On Thur, Google announced the release of Google Latitude to iPhone. Google Latitude is a location-aware application that has been around for months for mobile user to share the location with friend, coworker or anyone in your contact list. This service is not new to Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile users as Google has already brought it to their devices. And, now it finally comes to iPhone (but in the form of web application).
What’s Google Latitude
For starter, Google Latitude uses the built-in Global Position System (GPS) of iPhone (or cell tower location if GPS is missing) to find out your location. You can then share your location with friends or family members.
At the same time, you can also keep track the location of the counterparts and view it on Google Maps.
To learn more about Google Latitude, check out the video:
Google Latitude as a Web App on iPhone
On iPhone, you can only access Latitude using Safari and it requires iPhone OS 3.0 or later. To access Google Latitude, you can simply point the browser to: http://google.com/latitude and accept to share your location. The main interface displays a list of friends who they have shared their location. You can always click the “Add Friends” button to share your location and invite others to share their location.
Tapping the “See Map” button, you can view your friends’ location in a map. In the map view, it also offers a sleek menu to let you access different map features such as switching to Satellite view or showing the current traffic.
Google has put lots of effort to develop Latitude on iPhone. But it’s quite disappointing that Google implements Latitude as a web application. And that means Google Latitude can’t update your location in background. Your location will only be updated manually.
Like me, many of you may expect Google to develop a native app for Latitude. Google definitely know it too and they have explained why they put up a web app instead of native one (oh! it’s because of Apple!):
We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users. After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.
Google, like Apple, continues to push for improvements in web browser functionality. Now that iPhone 3.0 allows Safari to access location, building the Latitude web app was a natural next step. In the future, we will continue to work closely with Apple to deliver useful applications — some of which will be native apps on the iPhone, such as Earth and YouTube, and some of which will be web apps, like Gmail and Latitude.
Privacy Concern
Google Latitude is completely an opt-in service. That means, Google won’t share your location with anyone unless you enable it. And, you can always access the privacy option to hide your location. Furthermore, as claimed, Google doesn’t keep any logs of your location.
Still concern about privacy and feel unsafe? The best way is not to use it, not to share where you are.
Go ahead and Try it Out
Presently Google Latitude web app supports iPhone/iPod Touch OS 3.0 or above. For now, it’s available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. To try it out, just point your browser to http://google.com/latitude.
As always, remember to leave comment and share with us your experience on the application.
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Solving the always-on problem:
If you feel like jailbreaking your phone (totally worth it!) then there’s an app called Navizon. It’s a simple location finder app which also can update your location to their website at navizon.com. It has the usual buddy and friend stuff, but there’s two main things that set it apart.
1. There’s a version of it (free and not) in the app store, but the jailbreak version (same company) has an added bonus: it can run in the background. Basically, it includes a daemon that will run every ten minutes and update your location to navizon.com.
2. The navizon.com website can relay your position to Fire Eagle, Yahoo’s location awareness API system. This can then be hooked up to anything that supports it.
Example usage that I’m using, so I know it actually works:
a) Navizon software on the iPhone.
b) Navizon website relays to Fire Eagle.
c) Facebook app called “Footprint History” receives updates on my location via Fire Eagle.
d) Result: box on my Facebook page, which only my friends can see, showing my exact location and a path of where I’ve been for the last few days.
Neat, eh? Battery life is impacted slightly, obviously, but it’s not really that noticeable IMO.