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Google Latitude?  (View post)

DPic [PersonRank 10]

Wednesday, February 4, 2009
15 years ago10,013 views

http://i.gizmodo.com/5145901/google-latitude-friend-finding-maps-on-smartphones-and-pcs

DPic [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

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

DPic [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Sorry to triple post--

http://www.google.com/mobile/default/latitude.html
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Oq-9enE-k

Add to iGoogle to view from computer
http://www.google.com/ig/adde?source=imag&bpig=1&ga=a&moduleurl=www.google.com/ig/modules/fv.xml
Uses Google Gears

Share location from computer's wifi?
http://www.google.com/mobile/default/3
link currently broken

I tried to access it from my phone but it simply said coming soon

BrianS [PersonRank 7]

15 years ago #

Looking at the iGoogle gadget for this, it appears that Google may call the overall service "Google Friend View." I'm guessing we'll see Friend View integration in other Google Apps in the future.

http://www.google.com/ig/modules/fv.xml

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

it's gawker for non-famous people

James Xuan [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

"it's gawker for non-famous people"

Brilliant! I laughed at my computer furthering my families thought that I'm crazy.

The service is cool, and could help me and my friends out when I'm out of Credit. Buuut nobody here had GPS phones yet :/

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I'm able to geolocalize me on the map but I don't know where to log to this new service

DPic [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Here's the login page.
https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=friendview

The service is called Friend View

David Hetfield [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

This service rock!

In the meantime, i'm able to see Tom and Danny's location.

Wayyy cool! :D

Above 9 comments were made in the forum before this was blogged,

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Here's an interesting point:

You can choose the level at which you would like to share your location with your friends by clicking their name and selecting one of the following options:

   – Share best available location
   – Share only city level location
   – Hide location from this friend

However, when you add new friends it always defaults to "Share best available location" which may not be what you intended and there doesn't appear to be any way of changing this until they accept your invite and have already see your "best available location".

Surely it would be best to set this in your Privacy options by default. So as well as:

   – Detect your location
   – Set your location
   – Hide your location

You would also have:

   When sharing your location:

   – Share best available location
   – Share only city level location

... which would then be customizable for each friend.

David Hetfield [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

You're right Tony.
They should work on their privacy a bit more..

BTW, why did you stop playing with Latitude? :P

David Hetfield [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I've just got an invite, and i did get an option to hide my location, so maybe they're working on it right now :)

And for some reason, I can't see your image, Philipp.

KMB [PersonRank 7]

15 years ago #

Can you login with Google Apps doman accounts, or do you have to login with only Google Accounts?

Why can't Google link correctly to http://google.com/latitude ? Now it only says "visit google.com/latitude on your mobile web browser." You have to tap in the whole adress instead of clicking a link.

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Google has closed Dodgeball one month ago and now they are reopen it?
so stupid.

Hugh Isaacs II [PersonRank 1]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]TOMHTML

We didn't use it when it was named Dodgeball, so now we might use it named something with Google in the title.

Make sense?

It's just a simple branding change, with better privacy settings and not designed as another social network to have to deal with.

Just a simple app.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> BTW, why did you stop playing with Latitude? :P

I had work to do. That's all... ;-)

Pau Tomàs [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]TOMHTML I thought exactly the same when I first saw the service... of course Latitude isn't exactly Dodgeball but seems like they closed it just to made some buzz.

MZaza [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

In the homepage of this product the sample image is for people in Egypt and in the video it's giving an example for people in Egypt. And it's not available in Egypt!!!

TOMHTML [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I'm wondering is Dodgeball team is really behind this new product... I *HOPE* they are...

Ianf [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Tony Ruscoe "... customizable for each friend."

So first we have to grad friends acc. to the level, or degree of continguous real-time disclosure about our whereabouts? Good luck.

[ This reminds me of an early 90s SPY Magazine feature on degrees of familiarity and friendship that could be achieved between/ by two friends (i.e. "consenting adults"). At the very top of the heap, as stellar example, were Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Also, if you answered "yes" to all the questions, and gotten the top score, you WERE either Mick or Keith. So there.]

DPic [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Hey Philipp,

You thanked DPic and Danny in the blog post-- if Danny is the "Danny Piccirillo" that send you the Google Latitude invite, that's me =]

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> So first we have to grad friends acc. to the level, or degree of
> continguous real-time disclosure about our whereabouts?

That functionality is already there but it's only accessible once they've accepted your invite to share your location rather than before they've accepted your invite.

But what I'm saying is that you should be able to set the default level and then adjust it for individuals. Since I've got way more "online" friends than "real" friends in my Gmail contacts, I'd prefer to set my default to "Share only city level location" and then give more details to my close friends rather than the other way around.

genny [PersonRank 0]

15 years ago #

Also in this area, namely the mapping of the profiles, videomap.it came before.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Oops, thanks DPic, fixed :)

DPic [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Oops again! I'm still seeing both DPic and Danny, although i remember there being three other names thanked, and now there are only two. Did you remove someone else? xD

Tomi Häsä [PersonRank 5]

15 years ago #

Too big for my Nokia 5140i mobile phone when I tried downloading it.

