Maybe AT&T and Loopt are reading our blog?   It would be nice to imagine, but either way I’m glad of the news that Loopt and AT&T are working together to support background updating of geolocation from iPhones.

The concept of a continuously published stream of locations for a user is immensely powerful.  Imagine if the iPhone would publish updated geo-location which was shared with applications that the user granted access.    Loopt could let me know that my friend is nearby without me having to open the application to update my location.

I held off writing this post in the hopes of being part of the trial, but unfortunately haven’t been able to use the service first hand.

I can understand charging for the availability of this data, but the charge shouldn’t be associated with only one service — Loopt.   How about a standardized feed of my iPhone’s location that requires authorization to use, AT&T?   Then, I could share this feed with whatever services I wanted.  Now that I would pay for.