As we prepare to venture over to Austin for SXSWi I’m prepping my Android HTC Hero with all the latest geo-location apps to help me stay on top of all of the activities. Last year seemed to be about what was coming and this year seems be all about ‘where we’re at right now.’ Yes, Gowalla, Foursquare, britekite, plancast and A/R apps are going to have a big week and be all over the news. Yes, we’ve seen this coming for awhile but we’re here and we should take heed now. The world is closing in around us, our meta-data and our social graphs are getting packed in close.

I’m all for discovering hidden communities, great eating establishments and tiny music stores when I’m on the road but I’m getting pulled in too many directions. If we’re to see the wide adoption of floating geo communities we’re going to need some OPEN standards here. Remember the great hope of OAuth? Now the folks at britekite are hinting that a ‘Universal Check-In’ is in their sites. I’m not alone in hoping this comes sooner rather than later. If I was a betting man, I’d lay some cash down on Google to get this off the launch pad first. Yes, I’m happy to share where I’m at, but not at the expense of checking into four, five or even six services.

SXSWi will be about our location, our current activities and the reduction of friction to share this info. We’ll be streaming our conversations (full announcement coming soon!) and our focus will be on the here and now. We hope that if you’re in Austin we’ll sit down and explore what all of this means but if you’re ‘there’ in your own space anywhere around the globe we invite you to pull up a seat and help us parse the impact of the ‘here and now’ world.

[Update: Just after I hit post on Michael’s post, MG Siegler posted on the “war” heating up between Gowalla and Foursquare. Bottom line? Both are rolling out new features this week, and the world of location based services is going to be a focal point for the agenda setting week of SxSWi. –mrh]