I was sitting in on the beginning of the CivicSpace Labs weekly IRC meeting yesterday, kicking around some ideas with someone from Amnesty International (or at least the UK branch, I believe). We were talking about different sites for different geographic regions, and how to share relevant information across sites. (Note to self: get in touch with "willmoy")
When I got home that day, I got a flyer from the False Creek Community Centre (ouch, that site hurts the eyes a bit -- they need a Bryght Site!). Why did I get that flyer? Because my postal code is in an area that they define as "close" to them. Wouldn't it be interesting to receive electronic information the same way?
Today, we read and aggregate RSS feeds based on our interests. But bring geographic information into it (whether it be postal code based or latitude/longitude), and we might be notified of happenings in our area automatically.
I know there are lots of services out there that have some aspect of geo-information -- GeoURL shows sites in your area, Geocoder can give you map information for an US address, and Multimap is my favourite for maps of anywhere. Even Upcoming.org or Craigslist have aspects of both information and physical proximity, but not quite what I'm thinking of.
This isn't a fully fleshed out idea, obviously. So I'm looking for an interesting collision between topics, physical location, and automated discovery/delivery of new information.
Now let's hope we don't have to start dealing with Geo-SPAM anytime soon.