Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Google Latitude

Google have released a new mobile phone map tool that allows users to track friends and family in real-time. The service is called Google Latitude and is so far available in 27 countries.

Here is the now obligatory YouTube video about the new service:



Using the service you can use your mobile phone to view your friends' locations and status messages and share yours with them. You can also view your friends' locations and status messages on your computer even without a compatible phone or data plan.

Once you have agreed to share your location with a friend you can then choose to share, set, or hide your location - or turn off Google Latitude - from the privacy menu. You can also hide your location or share only a city-level location with certain friends.



Users can add a profile photo to Latitude which will be used to show their location on shared maps. Users can also create a status message and check their friends' messages to see what they friends are up to.

Finally, you can add a Google Map gadget to iGoogle, which will show the location of all your friends.

Google Latitude will work with:
  • Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1
  • iPhone and iPod touch devices (coming soon)
  • most colour BlackBerry devices
  • most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices
  • most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones)
  • many Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, such as Sony Ericsson devices (coming soon)
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9 comments:

smokeonit said...

no iphone at the moment! weak!!!!

Anonymous said...

IMHO that's a really cool feature. With tools like Google Map and Google Mobile, unavoidably Google was to come to the "personal tracking market" too. It was just a question of time. The interesting bit now is to see how the companies that are already in that market, and especially those who are generating income from Location Based Services, are gonna react face to what could be a disruptive technology although not new. Traditionnally "tracking technologies" often have a kinda "Big Brother" effect attached to them in despite of how useful they can be. And suddenly here you have it as a "simple gadget" and it's free, it's fun, it respects your privacy, it fits perfectly within a cool mapping system and... it's Google which helps in terms of credibility. Needless to say I like it. And if Google releases someday an API for Google Latitude at QuoVadis Live! we'll gladly embrace it!

Anonymous said...

Obama has a blackberry...I wonder if he will let me track him. I'm thinking not.

Anonymous said...

How is this different than brightkite?

Go Street Maps said...

The "privacy" element is key so that feature will certainly enhance the product.

smokeonit said...

i think BK is the same!

Kevin said...

This is BrightKite with the power of Google behind it. Plus a nice map interface.

Faizal R said...

waiting for iphone app

Unknown said...

When is this gonna be added as part of the google maps api..