Find your friends in real time with Google Latitude
Google today launched Google Latitude, a service from social geolocation be added to Google Maps that allows mobinautes to share their locations with their families.
Access to Google Latitude is in the new version 3.0 of Google Maps for Mobile now available for phones in BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile versions for iPhone and Android are expected in the coming weeks. This is to add the email addresses of his contacts to his list of friends who can share real-time position, phone number and status after having given their consent. It is possible to configure each of its contacts with what degree of precision exchange its position with precision in real time through GPS or cellular triangulation, or by manually entering or hiding in his position.
It is unfortunately not yet possible to get in touch with his friends in Google Maps. The email address and, where appropriate, telephone number, however, are easily accessible.
Access to this service is done on computer using a widget for the personalized homepage iGoogle. It gives access to the same functionality as the mobile application, the position in this case is obtained from the WiFi access point that the computer is connected.
Google responds to a certain extent to Yahoo Fire Eagle, which for its part is a platform that interfaces with other social services. TomTom also offers a similar service called TomTom Buddies, for owners of some of its autonomous GPS.
With this new service, Google will now be able to target advertising by location and not only focus.