Google reinterprets your mobile history

If you’re the kind of person who likes to trace your own footprints, you may be interested in the new experimental feature that Google introduced Wednesday for mobile phones.

When you opt into the Latitude location feature on Google Maps and enable Location History, you’ll find a brand-new beta dashboard view that doesn’t just report your meanderings in a linear, chronological way, but will attempt to group your visits by trends, like trips away from home. The addition of map thumbnails helps keep data visual, liberating your history from traditional text-based constraints.

Privacy has been a key concern of late, and for good reason. Apart from opting into the service, Google stresses that your location history stays between you and your phone. Extra requests for your password when you view location history may annoy you, but they aim to prove that Google’s serious. You can also clear your history at any time.

Google’s dashboard view of Location History works with Google Maps on any mobile operating system that can report your location in the background–namely, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian S60, and Windows Mobile.

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