google_latitude_1DO YOU KNOW where your friends are? If not, Google can help you find them. Google Latitude lets smart phone and laptop users share their location. Cough not pinpoint accurate, Latitude can display your general location based on information from GPS satellites and cell towers.

Once you and your friends have opted in to Latitude, your friends’ icons appear on Google Maps. Clicking an icon allows you to call, e-mail, or IM them, and you can even use Google Maps’ directions feature to see how to get to their location.

Let’s say that Bob wants to share his location with Jane. He sends an invitation from his handset or PC. Jane can then accept and share her location too; accept but not share her location; or completely reject poor Bob. If Jane chooses to share her location, she can provide her best available location or simply which city she’s in.

In addition to restricting specific people, Latitude will let you do a blanket location setting for all your contacts. You can set your location manually, tell Latitude to detect your location, or hide your location completely.

Google says that it keeps only your most recent shared location on its servers. If you’ve hidden your location, Google holds no information on your whereabouts.

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Even so, Google could easily build a demographic chart to show, for example, where certain age groups congregate in a particular city. I hope that isn’t the case, but questions about Google’s privacy practices have been raised many times before.

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