress towards a more open places database, or at least a federated one. Factual is providing some of the data for Facebook Places and creating a places database is a major focus for the company; MapQuest (owned by AOL, as is TechCrunch) is adopting OpenStreetMaps (which could very well become the central places database with more resources and development); and Foursquare lets other apps pull from its places database through its API. There are economic reasons why some companies don’t want to participate (controlling the places database makes it easier to serve up local offers), but expect to see this movement pick up steam in 2011.

- TechCrunch

Ushahidi now has a tool to allow “check ins” just like Foursquare and Gowalla. It’s called Crowdmap:CI and is currently in beta for iPhone and Android. It’s not that big a change for those adding data to Ushahidi or CrowdMap implementations. The big difference is that it’s for “quick data points” vs. long detailed reports. “Existing users of our mobile data collection products will find that Crowdmap:CI isn’t that different, it’s simply faster making it easier to drop location points.” It’s expected to be fully available the end of this month.

- Ushahidi Blog via Spatial Sustain

GPS Business News has an interview with Gil Elbaz, CEO of Factual, perhaps the most interesting data startup for those in LBS. Key quote:

“The job of cleaning this data, looking for spammy submissions, analyzing the sources or users that are submitting this data and then trying to boil it down into the right answer requires a lot of technology,” he said.

Also noteworthy: a still being determined business model with fees based in part on how partners help update the datasets.

- GBN