Eyes in the Sky with Google Latitude

Now that I’m back in Toronto, I’ve been spending a lot of my time catching up with some old friends.  Last week, I found myself in a particularly strange and awkward situation that required some geekery.

My friend Bob, his friend Zack, and I were all waiting at Bob’s house for the next showing of District 9.  Now, I’ve known Bob since we were about 8 or 9 years old, so we’re both good friends.  Zack, on the other hand, I’ve never seen before.  After some brief chit-chatting, I discovered that Zack was really into archery.  In fact, it turns out that Zack loves to shoot arrows at a “local” range.

Zack loved archery so much that he wanted to show us more at the range itself.  With more than 3 hours to spare until the next showing of District 9, how could I refuse?

Zack offered to take us all in his car.  He explained that it would be faster that way, since he knew exactly where it was, but didn’t know the actual address.  Sounded like a reasonable plan at the time.

Well, turns out that this plan wasn’t such a smart idea.  It turns out that Zack was drives like a maniac, going 120km/h in 60km/h zones, weaving in and out of traffic like the madman that he was.  On top of that, the range wasn’t “close” at all.  The trip was taking up on McCowan, way past Bloomington Road. We were leaving the city well behind and entering farm country.

So, just to stay safe, I turned to my Blackberry and fired up my Google Maps to find out exactly where we were.

And then it hit me, I had set up Google Latitude a few months back with my good friend Cedric.

For those who aren’t familiar with Google Latitude, its a Google App that lets you share your current location with friends & family.  A few months ago, Cedric actually came up to me and asked me to set it up on my Blackberry so he could stalk me (I’m sure he was only half kidding about that part).

So, with my Google Maps running, all I had to do now was fire off a quick SMS to my friend Cedric.  It essentially went like this: “Random trip to archery range.  If I die its up to you to defend my honor.  Oh yeah, fire up Google Latitude so you can find my disfigured, dismembered body”.

Within 5 minutes I got a response, message received!