Google Latitude on iOS 4

As you may remember from my post on iOS 4, I was looking forward to somebody developing a Google Latitude application.

Google Latitude is a way of keeping your friends updated on your location in real time. If you have a latitude application running on your mobile device, this will poll the Google servers and update your location. This is especially handy if you are meeting with friends, or want to see if somebody is home before popping in.

Google Latitude has been working as a layer on Google Map on the Nokia, Blackberry and Android based phones for some time now, however only worked as a HTML5 version on the iPhone (which doesn’t work as a background application)

Now thanks to the Background location feature on iOS 4, and Google making the Latitude API’s available, developers are able to start work on Location based applications.

The first one that seems to have emerged is an app called Latitudie.

Latitudie is still in it’s infancy stage, (Current version is 1.1) however seems to do the job. Once signed in, it will pinpoint your location on the map and start to poll the Google Latitude server. You then have to option to view your history, and thanks to  iOS 4 it will happily run in the background.

In version 1.0, the application tended to not update at all if your didn’t move locations, which would lead others to think you had the application switch off, also the accuracy would drop, making it look like you were in the middle of a field, and not at home.

In version 1.1 the developer has addressed these issues by allowing you to switch on/off “Low accuracy in background” and an additional feature of “Periodic updates” (when low accuracy in background is switched off).

As I’ve said, it’s still in it’s infancy stages, doesn’t allow you to view your friends on the map, or do much else apart from update your location. I find myself using the HTML5 Google Maps version to find my friends.

If your a data junkie and like to know where you’ve been and when, and have other friends using latitude, this app is a must. I hope as this app grows, it will add all the feature that the HTML5 version of google maps has to offer.

Tags: accuracy, API, application switch, background, background application, Blackberry, current version, developers, feature, google, google maps, home, HTML, infancy stage, infancy stages, ios, iphone, junkie, latitude, Latitudie, location, Low, Maps, middle, mobile device, move locations, Nokia, Periodic, periodic updates, real time, servers, stage, switch, time, update, version, way

Wolverine finally beat

About 2 months ago I downloaded the demo of Wolverine on my PS3, and loved it !, However with not seeing the film, I wasn’t willing to buy the full game in case of spoilers.

About a month ago, I finally got my butt into gear and and went to the cinema, and say Wolverine…which was an ok film.

About 3 weeks ago, I was in my local Tesco’s and noticed that it was available on the Xbox 360 for £25 !…Bargain. Luckily I have both consoles so bought it.

How is it ?…It’s fantastic !, I read many reviews, and it averages rating was around 7/10, but I personally think it’s worth more that this. The game play is very much like God of War, it’s a good hack and slash game, and really action packed, with some really gruesome cut scenes.

I did get annoyed by a few things, there were 2 points in the game that stand out where they were stupid timed jumpy bit, whereby if you didn’t time it perfectly, you ended up either falling to your death, and then have to wait around 30 seconds for the save game to load, or having to start the chain of events again, so the little platforms came out so you could then get to the beginning, and jump across them again…very frustrating.

The combat in the game was awesome, very fast paced, and as you go through the game and pick up and slot power-up, it only gets better.

The end of game boss annoyed me, in total took me 28 attempts at killing him, and not due to the fact that I’m bad at the game, it’s due to the fact that the 3rd stage of killing him, he fires the red laser at you, which destroys the ground beneath you, which then makes you fall to you death. The majority of the time you couldn’t jump out of the way in time, so had no choice but to die, so you have to load your previous save game which starts at the beginning of the 2nd stage, which then takes you 5/10 minutes of battle to get back to stage 3 again, only to have the ground blow from under me, and have to load the checkpoint again.

I feel I’ve been quite negative above, but the rest of the game more than makes up for it, it took me around 14 hours to beat the game of which I was only annoyed for around 1 hour of this, so 13 hours of mindless blood fest.

I’d give this game a 9/10 and if it wasn’t for the annoyance at the end boss, this would have got a 10/10 from me.

Tags: 360, attempts, bargain, Beginning, boss, butt, case, chain of events, checkpoint, cinema, consoles, death, demo, end, fact, film, full game, game, game play, Gear, God, god of war, ground, hack, month, platforms, PS3, stage, stage 3, Tesco, time, wolverine, xbox, xbox 360