A few days ago i blogged about Google Latitude’s new iPhone app which i installed immediately and have been using since. In your Google Latitude dashboard, you can view your history and even ‘play’ it. Below is a video of my history over the past few days…
The iPhone app is running constantly in the background on my phone, so whenever i move (or whenever it thinks i move), it sends my new location to Google and Google then store it in my history.
As you can see from the video, it’s pretty accurate. Over the past few days i’ve had exams in college between 3.15pm-5.15pm, so i’d leave home at about 12pm and head back home at around 5.15pm. Of course you can tell all that from the video 🙂
Dangerous? Stupid? Possibly, but i love it. I love the idea of being able to remember exactly where i was on a certain date and time and being able to ‘prove’ it to a certain degree. Also, think about the great peace of mind this can offer parents or partners.
Lost? Broke down? Kidnapped? In danger? So long as somebody can access your Google account, they can pinpoint your location to within a few hundreds meters at worst, normally i find it’s very accurate (you can see that from the way it logs my position on roads). For that reason alone, it’s worth having and worth enabling.
You can also share your location with friends (or strangers) which again i think is a good idea. Close friends and family should be ‘trusted’ people and are probably people you’re most likely to interact with in real life. Just today i noticed leateds was in work not because he told me or updated his twitter or facebook, but because of his location on Google Latitude.
So even though he hasn’t told me or anyone for that matter that he’s not at home, i know where to find him. That’s the beauty of Google Latitude if your friends use it, but if not, it still has value even if it’s just to ‘remember’ your movements from place to place.