MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. It's Tech Tuesday. Innovative companies are unveiling a wave of new mobile apps promising to harness the power of today's location-aware devices. Sites like LivingSocial use that data to offer real-time shopping deals. Your phone tells the company where you are.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThe company sends you fresh offers from restaurants right around the corner. Other programs are reimagining our local economy, creating new ways to buy and sell stuff, and new ways to actually get to know your local bartender or barista. This Tech Tuesday, we're going hyper-local and figuring out how new mobile apps could change our ideas of community. We're inviting your calls 800-433-8850.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIYou can also go to our website, kojoshow.org. Do you have a favorite mobile app that you use in your day-to-day life? You can send us email to kojo@wamu.org, or a tweet, @kojoshow. Joining us in studio is Peter Corbett. He's CEO of iStrategyLabs, a social media and marketing company. Peter was a co-creator of the D.C. government Apps for Democracy contest. He's joined us here before. Peter, good to see you again.

MR. PETER CORBETTGood to see you again, too, Kojo.

NNAMDIFrank Gruber is also in studio with us. He's CEO and executive editor of "Tech Cocktail," a news blog dedicated to identifying new products and trends in the tech world. Frank, thank you for joining us.

MR. FRANK GRUBERThanks, Kojo.

NNAMDIAlso here is Pete Erickson, founder and director of Innovation at Disruptathon, a series of live events showcasing cutting-edge technology. He's the founder of MoDevDC, a mobile developer community for the Washington area that serves as a forum for technical and business issues. Pete Erickson, good to see you.

MR. PETE ERICKSONGreat to be here, Kojo.

NNAMDIAgain, the number is 800-433-8850, or you can keep up with the conversation on Twitter by using the Tech Tuesday hashtag. Peter, two years ago, a new startup called FourSquare introduced a novel concept using your smartphone or laptop to check in at your favorite coffee shop or bar. Last year, FourSquare, it's my understanding, grew by 3,400 percent. Today, it has 10 million users, and that idea of checking in, now it's being integrated into virtually every new mobile app. How does it work? Why is it important?

CORBETTWell, it's questionable whether or not it's important or not. It's certainly interesting. The way that it works simply you download the FourSquare application when you visit your local coffee shop or a restaurant. It will geolocate you, right? So based on the GPS in your phone, it will know where you are. It will give you a list of potential venues that you're at. You click on that. You can add a photo or a comment.

CORBETTAnd then, if it's hooked up to Twitter or Facebook, you can share that check-in experience, the fact that you're actually here right now with the rest of your friends who may be following what you do on the Web.

NNAMDIAnd, of course, if you check in a lot, it's my understanding, that it created a sort of game or competitive dynamic where frequent patrons at any establishment, bar, coffee shop would compete for the most check-ins and then the title of mayor.

CORBETTIt reveals that humans are really simple, right? We -- what is being the mayor of your local coffee shop mean on a mobile application? Absolutely nothing, but you need it desperately. Like, oh, my God, now that I'm the mayor of this place I feel like I'm entitled. I can walk around, you know, with my head held high. So that's cool. People earn badges for checking in on boats or a plane or wherever else that might be. The utility of it is evolving, right?

CORBETTOnce you start to build enough of a network and you've left tips around for other people to know what they should do in places, you see how people find that valuable. So when someone else checks in after me and said, oh, I did that thing that you said you did, you feel good. They try that dish you thought was good, or they went to that venue to see music. So you feel like you're contributing to, I guess, the spiritus mundi in social media where people can share with one another good things they've done.

NNAMDIAre you the mayor of any establishment in your neighborhood? Call us, 800-433-8850 on this edition of Tech Tuesday. Today's mobile devices are multimedia beasts. They can capture and store all kinds of data. They can also transmit all kinds of interesting things about us. All of that data may be meaningless, though, unless someone designs a way to organize it and to share it, and I suppose, in a way, that is kind of a definition of what an app is, isn't it, Pete?

ERICKSONThat's right. You know, the -- first, I'd just want to say that the, you know, the mobile app revolution is really extraordinary, the hyper-innovation that's happening right now. And location gives apps a new sort of context. If, you know, if the Internet revolution is what connected us, mobile apps and their ability to locate us and to gather all kinds of interesting information, photos and videos and whatnot has really unleashed this new wave of innovation.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Can this data change the way you think about your community and your place in that community? 800-433-8850 is the number to call. Frank, over the last year or two, Americans have signed up in droves for daily deals over the Web. The two biggest companies are a local company called LivingSocial and Groupon, which operates out of Chicago. How does the daily deal work?

GRUBERWell, everyone likes to save money, Kojo.

NNAMDIYes, it is true.

GRUBERAnd basically, Groupon and LivingSocial have capitalized on this by offering basically rounding up this excess inventory a number of different small businesses around the country and allowing a place that people can go and actually find those deals in a really easy format. So it started out just by simply emailing people and telling them about certain details and letting people go and capitalize on it.

GRUBERAnd it's turned to a situation now that it's real time with your mobile phone wherever you're walking into a certain neighborhood you can get alerted of certain instant deals. So the ability to be able to save money has now become something that is capable on your mobile phone as well.

NNAMDIGroupon and LivingSocial are the big players in this daily-deal arena, but they're not the only companies that see big potential in this kind of service. Google and Facebook have rival services. What are they and other companies offering daily deals? What are the other companies offering daily deals?

