Some time ago Google announced some new features for their Latitude service. There's two features that I've especially become a great fan of;

1. Location History

When this feature is enabled, Latitude will save all the location data submitted into a history cache. This history can then be played back on Maps and Earth. Below is a video of recorded playback from our Christmas cottage trip to Northern Finland.



It's neat, completely automated and great if you have trouble remembering where you were last Friday night.. Any saved history information is strictly for your own use and cannot be shared.


2. Location Alerts

The central point of Latitude of course is adding friends and thus sharing your location to them, and in return knowing their location. The problem is that unless the application is constantly visible, any friends nearby while for example shopping would be missed. Location Alerts is a feature that will notify you by email or sms when a friend is nearby at an unusual time or place. This means any friends from work will only trigger an alert if they happen to be at the same place outside of work. Location History must be enabled for Location Alerts to work.

[ web apps // google // latitude ]