We’re happy to introduce an easier way to use Google Latitude from your computer at google.com/latitude. You can now see where your friends are, start using Latitude apps, and share your location all from one place when you’re at your computer.

Find your friends
We launched Latitude with a desktop iGoogle gadget to help you stay in touch with friends and family that may not have a smartphone. We’ve since learned that a desktop experience is important to you even if you’re already using Latitude on your phone. Today, you can now visit a dedicated site that makes it easier than ever to use Latitude when you’re already on your computer. From the Friends tab, you can:

• See where your friends are on Google Maps
• Add friends and accept sharing requests
• Control your privacy settings

Do more with Latitude
You’ll also now find Latitude and Latitude apps together in one place. After browsing your friends list, go to the History or Apps tabs to turn on optional Latitude apps such as:

• Google Location History (Beta) to see your personal history dashboard
• Google Location Alerts to get nearby friend alerts
• Google Talk Location Status to post your location in your chat status
• Google Public Location Badge to publish your location on your blog or site

Share your location
Just like on your phone, you can choose to share your location with friends and family from your WiFi-enabled computer. Before you can share your location, you’ll need to first give Latitude permission to access your location when prompted by your supported browser. You can always change your browser or Latitude privacy settings later. Learn more in the Help Center.

To get started, go to google.com/latitude on your computer. If you’re new to Latitude, you can then start on your phone by sending yourself a text message or choose to start on your computer.

Google Latitude

Google have revamped Google Latitude for the browser and added some very nice new features. Now you can view where your friends are and share your location from your desktop. You can also visualise your location history in some pretty cool ways.

Previously you have been able to use Google Latitude from your desktop via an iGoogle application but the new Google Latitude lets you view your friends current location on a large Google Map and also lets you view stats based on your location history.

The map shows your current location and the last check-ins of your Latitude friends. The history stats includes a breakdown of the number of hours you have spent at home, work and out and about. It shows you a map of all the countries you have visited and it lets you view an animation of your check-ins to Latitude for any defined time period.

The animation of your check-ins to Latitude on Google Maps (accessed by the ‘view and manage’ tab’) is a very nice feature. It lets you replay your location for any day and shows the time and location for each time your location has been recorded by Latitude. You can also download the data in KML so there is great potential for Latitude users to create their own Google Map animations or heat maps of their recorded locations.

Google Latitude has definitely now become a lot more interesting.

Via: Google LatLong

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Travellerspoint Trip Maps

Travellerspoint is an attractive and easy to use application for creating a map of your travels. Using Travellerspoint you can quickly create a Google Map to showcase a trip that you are planning or have made. The application can also be used to show all of your trips on one attractive map.

Using Travellerspoint you can quickly create a trip map, simply entering your destinations. Travellerspoint will then create a map of your trip and automatically provide background information about each of the destinations on your journey from travellerspoint’s own wiki travel guide.

If you want to plot separate journeys on one map you can do that. Separate colours are used for each trip and the user can control which colour each trip gets. You can add information about each stop and you can add photographs from your trip. You can even control the curve of each trip line.

You can embed your finished map on external sites and you can share the map with your Facebook friends.

Travellerspoint currently has over 1,000,000 trip stops mapped in its system.

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