Comments on: Review & Poll: Google Latitude for the iPhone

By: Trent

Trent — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:49:55 +0000

That is actually what we have been using as well lately. It really is as accurate as google maps and frankly remembers all the previous “locations” of your friends as well. Works with iPhone and with iTouch as well. I think they have some room to fix it up a bit, but it already has push notifications.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:46:05 +0000

we are currently using HewWAY and it works great. You dont have to be running the app all the time. just send a location request and the other person gets a text message on their screen to send location. Easy & quite accurate. Latitude seems to need the program running at all times and this is just stupid…….get a life and leave your friends alone! hehe

By: Trent

Trent — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:49:55 +0000

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:46:05 +0000

By: Trent

Trent — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:49:55 +0000

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:46:05 +0000

By: BlueBrain

BlueBrain — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 02:17:24 +0000

I don't think it's completely Apple or Google's fault it's a webapp.. apparently this is a workaround...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/28/google-voice...

Read that article for an explanation of a similar problem...

By: Full_Moto_Jacket

Full_Moto_Jacket — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 08:46:55 +0000

If I want anyone to know where I am, I'll call/text them. Same for if I want to know where one of my friends is. Latitude reeks of Big Brother, and I'll have none of it.

By: Laserheart

Laserheart — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:54:44 +0000

Without notification functionality (ie. notifying your iphone of a persons update), or behind the scenes tracking of a person, this app is pretty much useless… who's going to leave this app running all of the time on the phone?

HeyWay is much more practical and useful because you can request and be notified of people's movements if they want you to track where they are.

By: _Shorty

_Shorty — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:56:32 +0000

The problem is it doesn't poll GPS properly. It makes a quick poll of 'location services' and accepts the very first data it receives as being the data it should report. It doesn't matter that the very first data it receives from location services is the highly inaccurate cell tower location data. Try this: turn auto-locking off so that your screen and Safari will stay open as long as you want it to. Open Safari and load up Latitude. Go for a walk for 10 minutes, and watch your screen. I'll be very surprised if it a) locates you accurately, and b) ever updates your position at all, since it'll be using the same inaccurate cell tower location data over and over every time it refreshes. The only way I've been able to get Latitude to locate me correctly is to load it up in Safari, exit Safari, load up Maps, wait until Maps has a very good GPS lock (which we all know takes a good number of seconds to happen, maybe ~10-15), exit Maps and go back into Safari immediately. This way there is still some good info left in location services for Latitude to poll, and you'll get located properly. Problem is, if you leave Latitude open too long when you do this, it'll refresh and poll location services again, and you're once again stuck with the highly inaccurate cell tower position data. It should be polling location services continually when it is being used, so that it will get ever-more accurate data the longer you keep it open. But it does not. In its current state it is pretty much useless.