Google Latitude review

We review the latest Google iPhone app, Google Latitude, which puts you and all your friends on the map

Initially mobiles and smartphones helped us embrace social networking by giving us access to sites like Facebook and Twitter while out and about. That was a genuine lease of freedom that, quite organically, brought our physical whereabouts into the social arena. No point Tweeting about what you're up to if you don't let people know you're sat in the pub while they're still at work, after all.

FourSquare made a feature out of this location-aware social reporting, and a recent update to the iPhone's Google Latitude app has put the Internet giant in direct competition with the former social networking app.

Google Latitude offers a very simple app on the surface, which reports your current location either to friends only, or to the world. This geographical system blends seamlessly with other users, so while your spot on the planet is transmitted throughout the Internet, your iPhone is receiving info on where everyone else is.

This can all be plotted out very neatly on the app's built in Google Maps, giving you a neat and highly accessible overview of where everyone on your contacts list is (assuming, of course, they're also using Latitude, though they don't necessarily have to be using it on an iPhone).

Privacy is a contentious point right now, but looking away from the political panderers for a moment, this is a great feature if you happen to be getting together with a crowd and want an aerial view of your social clique.

It's also far more useful than a phone call when you're trying to find someone, and it means you can broadcast your location and don't even need to stand still to meet up with whoever's looking for you. If you're concerned about giving away your location to the enemy, you can set the app to only fire off your co-ordinates when manually activated, so privacy is still very attainable.

But this is more of a location awareness than anything social. A new feature, unimaginatively but descriptively called Check In allows you to, well... check in to thousands of different locations around you. Your check in information is sent out through Google Buzz, and is also immediately visible to people on your contacts list, even if you've not shared your physical location with them.

Although we couldn't actually find any nearby during testing, this Check In feature is apparently being linked up with Latitude-specific offers. The idea brings FourSquare in line with the likes of Groupon and puts the immense weight of Google behind it, so potentially this could really become a vital aspect of location-aware phones in the future.

With a simplified check in system that can run in the background and automatically log you into different locations, you could find yourself receiving special offers as soon as you walk through the door of a pub, shop, restaurant, hair dressers or any other place of business, simply for having Latitude installed on your iPhone. Let's just hope it catches on, and it's hard to imagine it not doing so when Google's running the show.

Like all the Big G's apps, Latitude is free and sweetly functional, so there's absolutely no reason not to embrace it and begin letting your friends know what you're up to on the streets of tomorrow.

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