CORBETTThis may sound snarky, but I will say not much. So we set up a Facebook deal for iStrategyLabs. We're down in DuPont, next to Kramer Books. And it was a joke. And we said anyone who checks in here gets a free pony.

NNAMDIYes.

CORBETTThat's a pretty compelling deal. I mean, there are a lot of people that might want a pony. But no one checked in. No one got the deal. It's just -- there's no traction within Facebook deals to see this. The reason LivingSocial and Groupon are so successful is they have a tremendous amount of traction driven originally by email. When you've got 100 million email addresses on a hyper-local basis and you can say there's $20 off of Nando's Peri Peri, you're going to buy that, or a yoga dealer whatever.

NNAMDIBut we've seen other companies like Yelp and OpenTable trying to edge in to this market, so there's got to be some there there, doesn't there, Pete?

ERICKSONNo, there definitely is a there there, and, you know, what you mention things like Yelp, you know, they primarily provide information on restaurants, seems to be the predominant vertical industry that they help consumers find reviews. You think, you know, one of the things that people rely on apps and online services is to find out what others think. You know, we talked a little bit about FourSquare and these other services.

ERICKSONSo what app developers are really busy right now is they're trying to unlock the key to the local markets and connect local retailers with people in their neighborhoods and provide a similar type of offering that the major players can provide, folks like LivingSocial and Groupon.

NNAMDIAnd there's another approach. One company called Looped, it's my understanding, is trying to invert the online coupon model by helping pull together consumers and allow the consumers to set a price for a desired good and then approach retailers to see if they'll accept that offer. Any idea how that's been working out, Frank Gruber?

GRUBERYou know, Looped has been around quite a while as well in the check-in space, and it's interesting to see them kind of now jumping into this space as well. You know, I don't actually use Looped on a regular basis. I don't know -- have you guys really...

NNAMDIHave you tried it, Pete?

ERICKSONI've certainly tried it.

CORBETTYeah.

ERICKSONThere's a dating aspect to it...

CORBETTRight.

ERICKSON...which I found a little not interesting, but that's what - that was my experience and that was probably a couple of years ago...

CORBETTYeah.

ERICKSON...as the married one here, yeah. I'm not using it.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Do you have a favorite mobile app that you use in your day-to-day life? Call us and let us know and tell us why. 800-433-8850. Today, we're going to talk about a whole bunch of new intriguing apps and ideas floating around about the mobile Web. We'll post links to most of the sites and the apps you hear us discussing at our website, kojoshow.org. And as I said earlier, you can keep up with the conversation on Twitter by using the Tech Tuesday hashtag.

NNAMDIYou guys are all early adopters who research and try out these new apps. Have they changed the way you behave as a consumer or as a local citizen, Frank?

GRUBEROh, definitely. The ability to have information at your fingertips allows you to really -- it let's consumers to get kind of a lot more information at one time, and also it allows small businesses or large businesses to be, you know, able to contact you. And so -- I mean, my first point of contact every day is my mobile device, you know, and I think that over the years that has changed. This is the first year that -- there's a recent study that showed that users are actually coming to their phone for Internet rather than going to their computer.

GRUBERSo the revolution is on, and I think the ability for people to contact you via your phone with the ability to send you notifications and whatnot is just going to continue, and it's going to, hopefully, help consumers. In some cases, it can cause negative effects. There are some privacy concerns with being able to track people around the globe with GPS, and, you know, people are sharing so much information with -- in the -- either photos or, you know, text messages or, you know, videos or whatever, and location is kind of the fact that makes it kind of in some cases scary. You know, there's folks that may be sharing a little too much...

NNAMDIYeah.

GRUBER...(unintelligible).

NNAMDIWe're going to get to that in a second...

GRUBERYeah.

NNAMDI...the privacy issue. But, Peter, you're the owner of a small business. Has this changed in anyway the way you interact with your local community?

CORBETTI wouldn't say just because we're a small business. It's probably because of the kind of small business we are. And we do a lot of civic innovation work. What that means is how can we take open government data and turn it into useful and usable Web and mobile services for citizens, and that's what the Apps for Democracy contest was about what you alluded to. I do think that mobile is transformative for local communities.

CORBETTAnd the reason why is we have to build this entire Internet, right, to reach the globe, and now that we have mobile from a GPS, a hyper-local perspective, we can go right back down to the street corner. And what that means is we can understand who is that local small business that has a deal that I want to buy, and I'm more likely to buy from that local location rather than a franchise, potentially.

CORBETTOr who has a need that I can fulfill right now? Does someone need -- and there's the zaarly’s and the ciphers (sp?) of the world who can dig a ditch in my backyard, who can build a fence, who can paint my house, who can paint my shed. Those kinds of opportunities moving out of the traditional framework of a Craigslist into the palm of your hand, I think, will transform local economies as these applications become more widely adopted. It is still early, for sure.

NNAMDISpeaking of owning a small business, do you own or work at a small business? How has mobile technology helped changed the way you interact with your customers? Call us at 800-433-8850, or send us a tweet, @kojoshow. Pete, you were about to say -- oh, was that you, Frank?

GRUBERThat was me, actually.

NNAMDIGo ahead.

