Google Latitude Tracks You and Your Friends

From PC World: The company announced late on Tuesday that it's expanding the features in Google Latitude , which was officially released in February as an upgrade to Google Maps . Google Latitude not only shows the location of friends, but it can also be used to contact them via SMS, Google Talk or Gmail.

Now, Google Latitude is able to keep track of your location history so you can look back on where you've been, according to a blog post by Chris Lambert, a Google mobile software engineer. The company also is unveiling the beta of a new feature called Google Location Alerts, which is designed to let you know when one of your friends is nearby.

For the location history, users should be able to play back their recent locations in order or view them on Google Maps or Google Earth. If you don't want anyone else seeing where you've been, Lambert notes you can delete specific locations or your entire location history.

"Whether you're taking a road trip across the country, backpacking across Europe, or just going out for a night on the town, it's fascinating to look back at where you went, and for how long you stayed," wrote Lambert. "Enable Google Location History to store, view, and manage your past Latitude locations... I stopped at an awesome BBQ place on my way back from Lake Tahoe this summer, but I couldn't remember the name when my friend was asking about it a few months later. I pulled up my location history for that weekend, found where I was stationary on the drive home, and the restaurant name showed up in Google Maps: Drooling Dog Bar BQ . "

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