I know there are a zillion smartphone / cellphone applications that find food near you, but what if I only have a laptop and need to find something nearby? For example, what's the best way to find the closest pizza if I don't know my current address?

Everyone keeps telling me how they find all these great bargains and deals by using the location features in their iPhones, but I have an iPhone too and I have no idea how to find any of this stuff. It's a phone. What am I missing?

An old school chum and I are trying to plan a lunch meet up in Seattle, but we're on opposite sides of the city. Is there any way for us to find a good lunch spot restaurant that's approximately midpoint in a city neither of us knows?

I'm trying to arrange a date and we're meeting mid-point between our houses to minimize driving. Problem is, neither of us know the area very well. Is there some way in Google Maps or some other tool to specify a location and then learn what restaurants are in that immediate vicinity?

I've created a Facebook Places venue for my cafe and am pleased with the results (and the tracking analytics, very cool!) What I'd like to do is offer some sort of coupon incentive to help people spread the word about my place. Can you step me through how to set up a Facebook Deal for my venue and best practices both?

Help! I'm in trouble with my boss: I created a Facebook Places venue page for the bar I work at without getting permission. My explanation: I checked in on Facebook Places and there wasn't a venue, so I created one. My boss isn't very happy, hough, and said the bar owner should own the page. I'm fine with that - I don't want to lose my job! - so how do I delete the page I created before I'm in even hotter water?

I occasionally go to very hip, trendy nightclubs here in Los Angeles and really want to "check in" to them on Facebook so that my friends can see that I'm at the cool party, the favorite club, etc. Can you give me a quick tutorial on how to use Facebook Places to check in so I can do so even in the jostling of the bar or the dance floor?

A colleague of mine had a very weird thing happen yesterday: he checked in to a restaurant just before a lunch meeting, and some random person called the restaurand and asked to be connected to him. He had no idea who it was and it's set off quite a firestorm in the office about whether anyone in the company should use geolocation checkin games. I think it's a bit overblown, but want to know, how can I see who are my Foursquare friends and remove those I don't know?

A friend just pointed out to me that because my iPhone 4 has a GPS built into it, it always knows where I am, and that it records that information in every picture I take with the phone. Since I often post pictures online, I don't want them to all have my exact location hidden within. Is there a way to turn this off?

I know that on mobile devices there are all these cool apps that let you search "near you" for different types of restaurants, etc., and I know that Yelp has some slick capabilities, but I'm wondering if I can find local food, say a good pizza place, near me within Google Maps while on my laptop?

I'm an addict, I admit it, I love Starbucks coffee. Complain all day about big corporate versus small business, but when I'm traveling, I really appreciate knowing I'll get a good cup of coffee or a tasty latte on the road. I'm an iPhone user and have a question for you: is there a way I can find the closest Starbucks drive-thru when I'm traveling somewhere new?

I love the fact that when I look at maps on my smartphone (a Droid X) it automatically centers to my current location. That's super useful to me. Is there an equivalent mechanism that works for laptops so that I can click a button and have a map of my current location appear? I prefer Google Maps, if that makes a difference...

I'm baffled! I want to start using Facebook Places when I'm in public venues (having read your article yesterday about Facebook Places and Privacy, thanks for that!) but it can't ever find my location. Is there some secret to getting it to work on my iPhone 4?

I'm a big fan of geolocation apps and have been using Foursquare almost since it first arrived on the scene. I like knowing where my friends are and having accidental, synergistic meetings with new friends based on my willingness to share my location information. Facebook, however, is a world where I share my status updates with over 1,300 people and I don't really want all of them to know where I am most of the time. If I did, I'd include it in a status update!

That's why when Facebook introduced Facebook Places, I was a bit leery. Worse, not only do they now have check-ins, but they'll show people who are checked in to your current venue even if you're not friends, and will let other people check you in if they're in the same place.

Disaster. But fixable...

I've got a real problem, Dave. My college-age son had a party in my house while my younger children and I were on a trip and now I find that my house is a venue in Foursquare called "Party House". I don't want that. At all! How can I delete my house as a Foursquare venue??

I'm starting to get paranoid about the geolocation capabilities on my iPhone. How can I figure out which of my many iPhone apps are tapping into the geo information and reporting it back to the app developer??

When I go to the local gym and want to check in on Foursquare, I always have to search for the venue rather than having the app just show me it as an option for my current location. What's up with that?

My son and his friends are really into a iPhone program called Foursquare, and whenever they go somewhere, they "check in" so that they can find each other. Neat idea. Is there some way that I can add my own restaurant to the list of places where people can check in so that they'll see we're popular and perhaps check us out?

My friends are all into playing the game "FourSquare" and when I checked it out, it looks like it's only for smartphones like the iPhone. Kinda stinks because I don't have a "smart" phone, just a regular cellphone. Am I stuck in the cold, or is there some way to play FourSquare from my Mac laptop?

I'm a big fan of Apple gear, like you are, and while I've been an iPhone owner for quite a while, I've always been pretty leery about paying for the Mobile Me service. Apparently, though, one of the slick new features is the ability to always find your phone if it's otherwise lost, called "Find My iPhone" or "Find My Phone" or something like that? Coolness. Can you show how it works?

Hey, Dave! Is there any way to find people that twitter in a local area - like your buds in Colorado? I'd love to find someone to have coffee with occasionally here in Key West.