Last night’s meeting of the Web 2.0 Mapping Meetup at Google focused on two great things that go great together: Web 2.0 user collaboration and mapping software. The speakers and their mapping/adventure travel content solutions were all over the map. On one side was the REI solution. REI is a billion dollar company or co-op (depending on your point of view) that has been around since 1938 and has almost 100 stores. Their solution was a work in progress. The speaker was really still figuring out what directions to take it and was looking for feedback from the audience.

On the other side was Eye-Fi, a 20-person that produced location smart cards that could be put into any camera and send the geo-tagged photo via wifi to a network storage like Flickr.

In the middle was KQED Quest, a local PBS station that is looking to geotag all of their content and make it available on the web. Many of the major pieces of their site are together, but many more are still in the works.

Friday was not as big a day for Apple as they were hoping it would be. The newest version of the iPhone with 3G and GPS was finally released. Customers were waiting in line for hours, but then tragedy struck. The iPhone could be purchased, but it could not be activated. Many of these fanboys and fangirls were left to wonder why they had spent hours waiting in line in the first place. It took them a few hours and a few hundred dollars for an iPhone-shaped paperweight, but they are finally thinking what the rest of the world was thinking when looking at the lines.

This latest problem at Apple on what should have been the best day of their year does make you wonder.  Rumor has it that Steve Jobs may be taking some time off to focus on this health. His frail appearance at last month’s Apple WWDC made people realize that the public concept of Apple is completely entwined with Jobs’ personality. No one outside of Apple is clear on who would take over if something did happen to Jobs. Not a good state for a very successful publicly traded company and certainly not the norm. Even Microsoft had a smooth transition from Gates to Ballmer.

But maybe the biggest sign that Apple may have reached a transition point is that Fake Steve Jobs is giving up the blog. Even he found it too hard to joke about Jobs when his health was not the best.

On of the pluses about attending MobileMonday last night was that I got a chance to signup for the early bird discount for Mobile Beat, even though the deadline was back in June. If you have not heard of Mobile Beat, it is a conference being put together by TechCrunch and PlugAndPlay on the mobile industry. I am sure that we can expect many more conferences from both groups in the future.

I am looking forward to the conference, but I am a little wary. I am one of these people who actually check what I am agreeing to  before I sign up for a service. When I  clicked on the “Terms and Conditions” link for this conference’s registration, which was powered by their chosen service of Amiando, I was sent to a great looking Terms and Conditions page. At least I think it was a Terms and Conditions page. It was titled “Informationen zum Fernabsatz und zum Vertragsschluss im elektronischen Geschäftsverkehr” and was completely in German.

So I might have registered for a conference, or I might be the newest investor and/or employee of TechCrunch. Until my German improves, I will not know for certain.

Finally, someone is stepping up to help consumers properly dispose of old electronics. Of course, when I say consumers, I mean me. I am tired of tripping over my old computer monitor that is decades old and weighs a ton. Best Buy has a trial program to allow consumers to recycle up to two electronic products a day.

Recycling electronics is all the rage. As I was writing this post, a radio commercial announced that Goodwill was having a recycling event at a local mall this weekend.

Hey, Steve Jobs, what can you and fellow Apple board member, Al Gore, do for recycling of Apple’s old products? A recycle program could really put those pretty Apple stores to good use.

Portfolio.com published an interesting article on the percentages of married women who work. It turns out that married woman will show up in an office more often in the rest of the US (67%) than in NYC (49%). The busiest worker bees are in Minneapolis with a rate of almost 80%.

Some New Yorkers might make a cruel remark that if you are stuck in the rest of the US, that you might as well work since what else do you have to do. In NYC there are certainly plenty of things to keep a married woman busy in the city that never sleeps. But I have to disagree with Zubin Jelveh, the author of the post. He hypothesizes that the main reason for the drop in working women was the long NYC commutes since all the other usual suspects such as children and labor market conditions were ruled out. I have heard of many reasons that a woman might not work or continue to work, and the commute was not a big part of it. If a woman wanted a job, she would not let a commute stand in her way.

What is my theory? Sorry for the obvious Sex and the City reference, but I would guess that there are quite a few Charlottes-wannbes. NYC is one of the most expensive and most competitive places in the world and attracts the best and brightest. To compete in this market, you have got to really want it, and you can’t get distracted. If you are not completely certain that you want to be part of the rat race and you have a source of income that can provide for you, then not working is probably your best option. Honestly, do you know anyone who is so unhappy with his job that he would quit if he won the lottery? Same thing. It is just that many people who are frustrated with their work do not have the option of quitting.