Google Latitude Comes to the App Store

[citi]

Lame! Google Latitude doesn't support 2G or 3G iPhones.

Probably ios limitation. Or fake ios limitation

 

[valkraider]

Lame! Google Latitude doesn't support 2G or 3G iPhones.

I can't play blu-rays on my VHS player either. Damn them!

Straw man. All iPhones have GPSs. There is no technical reason the app couldn't run on them.

Wrong. The iPhone 2G did not have GPS.

And according to the Google Latitude blog announcement where they announced the iPhone app, it does support the 3G running OS 4.x but it won't do background updating because the 3G does not have multitasking support.

Lighten up - it was a joke.

The iPhone 2G and 3G are really old. Some times new stuff comes out that doesn't work on old products. Heck, last Friday BestBuy was *giving away* iPhone 3GSs - so there is really no reason to not be up to at least a 3GS now if you care about application support. If you want to stay back at the 4 year old versions - cool, just don't complain about application support.

I remember before the iPhone when most of us NEVER got cell phone software updates... I had what my Motorola V360 shipped with - for the entire three years I owned the phone...

 

[3282868]

Wrong, you do not need an iPhone or even this app to use Latitude, you can set it up all on a computer if you want, please educate yourselves.

Do you talk to people like this normally? If so, wow. "Educate"? In case you missed it, I asked a question. The hint should have been the "?" mark at the end of the sentence.

Let's give it a try:

- How are you today? <- question mark denotes a question
- Does the program allow people to see your location? <- again, notice the question mark

You'd make a great professor, your students would LOVE you.

Originally Posted by bedifferent
I don't know much about Google Latitude. Don't other iPhone users have to have it installed and configure it to allow specific friends to view their location?

 

[reactions]

HUH?

Ahhh... this is just a simple tracking app. Yes it would be nice if it was just a built in feature and may be someday, but what's so bad with what's shown here? Seems decent and Google does good software for the most part.

all these separate apps make it a hassle to use.

streamline it please!

 

[muncyweb]

Glad the "hide my location" feature is available without download...or phone...or service.

 

[genshi]

all these separate apps make it a hassle to use.

streamline it please!

I have to agree, I do find it odd that the actual Google app (with the voice search and Google Goggles) has a list of other "apps" you can click on (e.g., Books, Maps, Earth) yet clicking on those should open up within this Google app itself, but not only does it not do that, it doesn't even open up the separate installed "book" "maps" or "earth" apps, instead, it goes right to the Safari browser. Makes no sense... I now have Google Voice app, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Books and now Google Latitude app, none of which are accessible from the main Google mobile app!

 

[eye]

Another cool piece of tech I have no use for, like Facebook, since I don't care what other people are doing every minute and I'm not dumb enough to believe they care what I'm doing either.

 

[kobiashi]

- Control your privacy - share only city-level location, hide your location, or turn off background updating at any time.

Hey, here's a thought. You can really control what's left of your privacy by not getting the stupid app.

 

[timeimp]

Anyone notice AT&T's absence?

During the video, if you look up the top when the gear icon appears, there is no carrier information. Just the bar's indicating the signal strength.

Is this a setting on JB iOS devices that you can enable or did Google edit out the word 'Verizon' or 'Sprint' for the entire video?

Just puttin' it out there.

 

[cyntaxerror]

google latitude feature

yeah, i tried it, yeah it started to bleed my battery like a horde of starving vampires against the last human on earth.

But I can think of a 'cool' feature! how about a pop up notification that a latitude friend is within a mile or so, asks : "Would you like to call/SMS them?" - would be useful for getting people together. I'm sick of hearing later on: "damn! i didn't know you were in town... if I'd have known...."

 

[junkmail]

Killed my battery

This app drained my battery all the way down to 0 in a few hours even though I had it set not to update in the background. I deleted the app.

 

[bluecooper53]

Inaccurate

I've been trying this app out for the last 24 hours.

- Haven't noticed a battery drain as my phone sits in a dock for most of the day
- But have noticed how inaccurate the thing is. If anyone was checking up on me, they would have to presume that I travelled to work by jet plane this morning instead of my usual bicycle. It was all over the place!

Anyway, I think it's fun. If only I could find some friends who were brave enough to let me track them. I wonder if a facebook version is coming.

 

[crezo]

welcome

welcome to iStalk®

 

[Built]

Why should I care what my friends/coworkers/significant othere are doing and where they are at all times?

