Google Maps

Google today announced a new service which competes with the likes of Loopt and BrightKite. Latitude is a location-based social network which is now a part of Google Maps. The service will not only let you see your location in Google Maps, but will also let you see where your friends are as well. It's currently available for the Android and several other phones.

Google has also announced that iPhone support will soon be included in the Google Maps application. The addition will likely be delivered via a software update, which leads us to believe that an update will be released within the next couple of days. It's also possible that last Tuesday's update silently included Latitude support.

Apple has begun seeding iPhone 2.2 Beta 2 to developers. It had been discovered in Beta 1 that Apple included APIs related to Google Street View in Google Maps, and in the latest seed Street View is now fully enabled. Additionally, walking directions are now available along with public transportation directions and schedules. Screenshots after the break.

Google Maps is one of my favorite applications on the iPhone, especially now since the addition of GPS. But there's always been this one little problem I've had with it. When I'm in a big city, or even my own city at times, Google assumes that I'm driving everywhere I go. This makes directions a little... odd when I'm walking. Thankfully, they've finally added walking directions to Google Maps. Try it out, maps.google.com. Type in a 'to' and 'from' and it'll let you toggle between walking and driving directions. Pretty handy, if you ask me.

No, it's not available on the iPhone's "Maps" application, but I can't see that being the case for long.