Disqus
There was a bit of a false start with Google’s location-sharing service last week, but today Latitude for iPhone is now available to download for free.
Google Latitude is a service typically bundled in with their mobile Maps app that uses a smartphone’s GPS unit to share your location with a set of trusted friends. You can hide your location whenever you want, and you get to pick and chose specific contacts who have access to the information. It’s a bit more specific than services like Facebook Places, Foursquare, or Gowalla, which only share your location when you actively check in to specific spots. By contrast, Latitude is always humming away.
The iPhone version is a long time coming, as Android, BlackBerry, and Symbian have all been rocking Latitude for awhile. Until last spring the iPhone couldn’t handle multitasking, and as such a Latitude app couldn’t quietly run in the background, sending GPS coordinates to the mothership while users went about their business. Google offered a clunky web-based alternative, but now that multitasking on iPhone is pretty commonplace, owners can now get onto Google’s location-sharing bandwagon.
To download Google Latitude for iPhone, head on over to the App Store, or check out the Latitude home page for more info.
[via PhoneScoop]
Update: O hai official blog post and video.
About The Author
Simon Sage
Simon Sage’s education largely surrounded writing, technology and online community, leading him to begin his blogging career at www.BlackBerryCool.com and to quickly discover a vibrant and active community surrounding BlackBerry and mobile technology. In exploring RIM’s platform, he has learned what enterprises are looking for in mobility as well as what makes the innocuous BlackBerry so appealing to them. Recently Simon’s been covering RIM’s gradual move into an already-crowded consumer market, and the impact of burgeoning challengers, such as the iPhone, as well as long-time leaders, like Nokia, on BlackBerry’s advancement. With plenty of content under his belt, Simon will be branching off a bit to see what other smartphone manufacturers are working on while still using BlackBerry as a barometer. At IntoMobile, you can count on his posts being even-handed, well-informed and thought-out.
