Google launches people tracker mobile tool

With an upgrade to its mobile maps, Google Inc hopes to prove it can track people on the go as effectively as it searches for information on the Internet.

The new software will enable people with mobile phones and other wireless devices to automatically share their whereabouts with family and friends.

The feature, dubbed “Latitude,” expands upon a tool introduced in 2007 to allow mobile phone users to check their own location on a Google map with the press of a button.

The feature could also raise privacy concerns, but Google is doing its best to avoid a backlash by requiring each user to manually turn on the tracking software and making it easy to turn off or limit access to the service.

Google also is promising not to retain any information about its users’ movements.

Only the last location picked up by the tracking service will be stored on Google’s computers,
Google Product Manager Steve Lee said.

The software plots a user’s location – marked by a personal picture on Google’s map – by relying on cell phone towers, global positioning systems or a Wi-Fi connection to deduce their location.

The system can follow people’s travels in the United States and 26 other countries. It’s left up to each user to decide who can monitor their location.

The social mapping approach is similar to a service already offered by Loopt Inc., a three-year-old company located near Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters.

Loopt’s service is compatible with more than 100 types of mobile phones.

To start out, Google Latitude will work on Research In Motion
Ltd.’s BlackBerry and devices running on Symbian software or Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile.

It will also operate on some T-Mobile phones running on Google’s Android software and eventually will work on Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iTouch.

To widen the software’s appeal, Google is offering a version that can be installed on personal computers as well.

The computer access is designed for people who don’t have a mobile phone but still may want to keep tabs on their children or someone else special, Lee said.

People using the PC version can also be watched if they are connected to the Internet through Wi-Fi.

Google can plot a person’s location within a few yards if it’s using GPS, or might be off by several miles if it’s relying on transmission from cell phone towers.

People who don’t want to be precise about their whereabouts can choose to display just the city instead of a specific neighbourhood.

There are no current plans to sell any advertising alongside Google’s tracking service, although analysts believe knowing a person’s location eventually will unleash new marketing opportunities.

Google has been investing heavily in the mobile market during the past two years in an attempt to make its services more useful to people when they’re away from their office or home computers
.

Google’s PowerMeter ‘to help families reduce electricity use’

Internet search engine Google seems all set to bring power grids into the digital age – it is to soon launch a PowerMeter to help families “reduce their domestic electricity consumption”.

According to Google, using a special widget embedded on their personalised iGoogle homepage, people will be able to monitor the PowerMeter software through their computers, which will help them see where to cut down on electricity use.

In fact, the PowerMeter will analyse the electricity consumption information captured by “smart meters”, and then translate it into easy-to-understand information, it said.

Ed Lu, a member of Google’s engineering team, wrote on the search engine’s blog: “In a world where everyone had a detailed understanding of their home energy use, we could find all sorts of ways to save energy and lower electricity bills.

“It may not sound like much, but if half of America’s households cut their energy demand by ten per cent, it would be the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road.”

In fact, the PowerMeter is currently in development, and is being tested among select members of Google’s own staff before eventually being introduced to the wider public, media reports said.

According to Lu, Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible as well as useful to people.

“We believe that detailed data on your personal energy use belongs to you and should be available in an open standard nonproprietary format. You should control who gets to see your data and you should be free to choose from a range of services to help you understand it and benefit from it,” he wrote.