Keeping frighteningly close tabs on the current locations of your friends, enemies, ex-lovers, bookies, and dealers is one of the hotter trends in the mobile space these days with products like
Loopt,
Whrrl, and Helio's
Buddy Beacon making location-based contact tracking a breeze. Now that Google's getting into the game, though, that business model might start to dry up for everyone else -- especially considering that its so-called Latitude tech will be built into
Android going forward and available for every other platform that supports Google Maps. T-Mobile has announced that Latitude will be built into the G1 starting with the
RC33 maintenance release that's getting rolled out to customers this week -- and yes, granted, it's not
Cupcake, but at least we have some new functionality to toy around with. And yes, we promise we won't mention virtual keyboards in this post... er, dangit. Video of Latitude in action after the break.
posted Feb 4th 2009 11:49AM
I see you.
for every ONE (1) T-Mobile user, there are 10 Verizon and AT&T users. Why bother.
@GeStroup
"....and available for every other platform that supports Google Maps...."
Strongly suggest that you actually read an article before posting on it. Saves you from sabotaging your intelligence level in front of the whole world....
for every ONE (1) intelligent person, there are 10 of you. Why bother.
will this work on iphone?
It will supposedly be available, but when I went to the link it texted me it said "Coming Soon."
Is it just me, or does the "Chat via Google Talk" make anyone think that when this is brought to the iPhone it will be accompanied by Push Notification?
Is there not a google talk app for the iphone? I assume it would just open a conversation when you click on it.
Huh. Too bad it never seems to get more accurate than an 18-block radius on my G1.
Turn on your GPS...
Wow, your phone is messed up. Call t-mo for a replacement. I use the GPS on my G1 to track my cycling trips and always get accuracy down to several meters
GPS doesn't work INDOORS... GMaps will use the cell tower info as a fallback...
Works great on my N95, I'm near london and my mate is in Scotland and it pinpoints is house. If the uptake is good this will be a powerful app for sure.
Too bad all my friends have iPhones.
Yes , that's really TOO bad.
Change friends.
Well, then you and your friends can always use Buddy Beacon :)
CC - Where.com
This works brilliantly on my N95. Im near London my mate is in Scotland and it pinpoints him almost spot on. If the uptake is strong in this feature I think this will be a very powerful app, especially if the iphone TV ads start highlighting it.
Does anyone know how to do updates on the Dev Phone 1? Does over the air work?
Cheers
does the g1 have bad recept? everytime i talk to this guy he breaks up real bad.
I havent noticed any problems (nor have the people I talk to)
My guess is that its T-mobile's service in your friends area and not the phone.
I've had T-mobile for several years, and the G1 gets better reception than any other phone I've used on the service.
what is cupcake?
Ooh nice, can't wait to stalk my friends from a distance.
*Insert evil laughter and lightning*
Now if only Google can get GPS based positioning working properly in Google Maps Mobile on the Blackberry Storm... :-(
Ditto.
Why is it included inthe update?
Are G1 owners too lazy to go online and simply download the new google maps?
At the risk of sounding like an idiot, does the other party need to send you some type of message to ask you whether or not it's ok if they can track you? Or if they simply have your number in their contacts, they can track you? Suppose you don't want to be tracked, can you shut that feature off?
Regards,
Paranoid in Seattle
There's a privacy tab where you can turn your location off.
This is working great on my Nokia N82. Just waiting for friends to install.
Did u watch the video? They show an option to hide from select friends.
Didn't watch the video(at work), but thanks for your replies! I was thinking of getting the G1, but if I was being tracked by my friends and family constantly I'd go nuts! I could here it now, "Why are you at McDonald's? You know you shouldn't be eating there!"
Well, you really shouldn't be eating McDonalds... maybe you need this...
@anonymouspimp
True, save me from myself G1! You're my only hope! Seriously though, you're right, McDonald's is crap, I need to stop eating there.
