API ability to access Latitude friend's locations.

[Davy]

Hi,

AFAIK, there is currently no way to access your friends location using
the Latitude API. There might be ways to access their location using a
public location badge, but not everybody will be comfortable using
that.

Is this functionality planned , or is there an alternative way of
retrieving friend's locations ?

An issue on the issue tracker concerning this issue has been created
for almost a year now.

Is there a reason why this functionality isn't (and perhaps won't be)
exposed through the Latitude API ?

Regards,
Davy

[Kristian Serrano]

For the record, I'm interested in this as well. I've been waiting for a reply to this, and I hope someone can shed some light on whether or not accessing friends' locations will be added to the API.

[Ana Ulin]

This capability won't be added in the next few months, I'm afraid.
Unclear if it will be added later on. We'll let the forum know when we
have something more solid to announce.

Cheers,
Ana

[Davy]

Hi Ana,

Not the answer we were hoping for ;)

Is there another way that would allow us to display a map including
your latitude friends location, without using the Latitude API, and
without resorting to Public Badge ?

I know certain third party iphone apps are able to do it, was just
wondering how....

Regards,
Davy

On Mar 1, 10:46 pm, Ana Ulin <a...@google.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 8:52 AM, Kristian Serrano
>

[Ana Ulin]

Hi Davy,

> Not the answer we were hoping for ;)

I know, sorry. I have nothing further to announce at this time, I'm afraid. :-)

> Is there another way that would allow us to display a map including
> your latitude friends location, without using the Latitude API, and
> without resorting to Public Badge ?
>
> I know certain third party iphone apps are able to do it, was just
> wondering how....

Whatever those 3rd party apps do, it is outside of the Latitude API,
and is not supported nor sanctioned by Google. You'll need to ask them
what exactly do they do.

A way you can show your users some friend-related data would be to
embed in a webview the Mobile Web Maps app with the Latitude layer on,
e.g.:
http://maps.google.com/maps/m#ac=f,l,

Cheers,
Ana

[Kristian Serrano]

I hope my response doesn't come across as aggressive, but I'm really surprised by your answer, Ana. Either Google has something planned and can't say, which I understand and respect, or there really are no plans to support 50% of Latitude's purpose, which is seeing friends' locations.

I'm not prying or another answer. I'm only sharing my thoughts. :)

[Ken Norton]

Kirstian,

I know sometimes our inability to share future plans can be frustrating. I wanted to update this thread since it's been a few months. I can tell you that we currently have no plans to add friends' locations to the Latitude API. This is for privacy reasons, and is unlikely to change any time soon.

I know that's not the answer you or a lot of the folks on this mailing list want to hear, but that is the reality for now. Our hope is that current or future social APIs may address some of these use cases.

Ken

Latitude Product Manager

[Zap Andersson]

So you are saying that the only way for us to ever display friends
inside an app, is to embed the latitude webpage?

That's a bit sad. Sure, it can be useful to use the API to build an app
purely for updating the location (incidentally exactly what I've done),
but every single one of my users then automagically asks me "so how can
I see where my friends are?".... even though I explicitly bill my app
as a *location updater* app only.

Will there then at least be a better more "embeddable" webpage we could
use? It seems the mobile version of latitude.google.com has gone AWOL
too :(

/Z

[Rob Aldred]

Ken,

This announcement is very bad news, anyone like myself wishing to develop things to extended and further engage the user using latitude is going to find it very difficult / pretty much impossible without the access to a users friends.

There are many ways in which this could be implemented without any privacy issues,

just writing off the issue is NOT an acceptable solution if you want my honest opinion.

This decision needs to be reconsidered.

Rob

[Jamie Thompson]

I'm not even sure how this is a privacy issue...my friends have given
me permission to see their location at all times
already! ...basically, as Google refuse to support my mobile platform
of choice are they effectively telling me they don't want me using
Latitude?

[Davy]

From a privacy perspective, I think Google makes a distinction between :

a) having the ability to look at your latitude app from time to time to check your friends current location.
b) having programmatic access to these locations, where you could constantly start tracking your friends location through an API, effecitvely building up an entire history of your friends locations.

Regards,
Davy

[Amer Alsaket]

If can have that programmatic access I bet Google will replace a lot of traditional systems and solve many relocation problems.

[MarkNL]

I "fixed" this by making a chrome background process that scrapes the
latitude page and send it to a private database.
Of course the downside is that you always need to have you PC on and
logged in the you Google account.

[Davy]

How does that work when people are on the road ? 

Do they keep a chrome session open running your background process, and does the chrome background process pickup the changes from their Latitude (assuming they have it running on their phone, capturing their location changes ?)

[MarkNL]

It's just a Chrome PC browser background extension that opens latitude
in iframe and monitors the ajax responses and sends it to my own
server.
My ill post it online when i got it stable and neat.

I am now building a Android app that notifies me when people enter or
leave a certain position.
Example: Person A has a dinner meeting with person B and want to know
when person B in on the way to A's house.
So person A sets a radius around person B house of 500m, now when
person B leaves his house and exits the 500m radius person A gets a
notification and can start cooking dinner.
Same can be done by settings (example) 5km radius around person A's
own house, Person A will then get a notification when person B is <5
km away.

[Davy]

How is the app running on Person B's phone able to retrieve the location of Person A (or are you using a central database, where the peoples phones are uploading location changes to a central database)  ?

Is it also through that Chrome extension, or is it something completely seperate ? (another app alltogether)

I made something based on fusion tables to do location tracking of others.  Also an interesting technology.

Checkout the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAtNjuYcdys

[Adrian Cruz]

On Wednesday, July 20, 2011 4:27:17 PM UTC-4, Davy wrote:

I made something based on fusion tables to do location tracking of others.  Also an interesting technology.

Checkout the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAtNjuYcdys

hmm interesting. i'm now curious. this might be quite useful. thanks Davy, looking at some fusion table docs now.

cheers! 

[Danno]

The privacy concern is that your friend has given you permission to
view their location, they have not given some 3rd party application
permission to see their location. I could very easily write an iPhone
app that shows you your friends locations, and while I'm at it, I'll
store their locations as well...

Dan