GRUBERIt's kind of -- to add to that, going back to the fact that now we've got this platform that's mobile that, you know, Pete had mentioned earlier, it's exploding. It's almost like we had the dot-com boom for the Internet, and then, we had the second coming of it about four or five years ago as Web 2.0. And now, we're kind of getting to this point where we're at the first kind of cusp of the mobile boom because we've got this ability to create these applications that are super rich. People have these tools in their hands, and it's where -- you've got this instant connectivity.

CORBETTThe thing I'd add to that as a small business person -- I mean the ability to travel the world and be completely connected the entire time and not have to worry about continuity of my business is unreal. I went all throughout Asia for 30 days last year and didn't skip a beat and was on, you know, a peak of a mountain in Japan checking my email and responding to clients. I mean that's incredible.

GRUBERYeah. That's an amazing feeling. And the first time that I did that I was actually using a service we haven't talked about called Brightkite. Do you remember that out? That was one of the first check in apps.

ERICKSONI miss it, miss it desperately.

GRUBERYeah. It didn't make it.

NNAMDIWe got a suggestion via Twitter from @Chrisby (sp?) who says, "Another mobile marketplace app emma.com." Have any of you used emma.com? I am not familiar with emma.com. But this we got from @obrienmedia, "Are alerts starting to become noise, clutter on mobile devices?"

CORBETTWell, I think if you've got alert setup on multiple apps you -- yeah, could be getting a lot of alerts and that's, you know, that's one of the things that people can opt in or out of. And that's the nice thing about mobile apps is you can configure your settings very, you know, very easily with regards to receiving notifications and whatnot.

ERICKSONThey're also one of the most powerful interaction components out there, right? So as soon as you -- if any one remembers Gilt when it first came out, the flash sale site. And if you opened up your iPhone or you opened up your iPad, it would just tell you, oh, my God, there's just much stuff for sale and you didn't -- you might not have been buying anything. You clicked and you went and you looked and maybe you bought something.

ERICKSONIt just puts you on that default mode of doing something. So developers certainly keep that in mind whether or not it's gonna burn you out. I think the answer is yes. I almost have no notifications on my phone at this point.

GRUBERYeah, I turned off most of mine as well.

NNAMDIIt's a Tech Tuesday conversation on mobile apps and local living. A conversation we're inviting you to join by calling 800-433-8850. Do you have a favorite mobile app that you use in your day to day life? 800-433-8850, or go to Tech Tuesday hashtag and keep up with the conversation there. Or send email to kojo@wamu.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation about mobile apps and local living. We're talking with Frank Gruber, he is CEO and executive editor of Tech Cocktail, that's a news blog dedicated to identifying new products and trends in the tech world. Peter Corbett is CEO of iStrategyLabs, a social media and marketing company.

NNAMDIPeter was a co-creator of the D.C. government's Apps for Democracy contest. And Pete Erickson is founder and director of innovation at Disruptathon, a series of live events showcasing cutting-edge technology. He's also the founder of MoDevDC, a mobile developer community for the Washington area that serves as a forum for technical and business issues. Pete, what is Disruptathon?

ERICKSONDisruptathon is a company, an idea I came up with a couple years ago. You know, we’re in the throes of the economic downturn. And being an entrepreneur, I decided to start a company that would do nothing but help identify and stimulate business and economic growth. And that's what Disruptathon’s mission is.

ERICKSONWe hold a series of events, of competitive-style events, where we seek to identify the top innovators in different categories that we hold our events around. We recently did an event in the media space at U.S.A. Today and our next event is Sept. 27, focusing on social media at The Washington Post.

NNAMDIThis region has a large number of big tech companies and a lot of people with the kind of skills needed to thrive in this new marketplace. You also run MoDevDC, a community forum of mobile developers in the Washington area. Tell us about that community.

ERICKSONWell, it's a great thriving community. We have almost 1,300 developer members here in the Washington area, making us one of the largest mobile developer communities in the nation. I started it 'cause I was looking for mobile developers and there wasn't any place to go and to look for mobile developers so I started a meet-up group and within a week we had 17 members. This was 2 1/2 years ago, you know, and today we've got 1,300 members.

ERICKSONWe hold two meetings a month and we really cater to the success of the mobile developer whether they're independent or they work for a major company.

NNAMDIFrank, you, like Pete, run events that bring, innovate us together and showcase ideas. What trends do you see?

GRUBERYeah, we host both mixer-style events that showcase all the stage tech start-ups across the country as well as some conferences, a conference called start-up mixology. And actually, Peter and I co-host something called Digital Capital Week, focus on innovation and creativity. And we see trends across the country. Obviously, you know, group-buying like we kinda -- or group deals, like we mentioned earlier, is a big one especially in D.C. and Chicago because of the presence of Groupon and Living Social, but you're seeing that everywhere.

GRUBERMarketplaces, mobile marketplaces especially, are popping up like crazy. I think every day I get another email from a company that's about ready to launch their mobile marketplace. You're seeing, obviously, location-based services are huge, and pretty much every time you load a new app now, they ask you, can I get your current location? So I feel like that's become almost like table stakes, like everyone's asking for your location because they need it to be able to personalize that experience to your needs.

NNAMDIIf you'd like to join the conversation, call us at 800-433-8850. Can this data, this information change the way you think about your community and your place in it? Or you can send us a tweet, @kojoshow. Peter, today as I mentioned, we're talking about a whole lot of apps. Many of which I'd never heard of before we started researching this show.

NNAMDIBut the hard truth is that for every runaway success, like foursquare or Facebook, there are thousands of failed projects that never catch on. What distinguishes a great mobile app from a generic new project? Obviously, the best way to assess the quality of an app is how many users it has. But what else is important?

CORBETTYeah, I think it's really about delivering value to the user. And if you can identify exactly what a human being wants or a collective body of human beings wants and deliver it to them, you're gonna see traction. The way that that pans out from a mobile perspective, specifically in application perspective, is how viral is that thing? Is baked into the architecture of this application that you built the requirement to share specifically?

CORBETTAnd is that just the normal reason why you would use it? Is that sharing mechanism the value itself? So I think Instagram would probably be the best example of an application that is delivering user value that has sharing and virality baked into it. I think it's seven months old now and has, what, two million users, and there's about 15 photos per second being uploaded to the platform?

GRUBERYeah, it's pretty ridiculous for...

GRUBERThey don't even have a website. It is merely a mobile application that is potentially going to be the largest photo-sharing application in the world at some point.

NNAMDIWell, some of our listeners have some favorites of their own. Here is David in Washington, D.C. David, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DAVIDHi, Kojo. Thank you for having me. I always listen to your Tuesday -- Tech Tuesdays. I wanted to comment about one of the favorite app that I use on a daily basis. It's called PhantomALERT. It's basically a GPS-based application that notifies you of, you know, red light cameras, speed cameras and speed traps while you're driving around.

NNAMDIAre you a scofflaw by any chance, David?

DAVIDAm I what?

NNAMDIA scofflaw. Are you looking to speed and not get caught?

DAVIDNo, not exactly. It also gives you, for example, school zones, railroad crossing. I think in a way it makes you a better driver. Being aware of, you know, your surrounding, in my opinion, makes you a better driver. So that's one of the applications that I use.

NNAMDIAnd I suspect that's a fairly popular application, right, Frank?

GRUBERYeah, I've heard of it definitely. And especially if you drive and you spend a lot of time in the Beltway.

CORBETTI hear the New Orleans version of the application has the local drive-through daiquiri locations as well.

NNAMDIThat would make absolute sense if you're in New Orleans. David, thank you very much for your call.

DAVIDThank you, sir.

NNAMDIOnto Joel in Fairfax, Va. Joel, your turn. Go ahead, please.

JOELHi, Kojo. Love your show. My question has to do with smartphones in general. Seems like often when you say smartphones, you're really talking about the iPhone. So I'd like to hear comments on whether or not the apps are as rich for other smartphone users.

NNAMDII'll go around the table on that starting with you, Pete Erickson.

ERICKSONYeah, well, the iPhone certainly started the mobile apps revolution with the release of the iPhone back in 2007 and then the App Store in the subsequent year, 2008. But, you know, there are -- there's certainly the Android-based phones as well. Microsoft has the Windows 7 phone, BlackBerry has, you know, their devices as well. And, you know, there's just so many companies now.

ERICKSONAnd then we also have to consider the tablets, all the followers of the iPad, if you will, getting into the game. So the mobile app space encompasses, you know, phones and iPads and others. And it's very rich with innovation and creativity, and the consumers actually have a lot of choice today.

NNAMDIWe did an unscientific poll on The Computer Guys & Gal, and 60 percent of the listeners who responded had a smartphone. And they did not identify it as an iPhone, Joel. But thank you very for your call. You, too, can call us at 800-433-8850 for this Tech Tuesday on mobile apps and local living. Here is Tracy in Sterling, Va. Hi, Tracy.

TRACYHi. Thank you for taking my call.

NNAMDIYou're welcome.

TRACYI just got back from Montreal, Quebec, and in pre-planning to go to a conference. I checked with AT&T, and it would've (word?) me about $30 to $40 a day to have data on my phone. So I opted not to do that. And then once we got there, we realized how much we really do rely on our phones for everything, from Yelp to just having a GPS for walking around the city. Is there anything out there app-wise or is there a way of getting around what your cell company wants to charge when you're traveling out of the country so that you can continue using your smartphone?

NNAMDIYes, those roaming charges can lead to suicide.

TRACYYes.

NNAMDIHere's Peter.

CORBETTYeah, I have the fortune of traveling internationally, maybe every quarter or so. And when I do -- actually I have AT&T and I found that the international data packages are reasonable, and it's all I really need when I travel. If it's a two-week trip, I buy 100 megabytes of mobile data and that's about all I need.

CORBETTThere's some hacks that you can do that will really help you. The first thing I do is I download that local map in Google Maps to my phone when I'm connected to the Wi-Fi. So it caches all those map tiles, is the technical speak. And then when I turn off my mobile data, I can walk around the city with full GPS walking maps on my phone without using data, which is very powerful.

CORBETTThe other thing that people do is they will typically take a local -- they'll take a SIM card that will have all of your address book, and you'll basically have your connectivity and everything you have from the States, and plug that into a local phone you can buy for like 30 euro or wherever you are. And that usually gives you everything you need when you're traveling.

GRUBERYeah, I was able to do that as well with the SIM card. I took my iPhone and I must use a lot of data. I think it's because I spend, you know, I spend a lot of time sharing photos and whatnot. And one of my trips, I think I went to like five gigs of data within two days, which is quite a bit.

NNAMDIOh, yeah.

GRUBERYeah, so turned that off. Turned that off with the iPhone, got just a phone that was, you know, pretty cheap and plugged in a SIM card. Used that for the rest of the trip.

