Google Latitude

With Google Latitude, you can:

• See where your friends are and what they are up to
• Quickly contact them with SMS, IM, or a phone call
• Maintain complete control over your privacy

Enjoy Google Latitude on your phone, PC, or both.

• From your mobile phone - View your friends' locations and status messages and share yours with them. (Supported phones)
• From your computer - View your friends' locations and status messages on a full screen even without a compatible phone or data plan. Click here to see your friends from your PC.

Overview

• Share locations
  Location sharing starts only when both you and a friend agree. Invite friends via email or easily add them from your Gmail contacts.
  
  
• Control privacy
  You can 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. For more information, see the Privacy FAQs.
  
  
• Share status
  Create a status message and upload your photo within Latitude. It also syncs directly with Google Talk. Check your friends' status messages to see what your friends are up to.
  
  
• Contact your friends
  Quickly contact your friends with an SMS, IM, or phone call. You can also get directions to lead you to your friends.

Get Latitude on your phone
Enter your number or visit google.com/latitude on your mobile web browser.

Mobile: Supported phones
Google Latitude is available on the following mobile devices wherever Google Maps for mobile v3.0 and above is supported:

• Android-powered devices with Maps v3.0 and above. G1 users in the US will be receiving Maps v3.0 in a system update soon.
• Most color BlackBerry devices
• Most Windows Mobile 5.0 and above devices. Note: Some Windows Mobile devices don't support cell-ID location detection.
• Most Symbian S60 devices

Coming soon!

• iPhone and iPod touch devices with the Google Mobile App (in the US)
• Many Sony Ericsson devices

Note: Some older versions of these devices cannot support Google Maps for mobile version 3.0 and above and will receive the most recent compatible version without Google Latitude.

Latitude on Your Computer

• When you aren't on the go, use Latitude from your computer to see your friends on a full-screen map and get in touch with them.
• You can share your location manually or use your computer's WiFi location.

iGoogle gadget: Sharing location from iGoogle
To share your location using the Google Latitude iGoogle gadget, you must set your location manually or install Gears for your supported web browser to let the gadget detect your location automatically. Gears is a browser plug-in that extends your browser's capabilities and has a Geolocation API that allows Latitude to detect your approximate location through your browser.

Use the following general steps to start sharing your location automatically:

1. Add the Latitude gadget to your iGoogle homepage.
2. If you don't already have Gears, install it by going to http://gears.google.com/ or going to the gadget's Privacy tab and selecting 'Learn more' > 'Get Gears.'
3. When prompted by Gears for permission, allow Latitude to access your location.
4. Check that you have allowed the gadget to detect your location in the Privacy tab.

You can always change your privacy settings at any time from the privacy menu.

During a conference call, Hugo Barra, Google Mobile product manager in Mountain View, we had explained that Latitude was designed to convey as simply as possible to its position in its contacts when desired or automatically. The service is fully integrated into Google Maps and is compatible with:

• Most BlackBerry devices (color model);
• Most Windows Mobile 5.0 and higher;
• Most devices Symbian S60 (Nokia smartphones);
• Many mobile phones compatible Java (J2ME) devices such as Sony Ericsson (coming soon)
• Android devices, such as T-Mobile G1 (coming soon)
• Devices iPhone and iPod touch (coming soon)
• The system can use both the GPS in the phone via the tracking antennas GMS (triangulation) through a WiFi connection active.

For example, you go join some friends who are in a restaurant, but do not know where to find it. One of them already can send you their location and then you receive it as a marking on a map from Google Maps. You can also ask for the position yourself to one of your friends by sending a request.

While it works with Google and thus Gmail. Similarly, all will be really effective if the people listed in your contacts. A range of options is available to settle rather how finely you want to share the information that Google recognizes as sensitive. You can adjust:

• The accuracy of the geographical indication referred, as for example by specifying that the city
• The automatic or manual query external localization
• The level of visibility (you can switch to "hidden" at any time)
• The contacts who have the right to see your position automatically, with a defined level of detail for each
• The potential is enormous, but that does not mean that he will meet a huge success because Latitude need phones like smartphones and a GPS antenna to be effective. It takes more that users have a Gmail account and they organize their contacts with him. However, a PC can be installed, for example, allows parents to keep an eye on their children.

Currently the service operates in 27 countries, According to Hugo Barra, it should be within the next two or three weeks.

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.

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