Google appears to have a new obsession with knowing and broadcasting your current location. A week after announcing Latitude, which shares your location with friends on Google Maps and threatens to render several startups irrelevant, an engineer has developed location-aware email signatures for Gmail.
After turning on the “Location in Signature” feature in Gmail Labs, you’ll see a new checkbox in the Signature area of your settings that says “Append your location to the signature.” Once the box is checked, all of your subsequent emails will end with something like “Sent from: San Francisco, California”.
By default, Gmail determines your location by looking up the geographical data associated with your public IP address. Since this isn’t always very accurate, Google encourages you to install its Google Gears browser extension software, which can more accurately identify your location using WiFi.
This project doesn’t appear to be related to Google Latitude, at least from a programmatic point of view. But expect Google to release a variety of “hooks” into the Latitude platform throughout its products, since it’ll be most useful as a platform not a standalone application.
This is SO WRONG. There should be an Android hook into a Gmail broadcast message to do this with BroadcastReceiver().
Because they did it this way there is no way other developers can re-use this API, and it does nothing for Android.
You can grab all IP addresses for countries here
http://www.blockacountry.com/
They generate .htaccess files to do that, but you can just copy paste them to reproduce Google’s API.
But it’s lame. It’s like a bad magic trick. Put the broadcast message INTO ANDROID YOU STUPID DICKS.
I will be seeing you all at Google IO. Forget I just called you stupid dicks.
I take it back, instead of a Geo->Location mapping service that you can query through AIDL, there should be a location translation API.
But it would be nice if Gmail had an option to set a receiver hook in Android so you could send Gmail signatures through your Android app as well, not just location. Gmail should have an API on android for signature data through IDL.
This is so cheap. I could reproduce this functionality in like 10 minutes. cheap.
Chillax, dude. Never seen such anger about a new, optional, beta feature.
What really makes me mad is that by making all of this stuff free, like their Android Eclipse bundle vs. Flex or Zend studio which sells the IDE,
and the free features and API Google presents as “beta”, they are completely free from any obligation to developers requesting features. Where as a company that sells products or charges has some responsibility to it’s customers.
Say what you will, IP->Location is a totally cheap feature that could have and was implemented in the days of 2400 Baud BBSs.
In many ways Google is worse than Microsoft, because at least Microsoft will allow you to change settings and interoperable with it’s flagship software.
Google is shipping all of this stuff, and locking all other vendors out categorically with no interoperation at all. Google is essentially putting out a new PC OS with thier web and mobile suite but in such a way as they’re more closed than Microsoft is to 3rd parties.
I feel that this new feature is just another example of that. What if Microsoft’s stuff was just as monolithic as Google’s? How would the DOJ feel about that or the EC?
I don’t think we should give Google a free pass anymore. All the companies that make money hooking into MS platform, should also have the same benefits on Google’s code base.
And thus I begin a new era.
Yes, it’s open source, but by giving handset vendors complete control over the distribution and not having hooks for people outside the loop, it would be like MS giving complete control to compaq or X company.
So think of it in that way against the FOSS argument.
I’m sure this was all planned in a board room somewhere in northern cali, but that’s what it boils down to.
MGZ,
That still doesn’t make you able to set things in default Android apps like Calendar, Gmail ect…
This is just for displaying Google maps.
Relax, just use google.loader.ClientLocation. I’m sure that’s all they’re doing here. If you’re using any google ajax APIs, it’s available automatically.
> I could reproduce this functionality in like 10 minutes. cheap.
So do it. Nobody is stopping you! The timer starts now…
Chris,
You really should stop smoking crack, that stuff will kill you.
Mapping location based on IP is 1985 tech. cheap.
This won’t work on mobiles.
If Gmail is really going to replace office, we need a way to hook settings like signature in from our own application through IDL just like Microsoft.
And the IP->Location should have been made into a function for the Android API. That’s what I meant to say but was too in a hurry to get the first comment in.
This was a very cheap feature.
Slow news day? Why is this news?
whom ever creates the greatest location aware network for consumers and businesses will win the search game on mobile and the internet.
MailboxLocator – send yourself
Why not? It’s updates like these that keeps me hooked on TC.
Getting your tech updates at TC is fine. But this item does not merit a big write-up.
Inserting approximate geo triangulated by sniffing IP addr — I mean, this is hardly news-worthy in 2009. As for Google’s ability to serve local ads, they have been inserting geo-targeted ads (based on the same sniffer tech) in Gmail for quite sometime, so this is not going to aid/enhance GOOG’s ability to insert local ads.
“Google appears to have a new obsession with knowing and broadcasting your current location.”
-> Wake up, dude. Google has an OLD obsession with knowing EVERYTHING about you.
Dont know how relevant it is and why someone just wont use email signatures. Personally dont see any value additions…
The real question here is, why would anyone care where you sent the email from? If it were important in any capacity, you’d probably mention it in the email itself…
What the sense in this feature?
So they can put advertising in gmail targeted to your or the sender’s location. Google sees that there is going to be a huge number of advertisers that aren’t advertising today because they can’t target precise locations with their ads. Think about the huge amount of dollars spent for location-based advertising – billboards, flyers, etc.
Interesting point, although Google can (theoretically) already use your public IP address to do this. It doesn’t need to detect it in the body of messages you send.
But now they can also target you with the location of emails your are receiving from others.
i’ll test the feature for the fun of it, and then stop using it.
I think that this is a great feature but am curious if it will be able to workwhen you are using Gmail on your mobile. Either way Google has added yet another shinny whistle to Gmail. With all of Gmail’s great features I am surprised that it has taken this long for Gmail to overtake Hotmail as Informationweek pointed out yesterday.
I agree with Dave. The more you can localize advertising information the more likely it is that users will click on the ad.
Twitter Location: http://twitloc.linkstore.ru does the same for Twitter
It would be nice if they’ll suggest a standard mail header for geolocation. This will give another dimension to email messages, much like how it help us to identify the location pictures are taken using EXIF.
That is fascinating. Truly interesting, especially the location-specific Gears application.
Neat but I’m not seeing how useful this is. I guess it does exactly what it’s supposed to and nothing more. Maybe if all your friends are savvy international travelers. I’d check justaskgemalto to verify there aren’t any security risks though.