Locate friends electronically

How cool would it be to just turn your cell phone on and get to know where your friends are at? Google Latitude helps you do just that. Latitude, the new feature on Google maps lets you share your location information and status message with friends.

This is how you get started on this. Visit www.google.com/latitude on your mobile. From Gmail contact list, add friends and family you want to share your location information with. On acceptance of the location share request, other person starts showing up on the map.

Hold on, this is not quite it. Even after accepting the invite, you have control over your privacy. You wouldn't want your manager to be able to see you around on his map if you are on a holiday, would you? You can set the privacy level for each friend, sharing just the city level location or even hiding your location completely. Watch the video below for security tips on using google latitude.

If just viewing friends on your map doesnt sound exciting enough, there is more you can do with friends on Latitude - send an email/message, call or chat using Google Talk or even get directions to the location your friend is at.

If you are wondering how google does this, this section may interest you. Google does this by Wi-Fi mapping i.e. thru the help of the wireless communication network (hot spots). This would mean that there are chances that Latitude may misplace you on the map if you are at a place where wi-fi network strength is not quite strong enough. This may leave you pondering how accurate Google latitude is. It can figure out your location within about 200 meters if you are working with W-Fi access points (hot spots). The links under more reading should quench your curiosity about the working of Google Latitude.

* Images used in this post are borrowed from www.google.com/latutude