Facebook Places is a major new geo-location product from Facebook that, starting tomorrow, lets U.S. iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad users “check in” to a business location so that friends can see where they are. Further, users can tag friends with them when they check in, which cross posts the location to the friend’s Facebook account. Users can also see a list of people who’ve checked into the same location, even if they’re not a friend.
After the weekend iPad frenzy, people seem evenly split: 50% of online comments are positive while the other half question the need to carry around yet another electronic device. Yet posts by pilots are all positive if not exuberant. The beauty for pilots is that about 350 aviation iPhone applications already exist. Most of the existing apps will run either in their native iPhone 320 x 480 pixel size, or can be doubled to display larger on the iPad. App developers can rework their applications so that they are optimized to display on the iPad’s larger display. About a half dozen aviation applications have been optimized for the iPad and others are in process.