While at first these innovations will be useful for social purposes like tourist guides and games for kids, as the technology grows and evolves, business applications will join this digital party.

At a conference in Lisbon last week, I watched a bunch of technology journalists scream and laugh and shout as they zigzagged around a park. They were taking part in a virtual 'whack a mole' game where the objective was to 'whack' as many moles as popped up from the ground in 10 minutes. The moles existed only on the map of the park that they viewed on their iPaq devices. As a virtual mole appeared in a section of the park they had to run to that location to 'whack' the mole. The game took only a few minutes to make, yet had the laziest and most cynical of the pack getting much-needed exercise while also having fun.

The game and the map were created using MScape technology (www.Mscapers. com) created by HP Labs. Unlike other location-aware applications, MScape software will work on any device that runs Windows Mobile software and not just on HP iPaqs. HP is also giving away the tools for building these maps and games for free and has developed a very loyal community who are building guides and games for locations all over the planet. HP is also actively listening to this community and the next iterations of the technology might use Bluetooth and GSM and might work on other operating systems too.

Nokia is also getting into the act by giving people the ability to use their phones as digital spray cans.

When someone goes into an RFID-enabled area, they can tag the area with a picture or a message.

The applications for this can be as silly as a virtual graffiti wall, where people can leave Bebo-style messages saying 'Sarah woz ere like', or more useful purposes such as leaving reviews of restaurants and services. For the Nokia service to work, hardware has to be installed at each location but as GPS technology becomes ubiquitous, Nokia might change its model to follow something like MScape.

These technologies from HP , Nokia and others will allow businesses to place links to their websites on maps, will broadcast special in-store offers as people pass the shop and provide 24-hour services to people if the office is closed.

There are distinct advantages to putting a digital layer on to the existing world, instead of creating a whole new virtual world, like the virtual world Second Life. To use Second Life, you need an always-on net connection, a powerful enough computer and special software. You also need to be glued to your seat.

With digital layers you can get game-crazy kids out of the house and into parks and towns, exploring the history of a town while interacting with virtual characters who educate them; likewise they can add their knowledge to these layers.

The Nintendo Wii game console is getting people out of their seats to a smaller extent and encouraging them to leap around their sitting rooms. Locationaware mobile games might take this to a whole new level.

Apart from Japan, Ireland has the highest usage of games consoles in the world and we're also up there with the best for mobile phone usage. It would be nice to see that translating into being the fittest nation in the world too.