NNAMDIThat's what I do when I travel internationally as a matter of fact. Tracy, thank you very much for your call.

TRACYThank you. Bye.

NNAMDIOnto Andrew in Washington, D.C. Andrew, your turn. Go ahead, please.

ANDREWHey, I was just more concerned about -- it's kind of like when a lot of the original advertising medias with the radios and the TVs got caught up in the early 1900s, that a lot of businesses that, basically, could not afford or did not have the capability keeping up with the modern technology just, basically, got ran out of business by not really having the best network setup to take advantage of the new advertising.

ANDREWSo I guess what I'm saying is these -- with the advent of smartphones and programs to eventually help you make quote unquote better decisions and deals about things in your areas are, I guess, archaic-style businesses, mom-and-pop joints, things like that, and eventually just gonna start going out of business.

NNAMDIYou mean brick and mortar businesses that do no deploy any of this technology or use it at all? Here's Peter Corbett.

CORBETTI don't think it's about whether or not the technology's gonna drive them out of business. I think being a bad business person will drive you out of a business. Now, if you're not good at marketing and understanding what your consumers actually use to find information about the things they wanna buy, you're doomed. So it's not necessarily about the mobile apps driving traditional businesses out of business.

ERICKSONYeah. It's more about fishing where the fish are, right? So if your customers are using mobile apps, you kind of need to be out there connecting with the fish.

CORBETTAnd, you know, if you're a Persian rug store and your buyers are, you know, 55 plus and they don't care about mobile apps, don't worry about it. You should worry about the things that people who are writing you checks every month or giving you cash, whatever it is, use.

GRUBERRight. Also, I would add that local retailers, they don't have to spend a lot of money developing their own mobile apps because their customers are using mobile apps. So it's really important for them to find out what apps their customers are using, and then make sure that their information is getting put out into those apps, and they're taking advantage of the coupons and deals that they can send out to users that way.

ERICKSONExactly.

CORBETTThe last thing I'd add to that is I would avoid developing your own mobile applications if at all costs. It's not cheap, and it's not likely that it's gonna gain a lot of attraction. So what you need to be thinking about is how do you leverage the preexisting applications that people are using, whether it's a Looped or a foursquare or Yelp or an Instagram or whatever.

NNAMDISo you can get on those applications. Andrew, thank you very much for your call. Of course, this had to come up. We got this tweet from @CLCordingley, "Can your guest talk a bit about the privacy and security concerns around the location-based apps? I use foursquare and Yelp. The possible positive benefits of these new apps is pretty obvious speed. But it raises some pretty serious privacy issues. Don't they?"

ERICKSONWell, there are, you know, there certainly are privacy issues. And what's interesting is, you know, this is a whole new area, the mobile app and geolocation. And, you know, there have been some very well publicized cases. I think Angry Birds didn't have a privacy policy until a few months ago. So, you know, like any new area of business like this, you know, there's gonna have to be some level of policies put in place.

ERICKSONBut that's really important that it's really just a matter of policy with regards to publishing a privacy policy and terms of service for your app. The amount of, you know, innovation that's going on right now is so important in this area, and it's important that we not stifle it.

ERICKSONYou know, there are groups -- the Association for Competitive Technology, actonline.org, recently did a study of the top 500 apps, and they found that, you know, almost all of them were, you know, inline with the right kind of privacy policies, the right use of data, letting consumers know, you know, what they're doing with their data. And of the 450,000 apps that are out there, you know, there are very few bad actors.

ERICKSONAnd, you know, location and commerce and connection are so critical and so important that, you know, privacy should be a concern. Every consumer should make sure that the app they're using has a privacy policy and understand what it is. But it's up to the consumer.

NNAMDICare to add anything to that, Frank or Peter?

GRUBERYeah. I think just, you know, use common sense with when you're sharing information. If you're gonna plan a space and you're gonna check in to certain locations, you know, maybe don't do it right when you get there, when you're leaving, you know, as you're leaving. So if you really wanna share, but, ultimately, you don't have to. If you don't wanna play in that space, you can turn off the settings you don't need to. I mean...

CORBETTA couple of things, and I'll play devil's advocate for a second. So the leaving the venue check in is classic, right? And I've checked in and I've had people show up at that place and I might have just wanted to hang out with that one person there and not see everybody. So if I wanna broadcast my location, sometimes I do when I'm leaving. The other thing is, God, consumers don't have any privacy. The reality is that information about us is being collected in every way, shape and form, outside of even mobile platforms.

CORBETTSo whether you're emailing or you're using the Web and, you know, I started on the Web when I was probably eight years old, and I was told, Peter, everything you do is gonna be on a server somewhere for the rest of your life, and I believe that and I know that that's the case. So I just assume I basically don't have any privacy.

CORBETTThere are great companies here in Washington, D.C., itself, personal.com, that's working in the space to make sure that consumers can bring back control over their data. But it's gonna be a crazy battle over the next three to five years for any of this stuff to shake out 'cause it's all so new.

NNAMDIOnto Matt in Washington, D.C. Matt, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

MATTHello?

NNAMDIHi, Matt, your turn. You're on the air.

MATTHi. How's it going?

NNAMDIIt's going well.

MATTFirst off, I like the show. Yeah, my buddy was telling me about this new app that's called Venga for Android and iPhones. And, basically, what it does is just like list all your favorite restaurants with exclusive deals and, like, dinner specials.

