Fibbing to your boss or partner about where you are just got tougher, thanks to Google Latitude, which maps your geo-coordinates and informs people on your friends list about your location.
Ever dug your own grave? Pranav Mehra, a sales executive for a company in Mumbai, claims he recently did. It started when Mehra introduced his boss to a new cell phone app — Google Latitude. This service taps into your cell networks to zero in on your geo-coordinates, and, once done, it copies those on to Google maps on your cell phone.
“While giving the demo, I made the mistake of adding my boss to the list of friends I shared my location with. Once the demo was over, I completely forgot about the incident and moved on,” said Mehra. Little did he realise that this oversight would land him in a soup. The next time Mehra texted his boss that he was running late for the meeting because he was stuck in a traffic jam, the tell-tale application squealed that he was still at home. “It went downhill from there as my boss insisted the whole team install the application. Now I happen to be the least popular person in office,” sulks Mehra.
Mehra might not be a fan of Latitude any more, but the service has a strong fan following, especially amongst youngsters. “It’s a fun way to track your friends’ locations,” says Sanjana Patel, a college student from Bangalore, “we know exactly where the gang is even without calling or texting each other. Sometimes this can turn into a nightmare, though, like it did the time when I took sick leave and my teacher found out, thanks to my friend’s phone, that I was in the canteen.”
Latitude is a simple tool that runs on all kinds of smartphones with operating systems such as RIM, Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian. You can just download the application and opt to allow your location to be automatically updated every few minutes. In addition to tracking your friends’ exact locations, you can also send text messages or call friends directly from the list that appears next to your map. The service takes in a search function that lets you find nearby spots like hotels or movie halls simply by typing a keyword into a search box. Latitude also offers directions to and from friends’ locations.
Privacy is, of course, an important concern with any kind of location tracking service, but Latitude is an opt-in service. So users get to pick who gets access and what level of information they can see. For instance, you could decide to give family and close friends access to your exact location, while your teacher or boss can find out only which city you are currently in. For times you need to go dark, you can simply opt out of broadcasting your location.
Some think, however, that turning off location notifications is just not enough. “There should be a way to broadcast a false location,” says Aniruddha Kulkarni, a Pune-based software consultant — “Take, for instance, a case where you want to avoid going to a wedding in the family, but not hurt your relatives’ feelings.” Latitude has made provisions for such cases too, by allowing manual location setting. With this option, you can set your location as being in a certain city no matter where you are.
There are other interesting uses people are putting this service to; Prashant Iyer and his wife use this tool to coordinate timings for local trains. “My wife travels three stations ahead of me. Earlier, in case my wife missed her regular train, I had to wait until we could catch the same train. But experimentation with Latitude is helping me save time,” says Iyer. “I must say, though, that the service is not very accurate, there have been times it showed my wife at office when she was already on the train.”
Latitude is not the first of its kind, but it has an edge over services such as ‘Loopt’ since it ties into the computer-based version of Google Maps. Hemal Kantharia, a college student in Mumbai, uses this to put his mom’s mind at ease. “My mom is in Vadodara and she constantly worries about my whereabouts,” says Kantharia, “so I set her computer to my Latitude to see where I am at all times.” Funnily, he has also found a way to keep his mother’s peace of mind intact on those nights when he goes out clubbing; he simply leaves his phone in the hostel, so his mom thinks he is blissfully asleep!
Latitude has invited a lot of attention on its Big Brother aspect, but Google put the issue to rest by saying they don’t store any history data. Latitude replaces your location by the last known coordinates and erases the rest. There is another issue of this tool turning into a stalker’s dream. But one can simply pick people they trust for broadcasting their location. Finally, there are two other hiccups with the service one should be aware of. First, the programme runs continuously in the background (even when you are not using the phone). So it hogs battery constantly. It also uses data minutes non-stop, so if you don’t have the unlimited plan, you can run up huge bills!
Very good post but difficult to understand cause I’m spanish speaker
click here for spanish version
http://www.ajatus.in/es/2010/02/what%E2%80%99s-your-latitude/
Alternatively You can select your language from the top right corner in this page
Difficult issue. Buzz turns an email platform into a rudimentary social network tool. I persistently admired Google in view of their search spirit. Although here I disagree with them. My life is in these days a majour threat. Although Google began taking serious the privacy concerns, Buzz still needs to overcome its problems. the people at Google seem to be playing with others data. Google has to do some better generalization about its proximate activities.
BUzz has just started. Lets see whats next from google.
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