The extension for MediaWiki adds coordinates to articles to be stored separately in the database, as opposed to in wiki markup, which the foundation says makes it easy to query the coordinates of a particular page or a list of pages around a set of coordinates. The functionality will also be available via the API, so developers can utilize it in their apps.

“One of the first major uses of GeoData information will be in the experimental mode of the Wikipedia mobile site, which will allow beta users to see a list of nearby articles,” explains the Wikimedia Foundation’s Max Semenik. “We expect to release this feature into our experimental mode in the coming weeks. In the future, we also hope to build this functionality into our contribution tools: for instance, we’d like to be able to show users a map of articles needing images near their location, so that they can easily take and upload photos of subjects around them missing an illustration.”

The functionality will be supported by all Wikipedia and Wikivoyage sites. Wikipedia in English, German, Simple English and Chinese are already using it.

More on the technical side of things in this blog post.

The Google Maps Tracks API lets organizations build apps that can store, display and analyze GPS data on a map. It’s built on top of Google’s cloud infrastructure, and includes geo-fencing, or a virtual perimeter representing a geographic region.

The Google Maps Geolocation API lets organizations build apps or devices that determine their own location without the use of GPS, by looking up the locations of nearby wifi access points and cell towers. This can save battery life for devices, by limiting GPS usage, and it lets the device work indoors and in remote areas, according to Google.

“The Google Maps Tracks and Geolocation APIs allow an organization to develop customized location-based applications to meet specific business needs,” says Google Maps product manager Nabil Naghdy. “The Google Maps Tracks API, for example, can provide a fleet management company with tools for analyzing data from past and present deliveries. By seeing routing information on a familiar Google Map, they can determine which routes can save time and fuel. Using the Google Maps Geolocation API, the fleet management company can equip its vehicles with advanced positioning capabilities. Even in dense city blocks where GPS dropout is common, a dispatcher can still locate its fleet.”

“The Google Maps Tracks API allows businesses to take advantage of a technique called geo-fencing, where a company can create a virtual region on a map to notify a device when it enters or exits a predefined area,” adds Naghdy. “For example, the same fleet management company could set up notifications that would automatically alert drivers whenever they were 10 miles outside their delivery territory and need to turn around. Automated notifications could reduce dependence on a central dispatcher, allowing the delivery company to use their employees more efficiently.”

According to the company, over 800,000 developers use Google Maps APIs already. The new APIs will simply enable them to use rea-time location info.

Foursquare users can now make one-click reservations at over 25,000 major city restaurants in the U.S., and OpenTable is expanding. It’s as easy as clicking ‘make a reservation.’

The San Francisco-based OpenTable was founded in 1998, and has since seated 280 million diners worldwide. The service is available in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Japan, Mexico, and the United Kingdom. In February, the company announced the winners of the 2012 Diner’s Choice Award, listing the top 100 restaurants in the U.S.

In related news, today foursquare announced that its users can now instantly verify their businesses for a small fee, instead of having to wait up to a month to register via snail mail.

Are you finding geolocation to be useful to you or your business? Let us know how you’re utilizing it.

Foursquare and Gowalla have been largely responsible for popularizing the idea of geolocation-based services. They combine many elements of other social networks such as the real-time functions of Twitter, the review aspects of sites like Yelp, and the social gaming of many networks, but they add location into the mix, which creates a completely new and exciting space.

Although location-based services are still in the early stages, they appear to be having an influence that is similar to the one that social media has had. According to Jay Adelson, the CEO of SimpleGeo and former CEO of Digg, there have been very few trends that have had relevance across multiple platforms and industries. He believes that social media falls into this select few, as well as location.

“Many of us believed for a long time, even throughout the social media revolution, that location also was one of those topics that would really act like a layer, as social has, on top of all these different applications,” he said.

Because he believes so strongly in this idea, he began working in the location space with SimpleGeo, a company that enables developers to easily make location-aware apps. The company has released 3 products since its launch last year including SimpleGeo Context, SimpleGeo Places, and most recently, SimpleGeo Storage.

