Google Latitude gets location history

Also offers nearby contact alerts

11 November 2009 11:13 GMT / By Duncan Geere

Google has rolled out a couple of interesting updates to its Latitude location platform. The software, which runs on your mobile phone and tracks your location, as well as displaying the location of selected contacts, can now display your location history over time.

The company is being cautious over privacy, so you have to enable the feature manually, but once you do it'll keep a record of everywhere you've been. You can choose to delete selected history, or your entire history, should you so desire. You can export it to Earth or Maps, and view a playback of a chunk of history (perhaps a road trip) in order.

The other addition is still in beta, and is called Location Alerts. It lets you choose to be notified by text or email if a friend is nearby. However, given that some people might have a family member or co-worker with Latitude in the same house or office, it also filters those notifications so you're not being constantly bombarded.

Cleverly, it recognises your regular locations and won't give you alerts when you're at those places. You'll only get them when you're at an unusual place or at a usual place at an unusual time. Apparently it takes about a week to "learn" those locations.

Are these additions useful, or a little too creepy? Let us know in the comments.

Via: googlemobile.blogspot.com

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Comments

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Posted by anony, Netherlands