Apologies, readers, that I’ve not been keeping up with the blog this week. The start of the World Cup, along with a concerted 4 days doing painting and decorating at home (which is exhausting if you’re not used to physical exertion believe me!) has kept me away from the keyboard unfortunately.
Things are back to normal now and there are some exciting events ahead, including an Edinburgh Festival preview I’m attending this weekend, a Social Media party early next week and an exciting promotional opportunity involving vouchercodes.co.uk, that should involve an interesting activity somewhere in the area, very soon.
The eagle-eyed amongst you might have noticed something slightly different about the blog in the last week or so too. Look down towards the bottom of the right-hand column and you will see that a Google Latitude widget has appeared. Using the GPS and cell tower proximity on my (new) HTC Desire phone, Latitude reports my location in real time. Presently I have it set to a fuzzy location match using cell towers but enabling GPS satellites will allow it to show where I am to within a metre or so. There are quite a few uses of this system that spring to mind:
- I get a text or email alert if other Latitude users that are in my address book are nearby, allowing for impromptu chats over coffee
- The system keeps a record of my location, so I can go back and see where I was at a particular date or time if my memory fails me
- It would help a friend or colleague navigate to my location if they get a bit lost when we’ve arranged to meet at a particular place that they are unfamiliar with
- It would allow parents to monitor the location of their kids if they’re away on holiday or similar, and also help if they get into trouble – no more people getting lost on Dartmoor or in the Welsh mountains for example!
- For the spys amongst us, drop a Latitude-enabled phone into someone’s pocket or vehicle and, voila, an instant remote tracking system (as long as you don’t mind losing the phone of course!)
I have to say that I don’t know anyone else who has Latitude enabled on their phone at the moment, so right now it isn’t very useful in that regard but that may change over time as more people get hold of Android-enabled smartphones. I do also see the inherent danger in using a system that is reporting my location in realtime, but lets just say that I’d be very surprised if anyone could be bothered to stalk little old me quite frankly… I’ll report back on further developments as new uses reveal themselves.