Share Your Location via GTalk

The growing popularity of mobile phones with GPS and other location technology led to the recent launch of Google Latitude — a cool tool that lets you choose to share your geographic location with your contacts. 

Now Google has announced a couple tools that let you share that information — with fairly generic location — with your contacts via Gmail and Google Talk. 

Note that Latitude is not yet supported by all phones, even if they have built-in GPS. Access Latitude on the iPhone and today you’ll get a “Coming Soon” message. Didn’t those go out of style in the 90’s, shortly after “Under Construction” pages?

Currently Google Latitude will work with Android-powered devices such as the T-Mobile G1, most color BlackBerry phones, most Windows Mobile 5.0+ and Symbian S60 (Nokia) smartphones. And soon (we are promised) the iPhone. 

But if your phone is supported, you can setup Google Latitude, then give the Google Talk location status a try.

What does Google Talk Location Status actually do? Not much, really. It auto-detects your location and then changes your Google Talk status to the city you are currently in. In other words, no need to worry that Google will rat you out when you tell the missus you have a late night at the office.  

And for those privacy freaks who are worried that Big Brother is watching, remember this: just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they are not out to get you.

And for those of you who can’t share enough, you can also check out the new Google Public Location Badge that you can embed on your blog or web page. Pretty much the same idea as Google Talk Location Status, but with a pretty map to go with it.