It’s true.  My mom thought Latitude was the greatest thing.  Not that she’ll ever use it, but that she could load up the web page and see exactly where I was.  Very handy, so as to avoid multiple phone calls asking "have you arrived safely?"  (Yes, my parents love me.  Be jealous if you must.)

Back story: It wasn’t anything I had originally thought of when the Latitude service from Google was first announced earlier this month , but adding my parents and my sibling was probably the best thing I could have done.  The idea came to me as I was packing to leave for a 3 day vacation to snowy Truckee, CA.  (Which supposedly had more than 4 feet of snow in 4 days.)  The road conditions to and from were far less than ideal, and I figured if anything were to go wrong, at the very least my family would know where I was last registered by my cellphone.

New story: While I’m still not entirely sold on location-based advertising (only because I don’t like advertising, not because I don’t like efficiency), Latitude is a great idea for parents.  It won’t be long before children everywhere are hearing, "if I’m paying your cellphone bill son, you’re damn well going to load some form of tracking service so I can find you whenever I want."  Not that it should be looked at in a negative way.  Safety first.

Truckee, CA Photos:
Cabin —

Snow on Truck (one day of snow) —

Google Latitude "So Cool", Says Mom was first posted to justinll.com on February 19, 2009.