Follow your buddies with Google latitude

Isn’t it cool to know where your friends are hanging out or where your daughter/wife is without calling or sms them? Don’t worry, Google heard your wishes, they launched a new feature for google maps called latitude . Once the user opts in to latitude, he can see the approximate location of his friends and loved ones. Off course, this is possible only if the other party decides to share the location. I guess this features shall come handy in lot of different scenarios. I think its one of the cool features on Google maps.



The things you could do with latitude is more than just location. In fact you can also be in touch directly via SMS, Google Talk, Gmail, or by updating your status message; you can even upload a new profile photo on the fly. It's a fun way to feel close to the people you care about. You can share your location only to those contacts that u trust. In addition, you can also change the location that u want to share with others. This is fun. For e.g. If iam hanging out in Hooters or Twin Peaks, I can set my location to some nearby temple. ( I'm just kidding, never been to such places :-) )

The biggest issue I could think of was privacy intrusion and google has given serious consideration for the same. The feature has built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application. Check out the video below to know more about privacy features






According to google mobile blog , There are two primary ways to use Latitude right now-

1. On your mobile phone: visit google.com/latitude from your phone's mobile browser to download Google Maps for mobile with Latitude. We currently support most of the popular smartphone platforms: Android, Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile, and we are hoping to see Latitude on the iPhone soon. It will be available through Google Mobile App, and you'll just need to download or update the app from the App store to find Latitude in the Apps tab.
2. On your computer: go to Latitude from your browser and add the Latitude gadget to your iGoogle homepage. What's neat is that if you've installed Google Gears or if you're using Google Chrome, you can choose to automatically share your location from your laptop or desktop computer -- no smartphone required!

So folks go ahead and download this cool feature.