If you need to know if you’re the last person to arrive at a party or how far away the train is stuck from its destination, Google today launched the solution. Google’s Latitude, a new addition to Google Maps for mobile, now allows you to share your location with your friends and family as well as keep a track of theirs.
Latitude can be downloaded on the mobile phone and invitations can be given to friends and family to join Google Latitude to track their locations. However, the location based service only works with prior permission from the other person. Privacy settings can be adjusted in Latitude so that you share as much or as little about your location as you want, with whom you want.
So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide. Everything is under your control and, of course, you can sign out of Latitude at any time. It is also enables the user to communicate with friends through text message, instant messaging or a phone call.
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 will work in 27 countries at launch.
The application is independent of mobile operators and can be downloaded free of cost from the Google website. “The only cost that the consumer will have to pay is the data packet charges that are levied by the mobile operators. This has no revenue advantage for us since this it is not linked to sponsored advertising, we just want to promote the use of maps on phones,” said Vinay Goel, Head - Products, Google India.
Latitude will work on Research In Motion Ltd's Blackberry and devices running on Symbian S60 devices or Microsoft Corporation's Windows Mobile and some T-1 Mobile phones running on Google's Android software.
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Latitude also helps you find the nearest eating joint, cinema hall or shopping mart to your location or near the destination of your choice. Latitude uses Google's technology to judge a user's location not just by GPS satellite, but also by proximity to mobile phone towers and wireless networks.
Companies including Verizon Wireless, owned by Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc, already offer Loopt's service, which also works on iPhone from Apple Inc.
“From our side we are encouraging the use of data and internet usage on mobile phones through our compelling applications however now operators need to provide cheaper data plans to push this movement,” said Goel. “In China it was seen that the overall mobile market has grown by leaps and bounds in the past couple of months, since the Chinese mobile operators dropped their data packet prices by over 70 per cent. In India about 15-20 million users that use internet on mobile phones, which also have the capacity to grow to a much larger number,” he added.
Google, which recently launched its Ocean application where not only surface maps but under-water images can also be viewed. The company also has offering specific to the Indian market. Google has features like SMS Channel where one can SMS his search query and get the answers through messages. This includes options where he can get updates on the chosen subjects like paddy rates, market movements and latest news. “Out of the over 300 million mobile users about 20 million use SMS as a popular way of communication. Therefore we have launched our SMS Channel. We have also done a pilot launch for our Google Phone Search in Delhi and Hyderabad, which facilitates voice based search” said.
"One can call a 1800 number and so its toll free and search just like on the Internet. We have put in a voice recognition that will be backed by operator," he added. The programmed has not been launched commercially since fine-tuning of voice recognition is still required. Google is also planning to launch this service in various local languages.