You Get Where I'm Coming From? Google Debuts Location-Aware Signature For Gmail
Last week, the search giant debuted Latitude, which allows users to track and locate their friends through Google Maps from a mobile device, laptop or desktop computer. The location-aware signatures aren't quite so fancy. They just let e-mail recipients know where you're sending from.
According to a Tuesday posting on the Gmail blog from software engineer Marco Bonechi, all you have to do to enable the new location-awareness feature is turn on Location in Signature from the Gmail Labs menu under Settings. You then go to signature preferences and check off "Append your location to the signature."
As Bonechi notes, the feature uses your public IP address to determine the location, and then adds a "Sent from" line to whatever signature you select. Dropping an e-mail from your mobile while walking down the street in Manhattan? Your signature will automatically add "Sent from: New York, N.Y." as a last line if Google can track the IP address correctly.
"It'll use your public IP address to determine your location, so it may not always be that accurate," Bonechi wrote. "For example, if you're at Heathrow airport, IP detection may put you in Germany. If you want more accurate location detection, make sure your browser has a version of Gears that supports the location module. That way, Gears can make use of Wi-Fi access point signals to recognize that you're actually in London.
Location-tracking features such as Google's Latitude have already incited concerns from privacy watchdogs. But Google assured through the Gmail blog last week, in a post by Vic Gundotra, vice president of engineering for Google's mobile team, that "we recognize the sensitivity of location data, so we've built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application. Everything about Latitude is opt-in."