While working on some location-based features for a side-project app, I've been struck by how different my reading habits are depending on my location. My reading flow (crawl, save, read, write) ends up being structured by if I'm on a subway, at home, at the gym, in a casual moment at work...all places my phone could be aware of.

So how might we deliver news differently if we know where are readers are and are able to infer their current state? I'm envisioning an Instapaper which serves me short blog pieces when I'm on the go and long reads at home, but I'm stuck there. How might knowing the mode of your audience change delivery and/or production?

Waiting in line for coffee, gym, subway, home ... don't forget the bathroom.

I wish I had a clear cut answer to this, but I find this difficult because a majority of my mobile consumption is built on articles I saved on my laptop browser. When I call up Instapaper or the Longform app, I am excited and anticipating specific articles. Adding a location variable to this would probably manifest itself as an organizational tool. For example, I would add a tag to this Vanity Fair feature because I know it would be great for a commute where as this Grantland oral history is well suited for the treadmill. I think this strategy is too limited for mass appeal.

One random idea: tying content to location for user generated travel guides.

To your point about using Instapaper (for me, Pocket) or other tools to select your own content in advance-- I wonder if delivering news based on setting needs to be automated, or whether users prefer to do it themselves.

I ask because some research suggests many people (particularly the young and urban) already engage with multiple sources for information in a setting. pewinternet.org

(Also, shameless plug - we're wrestling with this at Knight Foundation in a prototype contest we're running on location-based technology & community information - beta.newschallenge.org if anyone's interested).

If younger audiences are more content agnostic than previous generations, location-based reading tools may be desirable. For example, what if when I sat down at a Starbucks and opened Flipboard and my content was filtered by my social graph + editorial + timeliness + location + time of day? Location is a useful variable as you can predict that people (or even my own behavior) like to read shorter to medium length stories while waiting in line. If I am at the Starbucks for more than 10 minutes, the app can assume that I am staying for a while and promotes longerform content.

In the long-run, location is part of the equation, but is not the sole determinant for what I want to read.

Chris - would you send me a beta invite? Thanks.

To take Noah's point one step further: location is part of the *interface*, something that gives publishers and devs a clue about what the user wants or needs now.

You can't know by a location what features or content a reader might need or not need. You simply can't make those assumptions.

Make good options for users, make easy routes to share the URL by email, and design your app/site/component in a way that easily interconnects with the other tools in the reading ecosystem.

Great examples of systems that work well are Reeder and Pocket, which sync across devices, share to and ingest from other services, and adapt to the availability or absence of an internet connection.

Max, I agree that location can't pick the perfect article. But an educated pick is better than no pick at all, especially when you're dealing with a pool of content the size of the NYTimes. Right now, the NYTimes' current solution for fitting a newspaper broadsheet through a 4-inch screen is ordering articles by date and importance, as defined by an objective editor. Is there no place within this arbitration of articles for location to help?

I completely agree that better navigation makes this less of an issue, but we're always going to have to decide what articles to show and which we're going to hide. Location can be part of that equation.