Now Gmail reveals your whereabouts

 

Gallery

By Dawinderpal Sahota

Posted on 11 Feb 2009 at 11:49

Google is experimenting with another new tool to let your friends, colleagues and family know where you are.

This time, it's an add-on to Gmail that lets your recipients know your location when you're sending an email. The tool will display the city and country that you're writing from in your Gmail signature.

Last week, Google launched a tracking service called Latitude that lets your family and friends monitor your location, using your mobile phone or laptop. While Latitude uses GPS or mobile base station triangulation to track your location, the new Gmail feature uses your public IP address.

This is a far less accurate method of determining your location than GPS. For example, if you're using your work's VPN, but are actually working from home, Googlemail will identify your location as your office.

However, according to the official Gmail blog, if you want more accurate location detection, you can use the Gears plug-in for your web browser, which supports the location module. Using Gears, Googlemail will use Wi-Fi access point signals to pinpoint your location.

To try the location tool, turn on Location in Signature from the Labs tab under Settings, then go to your signature preferences and check the box next to "Append your location to the signature."