This is exactly the kind of innovation multiple app stores could foster. The author's example could be served with an HTML5 app. Launch the page from your home

This is exactly the kind of innovation multiple app stores could foster. The author's example could be served with an HTML5 app. Launch the page from your home screen, tap the location button and a custom database mapping web apps to locations presents results. That would work just dandy for a free app. Safari will even let you store pointers to these apps in a local database. If folks want to get paid though, it's clearly handy to have the 'burden' of the pervasive transaction.