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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Google Latitude Will Tell You Where Your Friends Are

Google today announced a new feature called latitude for Google Maps. Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. It's also an iGoogle gadget on your computer. Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you. So now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather. 

And with Latitude, not only can you see your friends' locations on a map, but you can also be in touch directly via SMS, Google Talk, Gmail, or by updating your status message; you can even upload a new profile photo on the fly. It's a fun way to feel close to the people you care about.

Check out the video below to see Latitude in action.

Once you’ve shared your location, you can hide it from individual friends or all of your friends at once, or you can turn off Google Latitude completely at any time. You can adjust your privacy settings in Latitude so that you share as much or as little about your location as you want, with whom you want. For more details on Google Latitude’s privacy settings, please check out this helpful video.

Google Latitude is available in 27 countries, and across a variety of devices, including:

  • Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1
  • most color BlackBerry devices
  • most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices
  • most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones)
  • Google.com users of iGoogle

To get started, visit google.com/latitude from your phone’s mobile browser to download Google Maps for mobile with Latitude. Or visit http://google.com/latitude on your PC browser and add the Latitude gadget to your iGoogle homepage.

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