New York, NY - Wanna find where your friends are? Search engine pioneer Google Inc. has added a mapping or a tracking feature to allow the users to track the locations of their friends, family and colleagues via Google Maps on a PC or mobile device.
The Latitude program, which is a feature in the mobile version of Google Maps (but not on Apple's iPhone yet), will start tracking after you and your friend have opted in to the program. With this feature enabled on your wireless devices, you can track friends in 27 countries and 42 languages, according to Google.
It can also work with iGoogle on your laptop or personal computer. The list compiled by PCWorld of compatible phones are:
*Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1
*iPhone and iPod touch devices (to be enabled soon)
*most color 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 (to be enabled soon).
If you do not have a smartphone, don't worry. Visit google.com/latitude on your desktop or laptop to install the Latitude iGoogle gadget and share your location right from your computer.
The new Latitude program can be used through your Google account. Once you sign in and you can easily invite friends to Latitude from your existing list of contacts or by entering their email addresses.
According to Mountain View, California-based Google, "Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you.
So now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather."
Check out this video to learn more about the privacy features. For your mobile, visit the Google Mobile blog for more details. There you can upgrade the mapping software.With the Latitude program, you can see your friends' Google icon displayed on Google Maps. By clicking on their icon allows you to call, email or IM (instant messenger) them. Moreover, you can even use the directions feature on Google Maps to help you get to their detailed location.
“It really enables a new type of social interaction,” Steve Lee, product manager for the mobile version of Google Maps, told Bloomberg. “It increases our user base and also increases the amount of usage per user.”
Google's Latitude program can only keep the most most recent shared location by you on its servers at any time. So if you decide to not to share your location with a particular person, then Google doesn't hold any information on your locale at all.
For instance, if you are flying from New York to California, but you don't want your friend on the West Coast to know about your surprise visit, you can manually set your location for elsewhere — perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls.
"Since you may not want to share the same information with everyone, Latitude lets you change the settings on a friend-by-friend basis," Google said. "So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide."
Everything is under your control, the company claims. What I wonder if some time it can get annoying. What if the federal authorities ever try to force Google to track your exact location?
"Fun aside, we recognize the sensitivity of location data, so we've built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application," Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google’s mobile team, wrote on the Google blog. “You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see.”
More Updates To Follow