Ianf [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

[put at-character here]Tony Ruscoe
> you should be able to set the default level and then adjust it for individuals.

I don't dispute the method, I question the principle. Now what we all need is a public Latitude API, so people can write tools to enable settings of disclosure acc. to arcane rules of time/ space/ and/or proximity to other graded friends in one's Contact list. Like "Share, hell! BROADCAST best available location TO friends of grade SEX but ONLY IF it's friday after 9 p.m. AND my date calendar EQUALS nil." This logick enuff 4u? ;-))

> I've got way more "online" friends than "real" friends in my Gmail contacts

Ah, so friend-grading's already begun? ;-)) Wonder how many shades of grey[*] there might be in between the two extremes of "online-only" and "truly-real" friendship.

[*] I may be somewhat biased here, as my father once came up with and defined a so-called "Gray scale" to compare with samples and thus judge saturation of color, still used in the textile industry to this very day.

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

I guess there are at least two basic approaches in regards to sharing settings:

1) define who another person is in regards to you; what the other person can see follow this definition
or
2) describe what another person can see

A case of 1) could be "person is a good friend, but she does not like my spouse, and she can get drunk too easily". The rules that could follow are: share location except when spouse is in a near-by location; share location except on weekend nights if I'm near a pub. This is a bit of an extreme example, perhaps a more traditional example could be "business aquaintance" vs "close buddy", which could have the rule that you don't want to meet (share location with) your business aquaintance during the weekend, but reversely you don't want to have your buddies pop up in your office or perhaps when you're deeply involved in your work in a net cafe.

A case of 2) could be: the person X (whatever their relation to us may be, the software doesn't know) may see my location on weekdays from 14:00 – 18:00 but only if I'm not near city center.

Alternative 2 seems much more clear to get across, but it also comes with a downside: you need to redefine it for every new application the same company (like Google) offers you. For instance, you might need to:
- define whether they can chat with you on Google Talk
- whether they can see your Google Reader subscriptions
- whether they may send you EXEs in Gmail
- whether they can get access to your Picasa album "Vacation 2009"
- whether they can edit along your Google Maps map titled "Our Company's Offices Worldwide"
- whether they can send you invites of any sort (to a Picasa web album, for instance)
- and so on

On the other hand, semantic definitions could become incredibly complex to grasp, which can be a big downside, and it could become increasingly complex to define relationships using just a set of semantics. Try define "person is a good friend, but she does not like my spouse, and she can get drunk too easily" in an intuitive way using an interface that also covers all other kinds of relations!

To confuse the matter, there is also another case
3) the software, by your actions, comes to its own conclusions about the status of 1) or 2).

For instance, a case of 3 would be: "Tony emails Philipp a lot and Philipp emails Tony a lot. Neither of the two hit the spam button when they receive an email from the other party. Tony once sent Philipp a URL that was password-protected. Philipp sends Tony emails containing N words on average, and the usual hours he sends those are from 11:00 to ..." and so on. From this info, the software could jump to several conclusions about the relation between the two, and then automatically adjust privacy settings. This is the laziest of all solutions, and yet it also holds the power to an incredible amount of confusion, mix-ups, and misunderstood privacy settings. Imagine I tell someone "stop emailing me!" but they keep emailing me, and i repeat, "stop emailing me!" – the software may now wrongly conclude that this person is my friend because we're sending each other so many mails everyday...

Pau Tomàs [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

The iGoogle gadget positioned me in London, Laussane, Helsinki and Finland in the same day...

Ianf [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

That could come in handy if you were a spy, and some counterspy outfit tried to keep tabs on you for its own nefarious^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HREDACTED reasons. Well done iGoogle!

Arie [PersonRank 3]

15 years ago #

I installed latitude on my WinMo phone. works great.
One of the menu items asks for a phone number so they can send a SMS with a "Verification Code" the is also a place to enter that code. however, no SMS was send. But all is working well without it..

Tomi Häsä [PersonRank 5]

15 years ago #

I couldn't install the software to my mobile phone, so in Google Latitude gadget I manually defined my location using my computer's web browser ("Finland"). Did anyone else notice your location is shown in Google Talk in "Set your status message here" section?

George R [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Privacy International criticizes Latitude because it can be used to surreptitiously track someone.

www.privacyinternational.org/
article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-563567

Computerworld story: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9127440

Juha-Matti Laurio [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

Google Latitude: An In-Depth Look:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=mobile_and_wireless&articleId=9127621&taxonomyId=15&intsrc=kc_feat

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

15 years ago #

> Privacy International criticizes Latitude because it can be
> used to surreptitiously track someone.

They say "In summary, the danger arises when a second party can gain physical access to a user’s phone and enables Latitude without the owner’s knowledge."
I don't get. Do they mean an unlocked phone which a third party can get access to? But once you have that access level – which is the fault of the person not protecting their phone, it would seem? – you can do anything: read their private stuff, look at their private photos, install a bunch of programs (by Google and Malware2000Inc) etc. Isn't that like calling a wallet "harmful" because once someone breaks into your house because you left the door wide open, they can take the dollar bill out of the wallet due to the wallet's "weak security" in defending the robber at that stage?

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