Google Latitude - real-time friend finder

Google finally came out with the obvious hack for their gmaps program, a
real-time link to the GPS that many smart cell phones now have. If one
signs up for the program and cons one's friends into signing up also,
then one can see those friends appear in semi-realtime on a gmaps
backdrop.

http://www.google.com/latitude/intro.html

I've been using it on a Google G1 phone for a few days and so far the
results are a bit mixed. The update rate is fairly slow so one often
gets many minute old data. The cell phones (at least the G1) also are a
bit too aggressive at shutting down extraneous peripherals. The GPS
just isn't kept on long enough to get a good lock when the phone isn't
in use and displaying maps. Obviously they can tune this and almost
certainly will in subsequent firmware versions. The unfortunate effect
under the current firmware is that the phone falls back to using
cell-tower and wifi auto-location when it is just sitting in your
pocket. The displayed position in my case is 1 block away using wifi
and 1-mile away when using cell-tower location.

Is anyone else playing with this program yet?

-wolfgang
--
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.full-steam.org/ (ipv6-only)
You may need to config 6to4 to see the above pages.

I liked the AT&T Navigator's ability to "send location".
I don't want my location constantly updated.

Around here, the cell coverage is so spotty that if you don't have a GPS
fix, the cellular location seems to be fixed to just one location per town.

--
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5

dold@74.usenet.us.com writes:

You can do that in glatitude too, but it is a bit more work. They let
you set the position manually (or automatically) and to turn updates
off. I like the idea of being able to push your position just once.
Maybe I'll put in a feature request for that.

-wolfgang
--
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht http://www.full-steam.org/ (ipv6-only)
You may need to config 6to4 to see the above pages.

I tried just "hiding my location", but that leaves my picture as a big blob
on my map. The tiny blue dot should be sufficient for my location.
Maybe a different color, or different _small_ icon when latitude is
enabled, but I don't need to see my own picture.

Logging out makes me log in again with full username and password if I want
to use it. I don't have to log in and out of GMail or GMM.

I did submit "feedback" in some generic place that will probably be
ignored. Make a "remember me" option. Let me copy-paste my location to
the BlackBerry clipboard so I can do whatever I want with it. And let me
use http://maps.google.com on my Blackberry if I don't want to download
GMM.

I was watching "Psych" on USA Network, and they showed a GPS tracker with
some real-looking coordinates. I was pretty sure that the coordinate
featured in the story would be legit, but the others on the screen looked
too far away to be legit in a track, so I thought I'd map them. My GMM
decided that it didn't like GPS coordinates of the form
34 02 21.47 N, 120 17 41.32 W
I tried several other variants of GPS coordinates, but none of them worked,
so I downloaded the new GMM, which requested a BlackBerry reboot. On
reboot there were several security violations, and now I had no internet
applications avaiable on the Blackberry. A second reboot cured that, but
no GMM. A new load of GMM checking the box for application permissions,
and everybody was happy, including looking for the Psych coordinates.

--
Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley Lake, CA, USA GPS: 38.8,-122.5