The Storage platform ties the products together in a way that supports any type of location-aware app. Through Storage, SimpleGeo offers developers a complete infrastructure solution to build location apps.

“Applying that same technology theory that was used to solve some of the social media problems of real-time data in the social Web from companies like Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, Digg, we’ve been able to take some of those lessons learned… and apply it to a geo-spatial problem,” he said.

As SimpleGeo further innovates, we will likely see more location-based apps and developments emerge and integrate into our lives. With this in mind, do you think that location has the potential to impact us in the same way that social media has?

Hot Potato posted to its blog today that it has indeed been acquired by Facebook. "This wasn’t an easy decision, especially since we’ve built up a base of dedicated users," the Hot Potato Team says. "If Hot Potato was going to sell to anyone, Facebook was the natural choice. Facebook is still small, moves fast, provides a great supportive environment for people to be entrepreneurial, and most importantly, Facebook builds great products. We’re looking forward to joining their team."

Meanwhile, the company will be closing down Hot Potato’s actual operations. They will no longer accept new registrations, and they’ll offer a way for existing users to download info from the site. In about a month, they will close everything and delete all user data (none of which will be retained by Facebook, the team says).

As others have noted, Facebook’s acquisitions have generally been talent-based rather than product-based, and that appears to be the case here as well. The question is, what does this mean exactly for Facebook?

The obvious answer would be that Facebook Places will get more feature-rich. There may be some interesting new opportunities here for businesses at the product level (perhaps similar to Booyah’s offering, but on a Facebook scale) in addition to the opportunities that already exist with Facebook Places.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook paid $10 million for the company.

Do you intend to take advantage of Facebook Places for your business? Tell us about it.

Now, not all of those users are using Places or even Facebook on mobile devices, but that doesn’t mean these users won’t see updates about people checking into your business from their friends.

For the people that do use Places from their mobile devices, they’re presented with a list of nearby locations to check into any time they push the Places link. If you’re nearby, that means you. Clearly this opens a huge window for enticing customers to check into your place. You can offer discounts or other offers/incentives for some pretty good branding and word-of-mouth marketing.

Once a person checks into your business, that is put into the news feed of all of their friends. Those friends (not to mention the person checking in) can then go to your Place page and "like" it. I’m sure you can see the potential this feature has.

Localeze provides business listings for Facebook Places, so that’s something else to consider. "Facebook is quickly becoming an important piece of a local business’ footprint giving them more visibility for current and potential customers," said Localeze President Jeff Beard. "Facebook Places is a very powerful social tool for businesses and consumers alike."

WebProNews blog partner Chris Silver Smith has a good article about how local businesses can take advantage of Facebook Places, and simply getting familiar with them from a business standpoint. As mentioned in a previous article, Greg Sterling also has an interesting comparison between Facebook Places and Google Places.

There has been a lot of talk about how Facebook Places will impact Foursquare, and the jury is still out on that one. Foursquare appears to be going along for the ride, letting its service be integrated with Facebook’s. Still, "check-in fatigue" may come into the picture, and users (Facebook has many more) may find it less and less necessary to utilize third party services to check in. Facebook could very well steamroll the "friendly competition".

There’s an outside chance that Facebook could really help Foursquare and the like. Foursquare’s numbers reportedly shot up on the launch of Facebook Places, but I suspect this is just a getting-to-know-you kind of affair as the check-in concept was introduced to a much bigger user base. It will be interesting to see how those numbers hold up over time.

As a business, I wouldn’t immediately start ignoring Foursquare, though you may want to consider putting Facebook front and center when it comes to your customer check-in strategy. There’s a much better chance your customers are Facebook users than Foursquare users.

Will Foursquare reamain relevant? Tell us what you think.

To use Facebook Places at this point, you either need to have an iPhone with the most recent version of the Facebook app or access Places from touch.facebook.com if you have a mobile browser that supports HTML5 and geolocation.

