Google Latitude in the fire service?

Not all fire departments have multi-million dollar budgets and have the luxury of gps enabled communication devices for their trucks and responders.

Google may have come to the rescue with its Latitude service which uses cel phone location services to display users locations on a map in near real time.

Here's how you might use it for the fire service.

1. Your responders could enable the service and update their location and availability status for responding to calls. Officers could know at a glance who is available for calls.

2. your trucks could each have a cel phone in them with the service running. Dispatch could track them via the web interface.


Here's what google says:

"With Google Latitude, you can:

* See where your friends are and what they are up to
* Quickly contact them with SMS, IM, or a phone call
* Control what your location is and who gets to see it

Enjoy Google Latitude on your phone, PC, or both.

From your mobile phone - View your friends' locations and status messages and share yours with them. (Supported phones)

From your computer - View your friends' locations and status messages on a full screen even without a compatible phone or data plan. Click here to see your friends from your PC."



You can visit the latitude site at http://m.google.com/latitude


Canadians (and users from other countires?) can use the link above as well to access the service. If you try to use it via a google.ca address you are blocked.