A few days ago I made a discovery. At the exit of Vancouver’s Waterfront SkyTrain station there is a tiny Starbucks, which I passed hundreds of times before. This time I stopped there for a minute longer and noticed a plaque hanging on the wall under a glass cover. It said: “The First Starbucks in Canada - 1987″.

My friends were unaware of this as well. Yet, this is a fact that would make every coffee bought there just a little bit more special.

I am not a tourist in search of landmarks, but I want more depth in my daily interactions. I want to know that Prince Charles and Princess Diana visited the park next to my house, that I walked exactly 10 kilometers today and that eating another croissant would completely negate the effect of yesterday’s work out. I want interesting META-data about objects, actions and experiences I come across.

Clearly, the provider of this META information would be a mobile, location-based application relying on a mix of Wikipedia, web feeds and sensor data. Much of it is technically possible even today. The real issue is bringing these insights to my attention in a relevant and non-disruptive fashion.

The Twitter updates a couple of my friends have hooked up through SMS represent the first step towards this goal. Twitter tirelessly pushes updates from your friend circle to the handset, producing far more noise than signal. A better approach is a passive, feed-based META-stream that alerts you of present and past events in your vicinity. Every kind of haptic interaction is a distraction in itself, so giving the user full control about where and when is the only way to avoid the disruption.

FriendFeed is old news. Prepare for the next step…