My hubby and myself use Google Latitude continuously. Each of us can know where the other is at any moment, on a map, within the precision of our phones’ GPS units.
It keeps us from having to text silly stuff such as “Are you at home or at work right now?” or “I’m crossing highway so-and-so, will be home in 20 minutes”. And we get the feeling of staying connected during the day.
I also use it to
Quick description for those who don’t know about Latitude:
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The service is voluntary (each partner has to agree to share their present and future locations with each individual partner). The tracked person can turn tracking off and on at any time.
The location is sampled about every 15 minutes, and on the map you see a spot saying “person Y, 3 minutes ago”. Only the most recent location is shown: you don’t see where the person has been in the past, although of course you could keep looking every 15 minutes. If the phone is turned off or the GPS is underground, the tag can say “person Y, 5 hours ago” at your last known location.
Google keeps a person’s location history in their Google account, accessible only to the tracked person and nobody else. You can see where you’ve been in the past week on the map, a few stats like how much time you spend at work in a given week, etc. The history can be deleted manually.
It works with Android and iPhone smartphones. To be effective, it requires some data transfer over the cellular network, maybe a few megabytes a month.
The service costs nothing. Presumably Google can show you better-targeted ads on your GMail page if they know you’re visiting Des Moines, etc.
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I’ve described this enthusiastically to some people around me, and most recoiled in horror. Especially about revealing their position to their SO.
I know a few people who would be good candidates for this service, such as my brother-in-law (“I’ll be there at seven”, he says, and then he shows up at eight and we all eat dessicated chicken). But no, he’s not interested.
So, assuming you had the necessary equipment, coverage and free data package, how open are you to using Latitude or something similar, and who would you share your location with?