Google Latitude Applications

I don’t know how I missed it, but within Google Latitude there are now options for sharing your location with others. Just go to the Google Latitude Applications page and enable the options that suit you. There’s an option to allow your IM contacts to see your location within GTalk (Jabber), and there are also options to get alerts from friends when you’re close, but away from your ‘usual locations’.

One of the more interesting features is the Public Location Badge. Although a possible privacy nightmare, having access to your location in KML and JSON format means that developers can start to utilise location without having develop individual mobile clients that use the GPS. Personally I would like to see the WordPress GeoRSS plugin use it to suggest my location when writing these posts.

I think there’s an additional corner which could be cut if we really opened up, by using the location information stored within the mobile operator’s network to give a rough location, without even having to run an application on the phone at all. This might sound closer to a 1984 scenario than anything before it, but the possibilities of knitting services tightly around the location of it’s users would be an incredibly valuable prospect.

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Duncan Sample

A Solution Engineer at Nokia Siemens Networks with interests in converging technologies, Location Based Services and information management.

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