Re: Google Latitude
 

This is basically a lot like Mozilla Firefox extension Geode which is planned to be included in Fennec (Mozilla Mobile). A Google employee wrote the W3C specification, and Apple iPhone has this capability already using Skyhook Wireless. It was using this as replacement for GPS.

Re: Google Latitude
 

Yes, this is possible with Geode. See my link above. You can choose to share between city, neighborhood, exact location, or nothing at all.

I very much agree with the privacy concerns.

And, its still true, you have to be careful when picking your friends :) and keep your enemy closer than your friends :D

Re: Google Latitude
 

Not much.
When I'm available, mine tell people that I'm working on my computer, or that I've left it idle long enough to time out. When I'm not available, they show no information.

No; I'm not conceited enough to think the world at large is interested in 99% of my life, and the 1% that has some relevancy to certain chunks of the world get posted in public sites (like here) that are frequented by those who will be interested.

That's what "we" have, and what some of us choose to use, and some of us don't. Some of us are choosing not to use it still, even though it's now being made easier and slicker than ever before. Almost as though our previous declination to use it was not based on difficulty.

FWIW, I don't see this as a generational issue. (I'm mid-20s, FYI.) I see it as simply a difference in attitude. We all see the same things, but still look at them differently. (There's also complete *****s who don't immediately see any link between "I can share my location with my friends" and "someone could spend some effort and track me down", but I'll restrict the discussion to sentient lifeforms.)

• There are those who see the possibility of tracking them down, and can't stand the notion that someone, with enough effort, could do that. (And are crazy enough to think they can realize untraceability... these guys are amusing.)
• There are people who see what's going on, and don't mind; they tend to think they've nothing to hide, and since sharing random minutiae of their lives gives them some sort of warm fuzzies, why not?
• Then there are those of us who see it, who also have nothing to hide most of the time, but also have nothing to flaunt, and feel that privacy is a natural default when there's no good reason to divulge info, and needs no justification. Maybe we don't get warm fuzzies, or maybe we just don't consider them a good reason. We are clearly the most principled, rational, and generally sane of the lot. :p

Since these different attitudes don't depend on any observations only available x years ago, or reactions to previous generations, there's no obvious reason these attitudes should be tied to any particular age or generation, and I don't think they are.

Re: Google Latitude
 

I don't think the point is so much privacy or who your friends are... The question is; are you willing to give Google ad servers your location all the time?

This would add a new dimension to targeted advertisement, make Google a gazillion more bucks, and bring us 1 step closer to a more perfect Orwellian society. :)

"WAR IS PEACE", "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY", "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH", "WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT HAMBURGER YOU JUST PURCHASED @ 41.889779,-87.625795"

Re: Google Latitude
 

Well, these days I certainly don't want to announce when I'm not at home. There are groups of criminals who actively use that kind of information to decide when to break into people's homes. This seems to get more and more popular.

Re: Google Latitude
 

Depends on many factors.

For example with how many people you live.

Or if the place seems abandoned.

Here its known East Europeans put hardware spyware on ATMs and drive around to notice paterns who is home when. So I tend to go to specific ATM locations, check them out, cover my hand when typing PIN. For the latter I tend to leave quickly, always have my lights on, and always have (soft) music on. Its just that many factors add up. How you look. How your home looks from the outside.

..but I heard the other day that when kids are supposed to be on school and they're blogging the compulsory_education_officer has a word with 'em. Funky!

I think Benson's post is a very good one to start with when dealing with this issue. I also believe my point about the accurary of the position is a valid one. And, I believe it is possible to define your friends and define who sees what. Eventually, after the hype goes away, I imagine it will be easy to tell a contact your (approx) location, but I imagine it won't be shared with the whole world or even all your contacts/peers. And, I believe something similar will be true regarding blogging and social network sites. And regarding a generation shift: I sure as hell would not want my kid to share her exact GPS location with the whole world. Sooner or later it will be in balance based on usability and security. It just requires some time, and (painful) mistakes.

Re: Google Latitude
 

And with Google Street View, thieves can screen prospects from the comfort of their own hovels.

On the plus side, I wouldn't mind all those cell phones reporting their location to Google while in a moving car on main traffic arteries. < That would lend itself to near real time traffic reports via a Google Map layer.

I know some may think my earlier Orwellian remark may not apply because Google is a private company and it's "do no evil" philosophy does focus on the end user...

