Marsbot Was Ahead Of Its Time

Remember MarsBot? M.G. Siegler (@spyglass.org) asked a question yesterday that got me thinking: "Where is the 'Where I've Been' Service?" He took a trip down the SoLoMo (social, local, mobile) memory lane with apps like Foursquare, Swarm, and Gowalla. His focus was on the location history aspects of these apps, but I wonder if the "where are my friends?" function of those apps was the bigger draw, and if apps like Find My were the real nail in the coffin. I personally gave up on the check-in apps a long time ago, but I never stopped the habit they helped me form of saving places I've been. I'm less consistent than I used to be, but I have 15+ years of starred place data in Google Maps and Apple Maps. My workflow these days is a rolling "Want To Go" list in Apple Maps that I then convert to a starred place after I've been there. I keep hoping Apple will turn Apple Maps into a new application layer via a Map Extension framework. Instead of standalone apps that use MapKit to organize…

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