Owners of an iPhone can share their location with friends using Google's sharing service Latitude. The company recently presented that web application.

Latitude is a service for mobile phones that keeps friends informed of their location. On a map they can always see exactly where they are located. If the phone has a GPS receiver, Latitude determines where the owner is. Otherwise the software tries to estimate the location based on nearby masts of mobile network. Users can also manually specify a location.

Details

Who installs Latitude, can decide how detailed the software works. Users can share their location at street level, but also program that others may only see in which city they are located. The location information is only available for people who share information with eachother.

iPhone

The Latitude Software is available for various smart phones like the Blackberry and phones running on Google's Android mobile operating system. Big absent was Apple's iPhone. Google now developed a web service that makes it possible to use Latitude on the iPhone or iPod Touch. Those interested can use their browsers of to surf to the service: www.google.com/latitude

App Store

This bypasses Apples App Store, the Store for iPhone software. Users of Latitude don't need to download or install any application. Apple iPhone applications imposes the restriction that it can not be used in the background, blocking a Latitude application on the iPhone to send location updates at  any time. This web version does not solve the problem: only when users access the Web with Latitude, the service is active.

Source: Nu.nl

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