Google Latitude: Two new features that tread on privacy but enhance functionality.

One of the coolest new services from Google of late has been Latitude, heavily built on top of Google Maps.

With Latitude you can see where your friends are on a map and until recently that was about it. But with the addition of two new features the services suddenly becomes so more interesting and fun to use.

The first feature will not be a joy to all of those who love their privacy. But as privacy is already dead, I started using it for the last few days and it is very handy. From now on you can choose to store all your Latitude locations so that you build up a history of every where you’ve been. On a map you can look back and search visually when and where you’ve been.

The second new feature is the use proximity alerts. If a Latitude friend is close by you can get an alert telling you that he’s close. You can setup a batch of rules so that proximity alerts that are common can be filtered out. You can set to use email and/or SMS to receive the alerts and after some testing I must say it works pretty well. Now wait until this will be used for other services, because the whole Latitude system is open to use.

Latitude works very well with Android or your own PC. Too bad Apple hasn’t allowed a local iPhone application yet, that would make transform this apps popularity.