I’m already way further addicted to my computer and my iPhone than one man should be, but perhaps this is the price I pay for my goody two-shoes lifestyle.   Sometimes I feel like #5 in Short Circuit, “Need INPUT!!!”

I’ve dabbled in location-aware applications.  Geo-tagging photos, finding the closest gas station…that sort of thing.  But the next generation of location-aware applications have arrived, and some of them are increasingly useful.

Take Locale (for Android), for example.   I’ve often thought it would be nice if my iPhone could use its built-in GPS to know when to turn on its built-in, battery-draining (but speedy) WiFi.    When out and about, I typically turn off my WiFi to save battery life, but then I forget to turn it back on when I get back home.

With an application like Locale (like I said…it only works with Android phones at this point), the phone would “know” I’m home and could flip on the WiFi for me.     Or, it could automatically switch my ringer to vibrate when I arrive at work.

This is much more useful than, say, Loopt, which essentially lets me stalk my Loopt-enabled friends by showing me where they are in relation to me on a map.  Loopt is great for bar-hopping, and finding people in a busy mall…but it’s far more of a novelty than Locale.

Mathew Honan at Wired has gone 8mm-style into the seedy underbelly of living the location-aware lifestyle and has filed a fantastic report of his findings…

I Am Here: One Man’s Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle.