Changes in Latitudes...and Longitudes

After several years working in the technology business, I should know by now to never say the words, “I’ll never use that.”  I have a pretty broad tolerance and am usually an early adopter of new technology.  But from time to time, I read a press release on a platform or service and utter those very words, “I’ll never use that”.  Such is the case with Google Latitude.

When Google Latitude came out, I really wanted to know who was such an exhibitionist that you would want to broadcast your location to the world.  And really, I admit, I am very late to the show for adopting location base services.  Perhaps, I really don’t want my wife to know that I am still in my office at 8PM, not stuck in traffic.  But, I digress, I filed Latitude as a location based service with API integration in the back of my head, but never thought I would ever use it.

That was until my recent trip to Seattle.  See, never say never, right?  There is a large event out in Seattle, Washington, that I was attending.  Several of our friends were going too.  My wife and I drove out from Nashville, one set of friends flew into Portland and were driving up, one set of friends were driving in from Las Vegas, and two different groups were flying into Seattle.  We were all trying to coordinate meeting up in Seattle, but didn’t constantly want to try to coordinate amongst twenty some people.  Can you imagine, all the “Where are you at?  When are you going to get here?” conversations we would have to fight through?  Let alone us trying to describe our location in an unfamiliar destination.

Enter Google Latitude.  You sign-up for Google Latitude with your Google ID.  Once you have signed up, it interfaces with your smartphone’s Google Maps for mobile application.  You then set your preferences for how accurate you want your location to be broadcasted and then invite your friends via email to share their location.  If your friend agrees, the next time you open you map application you’ll see an icon bubble representing your friends. 

So, the group of us agreed to use Latitude for this trip.  By turning on the application and taking a look at the location of our friends, we could quickly coordinate with the ones down the street, while giving a heads up to those still on their way from Portland due to a delayed flight of where we were headed.  Latitude gives you spatial data to consider when making social decisions.  

So what’s my next steps with Latitude?  Well, for now, I haven’t checked in for awhile, and probably won’t again until the next time I need to find my pack of friends again.