new jersey geographer

Google Latitude has been updated to incorporate new features that make it easier to share your location data. A website badge has been created that shows your most recent position on a web page. You can see an example of the badge showing my current location on this blog’s home page, as well as on the home page of NJ State Atlas. Google has also introduced a basic API allowing you to retrieve your location information as KML or GeoJSON.

Considering someone will likely (ab)use these new features soon, I’m starting a countdown. I’m guessing a week from now we’ll hear about how someone tracked someone unknowingly using a Latitude-enabled mobile device and the API. Personally, I’m hoping the API gets put to good use and is integrated into some groundbreaking projects.

Kate was tracking my progress home tonight, as I was going to pick up Thai food along the way. I manually set my location to “Thailand” and found when I got home, Kate was very confused as to where I was. Setting my location to “Thailand” actually set me as being in “Nong Chaeng,” which I assume is the closest place name to Google’s center point for Thailand.

When will Google release an API for Latitude? It should also tie into OpenSocial, like how iGoogle and Orkut do now. Google has been really great in releasing new and innovative social networking components and applications, but they need to really follow through and support their creations. Offer up an API and the community will do the rest.

Kate and I are down in Southwest Florida visiting her family. We drove down from New Jersey and used Google Latitude to share our location with her family and my parents. Kate and I also are taking some pictures using my GPS-enabled BlackBerry and are posting them on Flickr.

There probably won’t be many updates to NJ Geo and NJ State Atlas until I come back up next week.