DISQUS

ceedee · 10 months ago

It'll only be a problem for those who lie about their location to people that they are supposed to trust.
And I can't think of a reason why they would activate the facility in the first place...

digitaltoast · 10 months ago

What I find most amusing/scary about the Lattitude hysteria is the amount of deliberate disinformation being spread about it, and I know not why, other than it makes an easy tabloid story. I glimpsed The Sun in a waiting room, and they had an article about Lattitude. Let's remember:
You have to download it. You have to activate it. YOU have to tell it where you are. You have to actively share it, and specify who you share it with.
By the time The Sun had mangled it, it was "The spy in your pocket"!

Abul · 10 months ago

That is what the Sun is for - creating hysteria, hype and inaccurate junk for the mind numb.

MartinSFP · 10 months ago

It only works if you have Google Maps running and are logged into Latitude, so you have to to consent to sharing your location. Plus, the ability to manually set your location should give a lot of the less honest people out there a reprieve!

Tom Davenport · 10 months ago

Oh woe, people can't lie. Whatever, I hate people who bullshit like that. Google lattitude isn't a problem, liars are.

Ben Chapman · 10 months ago

Theres a very simple solution to this problem. Don't use the software!

binarylife · 10 months ago

good ole sun and its advocative journalism.

i suspect the scare is that if it gets universally popular it will be suspicious if people didn't have it. some how i can't see it happening, majority of society is not interested, just as they are not interested in facebook.

to be fair any relationship in which you'd check up on your significant other whether they actually are with friends is doomed in the first place. i really don't think it's google's place to teach any one honesty. or any other virtues for that matter.

let's please not lose the perspective here.

andrewgrill · 10 months ago

Ewan, back in Australia in 1994, when caller-ID was about to launch, there were massive privacy issues raised ("how dare you send my number when I call someone") etc and at one stage it looked like it may be delayed (and the same old tabloids had a field day trying to scare people).

Now...when you receive a "Private number" call - do you think twice before answering it - compared to the "Hi Ewan how are you"?

Walking past normobs in the street, the most often asked question is always "where are you?". The answer then helps the caller define the rest of the conversation.

If you call me and ask me where I am - I'll probably tell you - why would I not?

The latitude function WILL take a while for people to get used to, but just as SMS and caller-ID had to find their feet - latitude type location products will eventually come into their own.

When this becomes really mass market (which is the reason behind Google launching it) is so that instead of having to ask where someone is in the first part of the call, those with whom we have shared our number and our location will know instantly where we are before they call - quite a foreign concept now but I predict it will catch on - just like that SMS thingy concept.

PS: Latitude has a wide range of privacy settings built in. If I don't want someone to know where I am - I can set it manually.

loughlin · 10 months ago

Wow, i didn't realise "normobs" was common parlance in the mobile industry these days. They also consume fodder y'know.

Comparing Latitude to SMS is pointless, one is a network signalling service, the other is an opt-in service which currently has no commercial viability.

andrewgrill · 10 months ago

Beg to differ but 15 years ago SMS was a

"network signalling service with no commercial viability" - how times change when you let Normbs use a service they work out how they want to use it.

Igor · 10 months ago

Andrew is absolutely right.

Technology alway changed our perception of privacy and Latitude - or LBS in general - will not differ in this case. The problem is, that not everybody is bein affected by technology at the same time and in the same way. That's why there is always a group of early adopters who are facing scrutiny of their sanity. Then, gradually, technology gets adopted in to the masses and the cycle starts again.

Abul · 10 months ago

What happened to actually being truthful and telling people where you actually are?

If you are stupid enough to share your location and lie about whilst not covering your tracks, it's your fault surely?

Mac Morrison · 10 months ago

but you can set your location manually - i spent most of the weekend at the south pole

Tomi T Ahonen · 10 months ago

Hi Ewan

Very funny and very realistic. Thanks. I immediately blogged about it at 7thmassmedia.com

Tomi Ahonen :-)