You knew this was coming: location data is now so easily available that someone is giving it away. Location analytics vendor Placed is giving free access to visitor traffic data for 1,900 major businesses, including giant chains such as Walmart, McDonalds, and Starbucks. They hope to spur demand by educating the market.

Perhaps more hopeful for local media: start-up Relevnt is expanding its “location-based mobile network”, which lets local publishers and organizations host interest-based communities which are exposed via mobile app to subscribers. Contributors’ content appears within immediately via RSS feeds and contributors earn advertising revenue. Technically, each community is a Web domain owned by the local publisher and the communities are aggregated by the mobile app. So far, the only way to get the app is through the Apple Store so this isn’t entirely free-range content grazing.

Procrastinators of the world can throw a party whenever they get around to it: Google has once more pushed back complete third-party cookie deprecation.  The new target is “early next year.” Reasons for the delay include concerns expressed by U.K. data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office, an ongoing inquiry by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority, and widespread discontent in the advertising ecosystem.