MATTAnd I thought that was pretty cool because it gives, like, restaurants you've actually heard about, like, a chance to be in the palm of your hand compared to, like, these other apps that are giving you, you know, 50 percent off to some, you know, restaurants down the street that you've never even heard about.

NNAMDISo you're saying Venga tends to give you restaurants that are better-known?

MATTIt's more of, like, a -- I think they have over, like, 100 restaurants in the system, maybe, like, you know, up to 1,000 deals. I mean, it's like legitimate restaurants that have, like, a high clientele. Like, I think, you know, the Chef Jose Andres has a few restaurants in the system, like Jaleo downtown and others. And it's -- I mean, it's completely free. They're just -- it's like no ad driven, and it's really user-friendly.

NNAMDIOK. Matt, thank you very much for your call. You know, online communities like Facebook have obvious strengths. But people worry that these technologies, all these stuff we're discussing now might actually be alienating us from the real world, that we retreat in the chat rooms and we end up avoiding the original chat room: our local bars, community centers, bowling league, the places where somebody who's sitting next to you might tell you where there's a good restaurant in the neighborhood. The mobile Web seems like it exist somewhere in between the cyber world and the real world. What do you think, Frank?

GRUBEROh, definitely. I mean, just what we just talk about, you know, checking in as you're leaving, you're kind of exposing information, but you're doing it in a way that’s, you know, you don't necessarily want to run into people in some cases. So that's, I think, a great example of how it's kinda this intermediary area. But, I mean, the mobile device is where you are. I mean, you're pretty much carrying this thing around 24/7 using it profusely. And so I think that those two worlds are blending together very quickly.

CORBETTI think if there were a national association of luddites, this would be their tagline or whatever their common issue. It’s total bunk. I mean, I've seen social technology, mobile technology change the way that I meet new people and meet people en masse. I mean, Frank and I, as Frank mentioned, we produce something called Digital Capital Week. We could not bring what will be 10,000 people together in November in Washington, D.C., without these tools.

GRUBERRight.

CORBETTSo the idea that there -- these tools are alienating us...

GRUBERNo.

CORBETT...is, I think, ridiculous.

GRUBERBringing us together.

CORBETTI would suggest that if you're very experimental you try this one application called Sonar, which I think is very cool. So if you search in the App Store for Sonar, you'll see a little yellow submarine. And what it will do is if you're connected to Facebook or Foursquare, Twitter, et cetera, and you open up the application, it's going to tell you who around you you're connected to, first of all. So it might say, oh, Frank Gruber's here.

CORBETTBut there's Pete Erickson over there, who you're not friends with, but Frank is friends with him and 20 of your other friends. So you start to see the second ring of connectivity around you in physical space. Like that's wild and I like personally. Some people think it's freaky, and maybe it is freaky.

NNAMDIIt's wild and freaky.

CORBETTYeah.

NNAMDIMatt, thank you very much for your call. We're gonna take a short break. When we come back we'll continue this Tech Tuesday conversation on mobile apps and local living. But you can still call us. There are lines left open, 800-433-8850. Send email to kojo@wamu.org. Send us a tweet, @kojoshow. Or you can keep up with the conversation on Twitter by using the Tech Tuesday hashtag. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation on mobile apps and local living with Frank Gruber, CEO and executive director of Tech Cocktail, a news blog dedicated to identifying new products and trends in the tech world. Pete Erickson is founder and director of Innovation at Disruptathon, a series of live events showcasing cutting-edge technology. He's also the founder of MoDevDC, a mobile developer community for the Washington area that serves as a forum for technical and business issues.

NNAMDIAnd Peter Corbett is CEO of iStrategyLabs, a social media and marketing company. Peter was a co-creator of the D.C. government Apps for Democracy contest. One of the more powerful tools available on all cell phones is the text message, short message we can send from one phone to another. Now app developers are examining ways of building out new capabilities through group messaging. Frank, talk about this and who's doing it?

GRUBERYeah. It's something that's kinda come up in the last, I'd say, a year, six months. Group text, I mean, everyone has the ability to text message, right? So whether you're on a smartphone or not, but these start apps have kinda come out to create apps that allow you to group people together in a smaller group and then just text them messages, photos, things like that. So GroupMe is one of them that's kind of taking a lead there.

GRUBERThere's a local company called GroupFlier. There's a company called Fast Society. And the idea is that you want to kinda organize people in to smaller groups and be able to have this communication method nonstop. And so you can go into there app and you can post photos and you can share information, or you just do it via text. It makes it really simple to communicate with people on the fly. You don't have to look up their phone numbers. You have it all kinda in there. It just makes it really easy.

NNAMDIPete, you wanted to talk about this?

ERICKSONWell, I think that -- phone -- yeah, there is so much going on. There's another local company called MyTalk, another local company called SKYFER kind of following the same market. You know, we innovate when we connect whether it's in person or virtually. So I see all these tools as driving innovation and, you know, a lot of goodness out there with the connectivity. The other thing I'd like to add, Kojo, with regards to this market is that it is open for business, and people are hiring.

ERICKSONI get an email almost every day from a company looking to hire people, and these are very good jobs. And all the talk of jobs in the economy, these are very good, high-paying jobs. I would encourage anybody, if they're looking to get into the mobile space is to, you know, go back to school, learn mobile development. It's gonna be here for a long time over the next decade. It's gonna be a very good jobs market.