... but, we should all remember how easy it was for the US Government to commandeer AT&T and other Telecoms routers and servers in the name of National security. :eek:

I'll tell you what, if I was an "evil doer", I wouldn't want a cell phone closer to me than the blast range of an incoming missile. :D

Re: Google Latitude
 

From Ars Technica:

"Your activities on the Internet are akin to your activities out in public—they're not private and are possibly open for police scrutiny, according to an Ontario Superior Court. The ruling was made by Justice Lynne Leitch on—surprise!—a child pornography case. The judge said that there's "no reasonable expectation of privacy" when it comes to logs kept by ISPs. Canadians, watch out, because everything you do online could soon be turned into legal fodder, even without a warrant."

Re: Google Latitude
 

"reasonable expectation of privacy" coupled with laws requiring ISP's to keep logs...essentially the state can monitor you because a "private" party is already doing it for you and the law requires they hand over such info.

And all you wanted to do is see a little icon of your friend float along a Google Map.

Re: Google Latitude
 

Eh true, cue NSA jokes... its a bigger problem than merely GPS.

Re: Google Latitude
 

The trouble of all this stuff is that for 'generic' use you don't need technologies like this at all. There is nothing new required to firuge out how many active cellphones you have on a certain road, how fast thay are travelling, etc. The point here is that they are linking actual _persons_ to these little spots on the screen. And that's why privacy is a concern. A cellphone as such is a number, but now you're adding a face to it (with locations, behaviour tracking good for data mining, etc). You even have ad 'conversions' as you can tell if a person actually went to a restaurant you suggested. Also, never forget about phishing practices, these will not disappear but likely adapt to the new medium as well. A privacy-wise well educated person can understand the benefits and risks and make his/her decision, but plenty of people can't or won't really understand what they're getting into. Many social sites have the same problem, but those are much more virtual and hence pose less risk.

Re: Google Latitude
 

Ok, so resurrecting an old thread, sorry.

Anyway, has anyone looked at whether we could use Latitude?

We now have some web runtimes working and that can be integrated in stand-alone applications (e.g. see Macuco and the recently released Phonegap).

So using Google Maps should be easy enough from what I've read (I hasten to add I'm not a web programmer).

There is also a Google Latitude api for finding the positions of people: http://code.google.com/apis/gears/api_geolocation.html, which could presumably be added to a map overlay or the like, so at this point we'd be able to see the location of people on Latitude (I think).

and there's an api which allows you to ask Google for your location: http://code.google.com/apis/gears/ge..._protocol.html

Now, although we don't necessarily need the location information, I wonder if using this service would allow us to appear on Latitude too (and therefore make us visible to other people too)?

Any thoughts or ideas?

Re: Google Latitude
 

in one of the repositories for n900 there is a geolocation plugin for microb, but don't know if it working. tried with google maps on n900 but nothing happened

Re: Google Latitude
 

Use it with the maeMaps webapp

Re: Google Latitude
 

I am guessing if MicroB gets around to completely supporting HTML5, it could use the proposed geolocation API (http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source.html). Unofficially, I think Webkit already has some hooks into this because the iPhone and Android browsers both make use of it. I have no idea if the Gecko engine has this or not.

Re: Google Latitude
 

I think that's what this does, though not having looked at the source I can't be sure.

My general interest was not so much in how to get the location data, but in how to share it with some service that other people use. Google Latitude is available as part of Google Maps on pretty much every phone these days, so it makes sense to try to use the same service.

Re: Google Latitude
 

Latitude uses URLs to set it, as far as I know: http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/goo...aring-api.html

So it's not hard to implement it either..

Re: Google Latitude
 

Which points to a Google Geo Dev blog which says...
"there is currently no API to let you modify your location."

Re: Google Latitude
 

Ok, so I decided to do some looking. The iPhone version of Latitude is run thorough a webpage, so I thought I might give the same a go.

Seems to work.

Install the maemo-geolocation plugin for the browser;

In the browser open "http://www.google.co.uk/maps/m?view=...urce=mog&gl=uk" which is the page the iPhone opens. There doesn't seem to be a check on the useragent (except if you try to open google.co.uk directly).

I guess it will be something similar for people not in the UK, a combination of desktop Firefox + "User Agent Switcher" + tcpdump should tell you exactly if you can't work it out by guessing.

Then click away and use the (web)app.

Location updates seem to work automatically.

I've not done much testing, but am ever hopeful this will give us access to a shared location service (as Latitude is sort of a de-facto standard now as it's supported by so many phones).

The one thing I have noticed is that it doesn't change the "last updated" time for a user, this is changed, iirc, if you use the Google homepage Latitude applet, so there's presumably some way of doing it.

