Having just come from a two day symposium on abbreviated dial and in-vehicle telematics, I’m still wondering what, exactly, are the services that I’m supposed to be dying to have that are tied to my location.

I walk past Starbuck’s and I get a message that Double mocha something-somthing is 15 percent off? Cute, but so what? I’d never pay anything extra for that. The only real “mobile commerce” application that I’ve ever thought useful is the on-line price checking stuff. I’m in a store, I see something I want, I enter a model number into my phone, and I get a list of vendors and prices. Cool, but even then, how often would I really use that? Once a month? Twice? Even this article says things like:

“The US operators originally saw E911 as a bit of a nuisance, but this year it began to dawn on them that it might be the platform for an entirely new range of services”

But what are these great services? No one seems to know what is marketable, just what is technologically possible.

And don’t blow off the privacy stuff either. The Swiss government did a test this year where they tracked every cell phone movement and databased it for six months. How would you like your fiance to be able to know if you went to a dirty book store six years before you met. How about the opposing campaign if you’re running for office?

Spooky.