NNAMDIAnd speaking about how this is fostering innovation, Peter, foursquare, we talked about earlier -- but foursquare has made its data available through an API, which is an application programming interface. But that basically means that any developer can bill his or her own apps or programs using information generated by foursquare.

NNAMDIAnd you flagged an interesting new company out of Atlanta that has taken foursquare's data and basically inverted it to create a thank-you economy. Tell us about We&Co.

CORBETTYeah. I'm not sure if We&Co is gonna survive and thrive, but it's a really interesting take. So foursquare, as we discussed, is about checking in to a location. We&Co is about thanking the people who work in those places, right? So I may go to Raku Sushi every -- almost every single day in Dupont Circle or I go to Kramerbooks or I go to Dupont Cafe, and you wanna know who those people are. People who are gregarious tend to say hello, and this is who, you know, my -- I'm a regular now.

CORBETTHow do you let people in the world know that these human beings are adding value to your life? By being a good host in their location. So I just love that kind of thank-you economy thing. And I know that Frank and his colleague Jen Consalvo have done a lot of work with thank-you economy.

GRUBERYeah. We actually have an app called thankfulfor.com, and it's an online gratitude journal. It has an app. You can literally go out there and either publicly or privately thank people, and it tweets it out or puts it on Facebook. Or if you wanna be private, you could just, you know, have it private. But the interesting thing is it's a public stream. So if they're, you know, they are showing publicly, you can go out and see every day what people are thankful for.

GRUBERAnd I think one that really resonates with me is, you know, I stream through it every morning is -- one morning I saw somebody say, you know, I'm really thankful for the sunlight on my 90th birthday. And I was like, wow, that's pretty -- it made me...

CORBETTGrandma is tweeting.

GRUBERYeah, exactly. Well, first off, they're online. And, secondly, you know, that gave me chills. So it's a, you know, you look at the things that we have and you realize that life is good.

NNAMDIOn to Lisa in Vienna, Va. Lisa, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

LISAHi. This is a question for Pete Erickson. I noticed that last month he had a meet up about people getting sued for patent infringement. And I was wondering about the patent troll's impact on the creativity in the mobile community.

ERICKSONYeah. It's certainly a threat, and it's a threat that's being taken very seriously. So what you have now is because there are a few real notable cases. One called Lodsys. And they received notoriety because Angry Birds is one of the companies they sued. But there's, you know, hundreds if not thousands of other companies that are caught up in this. And it certainly does threaten innovation, but I believe that innovation is gonna prevail.

ERICKSONThere was just a ruling handed down today where a patent troll was -- received a pretty large fine by a judge. So, you know, I have faith that innovation will prevail and that there will be some adjustments made to our patent system to, you know, not allow these, you know, concept-style, very high-level patents from thwarting an entire industry from innovation.

NNAMDIOK. Thank you very much for your call. We move on now to John in Carson, Md. John, your turn. Go ahead, please.

JOHNHi. This is in response to a prior caller's kind of -- interestingly in the app called Venga. I'm not to particularly talk about this app, but one thing that's always made me curious about this app is that, sure, Venga knows that I'm an owner of this app and that I follow certain restaurants. But how do the restaurants know that I'm taking advantage of particular deals that they're coming out with, that they're advertising on Venga?

JOHNLike, with something like Groupon, you know, you buy a Groupon so the restaurant knows that their investment into Groupon is worth this sale. But Venga is kind of -- just like an advertising board that you might take advantage of or you might not. So how do restaurants know that you're going there for that particular deal that you saw on this particular app?

NNAMDIPeter?

CORBETTYeah. I don't know the specifics of Venga's analytics. They're a local company, and they've been out now for about three or four months. I have to assume they've got backend reporting system. The way that their model works, which is different from the other daily deals, mobile apps, is that they're basically charging restaurants a listing fee, which is a pretty smart model. And I -- they're probably getting a couple hundred bucks per listing.

CORBETTAnd if you get a, you know, few hundred in a market and then you're -- nationally, you get 10,000 restaurants, so that's pretty good money. So I would have to assume, as what would become a great mobile advertising channel, you have to report back to your customers what you're doing for them. So there's got to be backend analytics there.

ERICKSONYeah. And I know that company. They presented at Disruptathon. And, as I understand it, they give the restaurants a lot of control with regards to how they interface with the consumer. And that's what you're gonna see in a lot of these mobile apps. They specialize in that particular market. They're specializing in the restaurant market and giving the restaurants as much control as they possibly can get.

GRUBERAnd to add to that, Venga was one of the hottest startups voted by the Tech Cocktail community, so we're definitely gonna follow them as well. You know, if they aren't doing something that's more, you know, action-driven with their deals, I wouldn't be surprised if they did, you know, because it's a little bit easier, and it's a richer communication so...

CORBETTRight.

NNAMDIAnd, John, thank you for your call. Jay Root (sp?) tweeted to ask Frank, "What kind of damage do you guys think that iMessage will do to other group messaging apps like Beluga, GroupMe or A-I-M, AIM?"

