Google Latitude for Mobile
Posted by Sam Churchill on February 4th, 2009Google today announced the release of Latitude. Google Latitude lets users share their locations and is built into Google Maps for Mobile and iGoogle, which lets users create a customized home page.
The opt in feature offers up the user’s rough location, placing their profile picture on a map accessible through a PC or mobile device. People can share their precise location, the city they’re in, or nothing at all.
By clicking on the map-based icon, friends and family member can call, text, e-mail, or IM the user. Maps will also provide driving directions to their location. Once they’ve opted in, users can hide their locations from indivduals or the entire group at any time.
Latitude is part of Google Maps for Mobile, the company’s mapping software for mobile phones, but also can be used through a gadget loaded onto its iGoogle customized home page.
It’s currently available in 27 countries for a variety of smartphones, including Android phones, Blackberries, Windows Mobile phones (5.0+), and Symbian S60s. An iPhone version will follow soon.
It relies on Google Maps’ My Location feature, which uses the signals from nearby cellphone towers to plot a user’s whereabouts. GPS is not required. Google’s earlier text-based Dodgeball application was never more than a niche application.
Rival geosocial networking applications include Brightkite, Dopplr, Loopt, MobiFriends, Sniff, Tripit, Whrrl and Yahoo’s Fire Eagle. On a Nokia, it’s similar to Contacts on Ovi, Nokia FriendView and BuddyCloud.
The service also competes with fee-based location-based services offered by mobile providers. Those include Sprint’s open location platform such as Sprint’s Family Locator as well as GPS-based solutions for Verizon’s Chaperone and AT&T’s Locator services using Where.com.
Stacey Higginbotham says, Qualcomm announced a location-based recommendation engine powered by Xiam, on Monday. The service (offered through carriers) takes demographic information, a user’s personal preferences and geographic location, and serves up lists of places and events that the user might enjoy. As well as ads.
Many location-based application now combine cell tower triangulation with Wi-Fi positioning service from Skyhook Wireless. The main advantage in these location based services is that mobile users don’t have to manually specify ZIP codes or even have GPS.
On your mobile phone visit google.com/latitude from your phone’s mobile browser to download Google Maps for mobile with Latitude. They currently support most of the popular smartphone platforms including Android, Blackberry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile. Google product manager Steve Lee says the smartphone audience has grown tremendously. In the U.S. alone, the potential audience is 50 million phones.
Google Maps for Mobile also makes it easy to see Street View imagery on a mobile. Street View is currently available on a variety of mobile phones.
source : dailywireless.org
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