Google Latitude will start to make location-based social network/tracking more mainstream. We expect Facebook and MySpace to join in this game soon. We don't see companies like Loopt and Whrrl to become that successful as it's much easier for an existing social network to turn location-based versus the other way around.
We blogged about Location-based Services Trends in 2009 earlier this year, and these are coming into reality.
Nice... I can keep a tab on ma "Ho's"
that damn cheatin whore. Also, you have the option to turn off if you dont wanna be seen or not, so for exes this aint gonna work to well, lol, and who keeps there numbers afterwards anyways, except for the middle school whores. o and just regular day to day sluts which is like a contest for them to see who has the most numbers in her cell, stupid
test
It's released in GoogleMaps v3.00 for S60 too.
The future is based on Google
Hmmm..... so... all we have to do to end terrorism is to capture the G1 of the most popular terrorist....
Or send a subpoena to Google to force them to reveal the locations of the terrorists.
I can see why some people might light this. Lots of insecure friends, la touristas, etc...
For me, I prefer anonymity.
Actually I would think anonymity is for your insecure friends... don't want them knowing you are at the botox shop or dirty video store.
Whatever.
This is an awesome but oh, so scary app!
i hope this RC33 has more than just latitude. im not asking for cupcake, or even anything near that level, but if they can fix a few bugs here or there it would be nice.
if i install and uninstall too many apps within a short amount of time it makes my phone run extremely slow(even after reboot), my pictures/photos thumbnail cache files to be corrupt, and my phone to say there is no SD card inserted when i go into camera mode. (instead of wiping the phone though i found i could just uninstall a handful of apps i don't really use, and then delete the camera and pictures thumbnail folders so the phone will have to recreate them. so at least it's a workaround for now.)
this is a scary app, this is gonna suck if i wanna cheat on my boyfriend.
I've had this installed since noon on my T-Mobile Blackberry Curve running 4.5. I have three friends who just added it and it seems to be so-so. For instance, when I was at work, it had me spot on. When I went home, it pin pointed my location about five blocks from where I really was.
-You can "select" your location if you want to fool people into thinking you're somewhere else, (or correct a location error like I did). One of my friends has his location in the White House. You can too, simply say you're at 1600 W Pennsylvania Ave Washington D.C. and BAM, your photo is imposed over the White house lawn.
One of the cooler features is turn-by-turn directions for driving OR walking!! "use caution" it says when walking.
You have to use the iGoogle homepage if you want to see your friends locations if you do not have a capable cell phone, which is more inconvenient than not if you ask me.
Does this update add any sort of Walking or Transit directions to the Android Maps functionality?
I've been missing Transit ever since I canceled my Sprint service...It worked PERFECTLY on the Blackberry.
Awsome I can't wait. Just hope jesus freak gets his hands on this update soon. I love the g1 awsome phone. To hell with the iPhone g1 blows it away. Simply with copy and paste alone which apple hasn't added in like what is it two years. Ever since I got my g1 I haven't even taken my iphone at once. For the while does have better apps on the iphone just wait. With the way the econmy is got t-mobile is going to start doing a lot better. Starting sometime soon att looks like employees are going to strike against att. And in this last year verizon only did so good because of altel merger. Long live g1
I cant get this new Version of Google maps to work on my Samsung Omnia sch-i910. I cant type in any of the text fields?
you have to use the regular keyboard instead of samsungs keyboard... then it'll work.. but i've been having trouble getting gps reception.. not sure if im even able to yet at this point tho, considering how much verizon likes to downgrade their phones
the thing thats stupid about google i hope they read this they make applications for andriod then they will realease it on other platform so if i have to pick between and andriod,osx iphone and windows mobile and andriod had some really good application so im gonna get a g1 then ic an article andriod gives up advantage iphones will soon have googles subspace transmission application crystal signal clear all the way to jupiter then i'd be like sh1t i'll just get an iphone
Dude, use a period. U do not make any sense