And why would anybody else care what I am doing and where I am at all the time?

Fail.

This reminds me of that ridiculous Facebook app...Loopt, I think it is called. Some of my friends use it, and to be honest, I find it kind of distressing. Why not just broadcast, "I am not at home right now so feel free to go over and loot my place." Seriously.

 

[valkraider]

Why should I care what my friends/coworkers/significant othere are doing and where they are at all times?

And why would anybody else care what I am doing and where I am at all the time?

Fail.

This reminds me of that ridiculous Facebook app...Loopt, I think it is called. Some of my friends use it, and to be honest, I find it kind of distressing. Why not just broadcast, "I am not at home right now so feel free to go over and loot my place." Seriously.

Seriously? Have you read anything about this thing at all?

1. You don't have to care what anyone is doing at all times. You just can check if you want to know. Nothing forces you to look at the screen all day watching your friends' locations.

2. You can set your location to only update when you open the app. It doesn't have to be real-time.

3. It only shows your location to people you choose. If they are looting your place you need to select better friends.

I like the idea of being able to see if any friends happen to be in town. I like the idea of being able to quickly check where my spouse might be if we are planning on meeting. If I don't want people to see where I am I turn it off...

People have posted lots of clever ways this app could be used. And people have posted lots of ways you can customize the privacy settings.

 

[Inconsequential]

Been using this since release.

Not perfect tracking, but it will have to do!

 

[pacohaas]

yeah, i tried it, yeah it started to bleed my battery like a horde of starving vampires against the last human on earth.

But I can think of a 'cool' feature! how about a pop up notification that a latitude friend is within a mile or so, asks : "Would you like to call/SMS them?" - would be useful for getting people together. I'm sick of hearing later on: "damn! i didn't know you were in town... if I'd have known...."

I haven't noticed any difference in battery life running Latitude in the background.

Also, your feature request of SMS notifications is already in "experimental mode", they call it "location alerts": http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/11/google-latitude-now-with-location.html
edit: looks like they may have "retired" this feature: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1084508

Lastly for those concerned about people loading this onto your device (or maliciously trying to load it on other devices without telling people), I just received an e-mail from google:

Hi,

To protect your privacy we would like you to know that Google Latitude is running on your mobile device and reporting your location.

If you didn't enable this or want to stop reporting your location, please open Latitude privacy settings or sign out of Latitude. To learn more, visit the Latitude Help Center.

Thanks,

Google Latitude Team

(c) 2010 Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. Terms of Service | Privacy Policy

 

[Tha Professor]

Monitor the children or the other way around..

I turned on the Find My iPhone on my dad's device so I can see if he is coming home already... perfect!

 

[twoodcc]

i guess this is big, with all the location apps and stuff. but i really think users should consider their privacy, especially with apps like this.

 

[Dbrown]

Stalkers will like this ...but then so wont the FBI/US Government??? I do hope Google are able to prevent handing over this very sensitive and personal information.

Like the govt doesnt already know any of your most personal info already? Like your name, DOB, where you live, where you work, how much you make etc.

Look, govt doesnt care that you visit adult bookstores or whatever. If you are a law abiding citizen they cant do anything to you.

 

[fox10078]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Nice app, but I'm still a bit weirded out by all of these location apps. If I want to hang out with someone, I'll just call them and ask to hang. It strikes me as odd that people will find a friend's location using something like Foursquare and then just show up unannounced.

but with foursquare all the attention whore people have something to be proud of if they get a mayorship.

So comical you say that, I see a few Facebook friends who use foursquare and it's exactly as described

 

[pr5owner]

How does this app updating location in the background affect battery life? Anyone used it for a little bit yet?

its only in use when you have the app running, if you close it, it stops running and google servers only relay your last known location.

 

[abc123]

I like this app. It is not something that I use everyday but it is great for trying to meet up with people, seeing how far away someone is (so I know when to put the food on etc).

I'm not sure why it would increase divorce rates. Anyone with half a brain who was fooling around wouldn't set the app to report location in the background. Knowing your partner's apple id password and turning on the find my phone feature seems like a much better/sneakier way of tracking someone if that is what you want to do...

 

[pacohaas]

its only in use when you have the app running, if you close it, it stops running and google servers only relay your last known location.

This is bad info. It uses background locating if available on your device, cell tower triangulation and whatnot.