The notion of a 'Digital Valet' has become increasingly popular in recent times. What I mean by this is a move to make the online experience a much more personalised medium for users. The Digital Valet would be extremely knowledgeable about your habits - so much so that, by analysing your history online together with your current behaviour it would be possible for it to predict what you needed next even before you ask for it.

Marketers are now looking at ways of making this a reality. To do this, they need to layer our online browsing and shopping behaviour over our social circles whilst also pulling in our contact list and calendar. By fully integrating these different areas it becomes possible for a system to anticipate our next needs.

A simple example would be booking your next holiday where the system can present you with options based on when you and your family are all free, where you have gone before and what is currently affordable to you. By cutting out all options that are not suitable, you are presented with recommendations without having to do the sorting yourself.

The really exciting arena for this concept is on mobile phones. Buzzd is a service that aggregates user input around nightspots - both directly from users as well as open sources like Twitter. Their 'Buzz Meter' feature allows you to see where the best night is happening in real time, localised to your position.

Once Buzzd starts learning its user's habits and preferences, it could then apply filters to the world around you. Geo-location hardware can infer experience and behaviour, such as whether you have been in this city before, what kinds of artists you have purchased, food you have searched for, or clubs you have frequented.

It is with this extra level of background knowledge that a new layer of service can be added to simple geo-location. If the system knows I am a vegetarian, then that local city map of relevant resources should look very different to me than it would to a steak fan. A jazz fan might be notified that an artist he has purchased before is playing that night in this city, together with info on ticket purchase.

The value of geo-location is not in knowing where you are but who you are. You, your interests and behaviours become a filter laid upon the world.

This all sounds quite futuristic at the moment but this technology is just around the corner. It won't be long before a tourist visiting Belfast will be using their mobile to recommend what to do, where to eat and where to stay. Recommendations based on an individual's personal taste and behaviour carries more weight than recommendations based on other peoples tastes.

The real barrier to these services would be the issue of trust. For these to work, the system would need to access private personal information from users. A genuine trust needs to be established between the user with their information and the tech company seeking to access it in order for both to benefit.