We bid you adieu, Latitude!
+Joe LaPenna's ode to the aging stand-alone Latitude app is a touching one, while also hinting at what's in the works. He reminisces through the years of making the service better by being a dedicated user himself. His approach to helping transition to the new system included cutting himself off from location sharing. This prompted his mother to worry about his safety after "dropping off the map." He touches on a few promising points that should prove exciting for future releases.
Location Sharing Isn't Going Away
It was very clear in Joe's post that they're always going to have some form of location sharing. I'm sure that's a load off a few of your minds. He also mentions that location history will not being going away. This is great news to those who use the feature for keeping track of customers and/or employees. These features will also still be logged and accessible from the web.
Google+ Locations Is More Stable
Joe mentions that were a lot of bugs with Latitude and that they weren't able to fix them all. He explains the the new built-in edition of Locations is more reliable. Fine tuning should only prove to make the service better.
Better Battery Usage
It is always a bit of a balancing act to get a consistent stream of location data while still conserving battery life. Joe answers this pressing question stating the improved code base will now use a lot less of your precious energy bars. He says their goal is to ensure users don't have to think about it.
Latitude's Missing Functionalities Coming Soon
Wonder why some features are missing from Locations? Joe cites that often two intersection products can get in each other's way. There are some things they can't start working on for Google+ Locations until they can decommission the Latitude infrastructure.
Extensive Location Sharing Tests
Joe says he spends half his day at work on Hangouts and the other 50% working to improve Locations (along with other things). In addition, he currently has three full time teammates on Locations along with some other Googlers who help out. He assured that they're going to keep adding these features being tested to Locations. So keep an eye out for these new features!
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+jlapenna/posts/deBP7kj7rMi
From the sound of it, there are a number of great additions to Locations in the pipeline! How often are you using the Locations feature now? Are there any features you want to see in a future release of Locations? Let us know in the comments!