Tap the "Check In" button, and you’ll be presented with a list of nearby places. Then, select the place where you are. If it doesn’t show up you can search for it or add it. Once you check in, it will appear in your news feed and show up in the recent activity section on the page for that place.

You can tag friends with the feature, similar to how you can tag them from status updates or photos. You can also post an update along with the check-in. There is a "People Here Now" section that shows who else is checked-in at a place.

"This section is visible for a limited amount of time and only to people who are checked in there," says Facebook Places Product Manager Michael Sharon. "That way you can meet other people who might share your interests. If you prefer not to appear in this section, you can control whether you show up by unchecking the ‘Include me in ‘People Here Now’ after I check in’ privacy control."

"With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with," he adds. "You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it. When you are tagged, you are always notified." For more on the privacy settings, read Facebook’s announcement.

You can share your check-in info with third-party apps to make other services relevant to you. Friends can share your info with apps unless you turn it off.

If privacy is a concern for you, go check your settings now. You’ll have to uncheck some boxes.

Naturally, there is a whole lot of discussion about the feature out thee. Techmeme has a wide sampling.

Currently, Facebook Places is only available in the U.S.

Facebook has provided us with the embed code for the live video of the event for you viewing pleasure:

Kim-Mai Cutler at InsideFacebook speculates that the launch will be connected with the auto-suggest feature spotted on Facebook today, adding,  "The company has reportedly partnered with location-focused business directory Localeze, the same company that powers conversion of addresses or coordinates into named locations for Twitter. Facebook could use Localeze’s directory to match addresses, and coordinates coming in through the API with businesses that have Facebook Pages."

We’ll find out what’s really going down soon enough. Keep your eyes posted on the video above.

Kim-Mai Cutler at InsideFacebook has a screenshot of a tweet from this account, which claimed to be the official account for "Facebook Places". The tweet read, "It’s true. Watch out for the Official announcement scheduled to begin at 4:30pm PT / 7:30pm ET".

However, if you go to the account now, you are greeted with a message from Twitter saying the account has been suspended. Still, Cutler says the account was followed by numerous Facebook employees.

Facebook did recently release a video channel called Facebook Live. This is a place where users can view Facebook events, so I’d be checking out that around 7:30 eastern if you’re interested.

WirelessWeek points to a survey from JiWire indicating that many consumers are willing to reveal their location data in exchange for more relevant advertising. Even still, given Facebook’s track record for privacy issues, it’s almost guaranteed that privacy will come into question around an location-based release from the company, whether or not concerns are justified.

Auto Suggest for the Status Box

While I don’t appear to be getting this feature, Mike Melanson at ReadWriteWeb reports that Facebook has begun automatically suggesting links to Facebook Pages, Groups, interests, and other users, from a drop-down list of suggestions as you type in the status box.

It’s unclear whether this is a feature that is rolling out to everyone or simply a test.

In other Facebook news, it was announced today that the company, along with Tata Communications, has joined the Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group. "Our deep commitment to site security requires the development of robust technologies and active engagement with organizations like MAAWG.  We look forward to collaborating with the entire working group to aggressively fight messaging abuse."

Check-in app posterchild Foursquare has made some changes to its own privacy controls.

"For example, you can now choose to share your email or phone number with friends, opt out of all Mayorships, and have more control over email settings," the Foursquare team says. "We invite you to check out your updated settings page to review some of the tweaks we’ve made."

"It seems that a lot of concerns over information sharing on location-based services arise from confusion over what is shared and where it’s shared, so we’ve put together an explanation of the different ways foursquare uses and shares location information," the team adds.

The overview can be found here. Among other information, a "Sharing Matrix" can be found, which shows you which elements are being displayed where, what is viewable by friends, and what is viewable by all users.

It’s probably a smart move for Foursquare to talk about this today if Facebook is going to announce its new location features tomorrow, because Facebook’s is going to draw a lot of scrutiny whether they get it right or not. This in turn will bring a great deal of scrutiny to this whole space in general, and Foursquare is right there among the top players.