Let me know if it does or doesn't work for you.

Re: Google Latitude
 

Woohoo!

Thanks, lardman. Your instructions worked for me!

I installed the geolocation plugin and then changed the URL to the North American version.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2661/...3b39fcf4_o.png

I'm in a concrete building so my GPS is only getting "coarse accuracy", but that's ok for the purposes of the screenshot ;)

EDIT: It does seem to be updating my location every few minutes...

EDIT2: It looks beautiful in full screen mode!

Re: Google Latitude
 

I've just started sniffing the TCP data that the web page exchanges with the Google servers, as it would be better to have a daemon (or at least a non-web browser app) to provide position updates from time to time (allowing the user to set the interval, etc.)

I see it returns the information about my Latitude-enabled contacts as a JSON message, though I've not worked out the exact format yet, nor where the page is uploading my position info to the Google server.

If you're more familiar with how HTML works than I am do please have a look at the comms :) (and you can open the above mentioned pages in a desktop browser, just make sure you haves some sort of location plugin available. E.g. Gears or the W3C geolocation one for Firefox, the latter being preferable as it's the one we use on our devices)

Re: Google Latitude
 

Truly kosher way could be:
1) enable XEP-0080 in IM client (and make it behave properly not to run GPS receiver constantly)
2) kindly ask google to update location data with XEP-0080 info provided via gtalk ;-)

Re: Google Latitude
 

If you can get them to accept that, then I'm more than happy ;)

Re: Google Latitude
 

Uhm installed maemo-geolcation, went to the provided URL, but it doesn't seem to get my position?

missing some steps?

Re: Google Latitude
 

You'll need to close all browser windows at a minimum, and possibly reboot, before the location plug-in is loaded. You'll know you're on the right track when upon your return to Google Latitude, a non-Fremantle-ish dialog box appears and asks your permission to share your location data.

Re: Google Latitude
 

Yeah indeed I had to reboot the device....

Re: Google Latitude
 

http://github.com/ablyler/playnice

a php code for update google latitude for iphone

is easy to use class.google.php to send a latitude, longitude and accuracy to google.

now... i'm translating to QT

Re: Google Latitude
 

Good find :)

Re: Google Latitude
 

This is very interesting, thank you for posting this mate :)

Re: Google Latitude
 

You can use the iphone app:
http://maps.google.es/maps/m?mode=latitude

For me works on maemo5 + firefox mobile (html5)

Re: Google Latitude
 

You can use the iphone app:
http://maps.google.es/maps/m?mode=latitude

For me works on maemo5 + firefox mobile (html5)

Re: Google Latitude
 

i submit a extras-devel an app for update it...
it's very simple

put yours google username ( ej: rlinfati ) and your pass and push Update button

at the side you can change the lat, lon and accureacy

next step, use the cellinfo and/or gps for get the coordenate ( now use only your ip )

The garage project with the git repository: http://googlelatitude.garage.maemo.org/

Re: Google Latitude
 

Any idea how to zoom out? On the iphone you need 2 fingers which obviously doesn't work on the n900.

Re: Google Latitude
 

I can zoom in with double click but I can't zoom out . On my computer I can zoom in with double click with left mouse and zoom in with MAJ+double click left mouse . But on the n900 MAJ + double click = right mouse

Re: Google Latitude
 

works really well on an N810 with the default browser as well. Don't think it'll pick up the location from the GPS though, but really useful anyway.

Thanks

Re: Google Latitude
 

will this work on N8x0 as well as the N900?

Thanks

Re: Google Latitude
 

Assuming maemo-geolocation is available and works on the N810 then yes it ought to.

Do please give it a try and let us know :)

Re: Google Latitude
 

i have had a look and maemo-geolocation isn't available for diablo as it is only built for fremantle, which is the first bit of bad news.

the second is that the googlelatitude app requires QT4 and thus close to 60mb of dependancies on my N810, so try this i either need to uninstall just about everything else, or get the tablet booting from flash.

this is a shame as i use google maps and latitude a lot on my S60 phone, still the webliink to the iphone maps page is very useful.

Re: Google Latitude
 

@gazza_d
yes, i use qt 4.5 on n8x0 and qt 4.6 on n900

on n8x0 it crash at change to map view... ( i'm not sure why... )

Re: Google Latitude
 

I need to have another look at the googlelatitude app and check what the deps are, I was mainly talking about using the webpage I listed first of all.

But it sounds like the app should work on the n8x0 once the crash is tracked down.

Good job rlinfati :)