Google’s Ride Finder is the kind of application that will become handy when you have an iPhone. A Google Map shows updated real-life data of cabs in U.S. cities, tracked by location. I zoomed into San Francisco and clicked “update location” a few times. It really shows how the cabs are moving. Say you are stuck in the city and need a ride. You simply walk to the next cluster of cabs and get a ride home.

Expect a lot more of these applications to emerge with devices like the iPhone. A year from now, competing phone manufacturers will have updated their browsing experience to catch up with the iPhone. On the users side of the experience, the Web is now leaving the desktop or laptop and evolving towards a semantic web, where Web applications tie in with real life objects and situations.