- Sunday, 22 November 2009
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Oliver Cromwell was hanged and decapitated two years after he had died
Google releases spy application
FOR MOST OF US our exact location is something we’d like to keep under wraps, yet for those who want to share it with the world, Google has come up with an added extra for Google Maps.
Google Latitude is the latest initiative from the internet search giant and is a new feature of the Google Maps application for use on your mobile device to track the whereabouts of friends, family and even enemies - he's behind you.
By using GPS tracking, your mobile device can send out a signal to let others know exactly where you are at any given time. There are, of course, some security options.
If, let’s say, you don’t wish for your spouse to know that you’re going for a quiet drink with that attractive lady in accounts after work, you can simply set your location to elsewhere.
Yet this application is not just aiding sneaky maneuvers, it is designed to let the user know if a friend is in town, or if a plane has landed safely, or even if your partner is stuck in bad traffic on the way home.
Google has been very careful in constructing the privacy controls for Google Latitude, as everything is on an opt-in basis and the user has the option to log out of it at any time.
Alongside these controls, the user is also able to select who they want to view their location, so perhaps one person would like to let the whole world know where they are, while another just wants their pals to keep track.
Latitude is available from today on the Blackberry S60 and Windows Mobile and is expected to be on Android and the iPhone shortly. However, if you have no smartphone, fear not as you can also use this application on your laptop or desktop.
Latitude is available in 27 countries from today onwards and is expected to reach out to more in the near future. μ
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Why the heck are you calling this a spy app when you can decide on a per person basis whom you want to share your location with. You can even artificially set your location to a false one for a person. You mentioned all this, but why the title?
Having a girlfriend who tends to ride her horse around on the Northumbrian Moors for unpredictable amounts of time, I could see a definite use for this one - even if it was only to get some idea of when I can expect to see her coming in through the door, streaming brown water all over the place and smelling slightly of compost. For her, this could mean the differnece between cold pizza, burn pizza and just nicely toasty-rich pizza. Mind you, I bet having it running all the time murders your mobile's battery (asuming your mobile's battery hasn't already murdered you, of course - oh, wait: that's a different story).
telling someone where to go when they get lost.
Technically I am sure that you can indeed turn it off as you wish. Unfortunately, the social mores are different. If you let you girlfriend/parent/colleague get used to being able to track you, then the day you turn it off is inevitably the day when that person is specifically going to quizz you on why you turned it off.
Thus turning off the tracking is the very thing that is going to get people suspicious about what you were doing. That is why this is spyware. Not because the app is made for that, but because of the way the app is going to change the lives of the people that use it.
This thing meant to make life simpler may actually make it more complicated. However, there are the brighter sides of things, like one can find a persons who goes missing by finding out where he or she was at the last time Google accessed the device.