ErinIs.com

Google turned me into a stalker with the launch of Google Latitude. I wasn’t paying attention when I signed up to test it out and checked everyone in my Google address book which is, thankfully, much smaller than my Yahoo or Outlook address books. Apparently, Google sends an email to everyone letting them know you’d like to stalk them and then sends them emails whenever you check in. 

Everyone in my address book received an invite to let me stalk them and then two emails telling them where I was (sadly both times at the office). One of my friends was so kind as to let me know via Facebook that she had received notification that I wanted to know her every move. While for the most part stalking my friends is totally cool, there are a couple people in my address book I would rather not stalk (especially when it tells them I’m doing so). Awkward….

So thanks Google.

Is a double opt-in set up so much to ask? You couldn’t have put in a little pop up that says “Are you sure you want to send an email to these people to invite them to your Latitude network?” 

Oh and my assesment of latitude is that it is sub par geo-location social networking; BrightKite does it better.

As Google continues to slowly take over our lives and do everything we could ever image something to do, they’ve released a 411 service.

Just dial  from any phone for a Google based voice recognition directory. I hate voice recognitin anything. While I’m normally an early adopter and technology lover, I will scream ‘Help’ and pound on the 0 key to be connected to a real live person on any answering service. 

Google’s voice reconition is better than the few other services I’ve tried (5-1-1 traffic is especially heinous) and it pulls data directly from the Google Maps database.  I tested it for our clients and they all are within the first round of businesses within thier category (automotive, credit unions, etc). 

But really, I only call 411 when I’m driving around lost. Even then I tend to go online rather then dial 411. I wonder how long until they monetize it with some advertising or featured listings….