Google Latitude

Google have released a new mobile phone map tool that allows users to track friends and family in real-time. The service is called Google Latitude and is so far available in 27 countries.

Here is the now obligatory YouTube video about the new service:



Using the service you can use your mobile phone to view your friends' locations and status messages and share yours with them. You can also view your friends' locations and status messages on your computer even without a compatible phone or data plan.

Once you have agreed to share your location with a friend you can then choose to share, set, or hide your location - or turn off Google Latitude - from the privacy menu. You can also hide your location or share only a city-level location with certain friends.



Users can add a profile photo to Latitude which will be used to show their location on shared maps. Users can also create a status message and check their friends' messages to see what they friends are up to.

Finally, you can add a Google Map gadget to iGoogle, which will show the location of all your friends.

Google Latitude will work with:

• Android-powered devices, such as the T-Mobile G1
• iPhone and iPod touch devices (coming soon)
• most colour BlackBerry devices
• most Windows Mobile 5.0+ devices
• most Symbian S60 devices (Nokia smartphones)
• many Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones, such as Sony Ericsson devices (coming soon)
  

________________