GRUBERYes. So -- well, Beluga got acquired so -- and they got acquired by Facebook. You know, there's always opportunity for additional players in the field and what you'll see is that, ultimately, they'll get consolidated. So the bigger players are gonna end up gobbling up the little ones. Or, you know, if one is better than the other -- let's say, you know, GroupMe just dominates and is better than existing applications out there like, you know, AIM and whatever -- they're gonna rise to the top. So I think it's just a matter -- it's a very competitive space, but there's opportunity.

CORBETTThere's gonna be a broad shake-out.

GRUBERYeah.

CORBETTOur company, we use Fast Society, and it's like the hipster of mobile texting, group texting applications 'cause it's like rally your team to go to this place. And we actually use it for operations, right?

GRUBERYeah.

CORBETTSo our COO will send a group text message to the entire company and letting people know, you know, someone left the alarm on or left it off or whatever that is. And then if we wanna go have happy hour, there's a button, which is rally people to do specific things or rally people to go to, you know, Bar Dupont or something to get a cocktail. Apple will probably own 60 to 80 percent of this market, just like they are in a number of other spaces. And then there will always be these niche applications that, you know, a hipster might like or a, you know, a Georgetown crew might like.

GRUBERIt's against the establishment.

CORBETTYeah.

NNAMDIOn to Adam in Gaithersburg, Md. Adam, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

ADAMYes. Good afternoon. I'm enjoying the tech conversation here. My question was -- I'm a video content and a full motion video analyst, but I've always been curious as to, you know, how to best monetize video other than movies.

ADAMAs someone who's interested in getting into mobile apps development or communications, I was just curious if any of your panel is familiar with any of the, you know, streaming technologies which would take video and make it viable for an innovative platform for use, you know, other than movies. I know there's movies people download, but, you know, that was my question, is to find out how a video producer can maybe take advantage of the market.

NNAMDIHere's Pete Erickson.

ERICKSONWell, I think, you know, from a production standpoint, I mean, it's -- it is a very difficult market with regards to getting into the online streaming. But the user-generated video market is something that we're seeing a lot of activity in. A company that did very well at a recent Disruptathon called OneNews allows you to shoot video of an event you see, and then actually put it into a marketplace for news companies to buy and utilize in their newscast.

ERICKSONSo, you know, with regards to production and delivery, I think it's, you know, it's a tall order. But if you want to, you know, help users and user-generated content get into -- get out to the marketplace, I think that's where there's opportunity. Guys?

GRUBERYeah. Go ahead.

CORBETTI think there's another huge opportunity. We recently ran a campaign with Honest Tea, which is based right up here in Bethesda. It's called Honest Cities. And our original methodology was to use 12 iPhones streaming video through ustream.tv with -- these are hidden cameras at pop-up tea booths, right, on street corners across country, 12 cities, et cetera. And what we really needed were people to manage that process.

CORBETTA local streaming news production team is not something you buy on Amazon. It's not something you post to Craigslist. So if you're able to create a network of people that have these new media skills -- basically be able to stream video, let's say, from iPhone 4s to the Web for whatever reason, you're gonna get calls from local news stations to do that. You're gonna get calls from companies. You could create a whole new field of service.

NNAMDIWe got an email from Gina in Takoma Park. "Don't people take vacations from work anymore? I was somewhat horrified to hear about your guest checking work email while on top of a mountain in Japan. It seems to me that it's a poorer world if people don't allow themselves to truly experience life's wonders with which they can totally refresh and renew themselves. We can't do that if we're constantly thinking about work."

NNAMDIIt occurred to me, when I read that, that mobile apps today are not generally about work, even though a lot of people, I think, still think of anything you do online or with a mobile app as somehow having to do with work. I don't know, Peter. Your word.

CORBETTSure. So that was directed at me, for sure.

NNAMDIYeah.

CORBETTI get the work-life balancing all the time, and I -- I'm so fortunate to not have a balance. There is no distinction between work and life for me. It's all life, which is awesome. I'm happy every single day. I'm not stressed out. We have a growing team, which is amazing. The fact that I can be in Japan on a mountaintop, checking email if I need to, means I can go to Japan. If I couldn't check my -- I would have not have gone. I couldn't have done it. And so being -- having all communications and technology integrated into the flow of my life is a blessing, if ever there were one.

NNAMDIWell, here's what Jesse tweeted to ask. "What are the location-based apps you wish existed but are not yet possible to do today?" Frank.

GRUBERRight. That's a good question. Well, let's see.

NNAMDIIf he knew that, he'd be developing it, OK?

GRUBERYeah, exactly. There's -- well, there's so much opportunity. I mean, we're just getting it -- we're at the beginning of this revolution, so there's gonna be so much more. There's still a lot to be done with augmented reality. That's something we haven't really talked about.

NNAMDIYup. Had some questions about it, but didn't get to it.

GRUBERYeah. The ability to augment reality is the ability to see things based on your location and actually interact with them. So there's, I think -- was it Yelp? -- kind of did something where you could find things local by holding your phone up. But as far as the ideal application, it's still to be found out.

CORBETTI'd go for...

NNAMDIFrank -- go for?

CORBETTI would go for applications that enable you to volunteer in real time based on your geolocation or some early stuff from The Extraordinaries, but it's not quite there yet.

NNAMDIPeter Corbett is CEO of iStrategyLabs, Frank Gruber is CEO and executive editor of Tech Cocktail and Peter Erickson is founder and director of innovation at Disruptathon. Thank you all for joining us.

CORBETTThank you.

GRUBERThank you.

ERICKSONMy pleasure. Thank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.