Google Latitude launched a bit back with a cool feature letting you share your location with friends. Now Google has taken it a few steps further with two major new features. These include location alerts for when friends are nearby and optionally storing a history of your past locations. I feel that may be a bit too “big brother” for some but I know tons of people already do this with similar GPS tracking applications.
The location history lets you turn on a log of all the locations you have been over time. You can always delete selected history points or even the whole history at any time if that is what worries you. Still its pretty cool. What would be even better would be if you could sync up the GPS location with pictures you have taken with your camera so that pictures are automatically geo-tagged in Picasa… I dream big! 🙂
The location alerts is where things get even more interesting. The feature is in beta and simply notifies you when your friends are nearby. They made the alerts smarter by utilizing the location history to make sure you don’t keep on getting alerts when you get to work or home and other routine locations. They will only send you a notification in an unusual place or at an unusual time but this may take some time to figure out your routine.
To enable these features head to www.google.com/latitude/apps. Let me know what you think of them!
DavidB Not Registered
Posted: November 17, 2009 at 7:01 PM EST from my BlackBerry 9630
Hmmm….I thought it was Picasa where Google Earth pulled geotagged photos from and highlighted on the map? Check out somewhere like Hoover Dam for some really cool user photos of the new bridge.
So yeah, a Maps layer of Picasa pics would be cool.
From my BlackBerry Tour…