|
Google Latitude - Friend tracking for anyone with a half decent phone |
|
Written by Hugh Williams
|
|
Thursday, 05 February 2009 |
 Google has recently announced an interesting addition to its mapping technology called Latitude, a geographical location service, soon to be available for every major mobile phone platform that supports Google Maps. Latitude not only keeps track of you and your friend's whereabouts (either through GPRS enabled mobile phones or manually added information) but it also interlinks nicely with Social Networking.
Google will build Latitude into its own Android platform first with an RC33 update, then it will be available on BlackBerrys, Java-enabled phones, Windows phones and Symbian devices, and finally, the iPhone.
For the safety concious users out there, have no fear, as Google and
its notorious privacy controls will require users to manually turn on
Latitude before it will broadcast their location. It will also only
display the most recent location, it will not track daily movement, and
there are also several detail levels to serve your needs.
 For example,
your closest family and friends may benefit from knowing which street
you are on, while you may only want your wider network of contacts to
know you are in a nearby Town or City. You also have to request to be
allowed to chat with someone, and they must accept you before you can
talk to them. You can accept someone else's location and share back,
accept their location and hide yours, deny their location or block
them. You can also change privacy levels for each individual friend
after you accept them by going to their Latitude profile, or for all
friends by entering the "privacy" menu in your account. Once you're up
and running, you can display your location along with a Twitter-like
message: "Down the pub, come and join me!".
Like most technological innovations, and specifically with Google, the
provision of this wealth of information goes both ways, if advertisers
can tap into your location and mash it up with locations of their
outlets or services and your browsing history, you'll be hit with
perhaps the most targeted ads humankind has ever known. Imagine having
your mobile phone kindly inform you that you're two blocks from your
best friend, and in between you both, there lies a Starbucks where you
two can meet. Depending on your viewpoint, ads could become either more
useful or more invasive than ever before.
Like social networks, blogging, and other forms of electronic
communication before it, people will probably be initially skeptical.
But because they've already come to trust Google with their
communication, documents, payment information, questions, research and
family photos, it won't take long for mass adoption to become the rule.
So go ahead: shake your head and roll your eyes at Latitude, then go
ahead and sign up for it. As with Facebook and MySpace, you'll end up
doing it eventually, once your friends begin to pester you for being
the odd one out. You may as well jump on the bandwagon now. Just don't
be surprised when you end up meeting your friend at that Starbucks a
few blocks away.
» No Comments
There are no comments up to now.
» Post Comment
|
