Google Latitude for iPhone now available

Tired of being texted: "Where are you?" by your friends? Google Latitude for iPhone can answer that question for them without taking you away from your other important text messages, like "Hafta break up with u; sorry," or "Free food @Phils, 2 pm."

The free, location-based app, made available Monday in Apple's App Store, lets you share your location continuously with whomever you want, and see where your friends are on a map, as well as on a handy-dandy list.

Location-based apps, like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook's Connect, are all the rage, it seems. But Google has had a dedicated mobile website for Latitude for awhile, and the app has been available for use on BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian smart phones, as well as on computers. But the iteration for the iPhone is specifically made for Apple's iOS 4, the latest version of the company's mobile operating system.

You can control your information by sharing only city-level location, hiding your location, or turning off background updating at any time, Google says.

"Remember, Latitude is 100 percent opt-in," Google says on its blog. "You must install the app and add friends (or accept requests) to start sharing your location. You can turn off background updating if you’d like and control the same privacy settings: share only city-level location, hide your location, or sign out of Latitude at any time."

To use Latitude on Apple's devices, you'll need to have iOS 4.0 or later installed on these devices: iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation), and iPad.

Mashable notes that the numbered version of the app is 2.0.0.346, "a slightly odd version number for a new application, revealing how long it took for the app to be ready for prime time or for Apple to approve it."

In fact, Latitude showed up last week in the App Store, but was yanked back, for reasons unknown.

And not everyone is a fan of Latitude for iPhone.

"I will use it, but it’s totally breaking for me," writes Robert Scoble, in "Google's Foursquare Rival, Latitude, Is A Mess."

Among the reasons he cites: the user interface "for adding new people really sucks. It is forcing me to go through friend requests one at a time serially. So, if I need to add a real friend, like my wife, I can’t without first going through hundreds of requests. Compare to Instagram and you’ll see the folly of that."

Also, he contends, "There isn’t value to sharing where I’m at all the time. I look at my friends on Google Buzz. Does it really matter to me that I know where they are? No. It only really matters if they are open for a meeting, if they are in the same neighborhood as I am, or if they are doing something 'braggable.' I’m not freaked out by sharing where I’m at, like many other people are, but I just don’t get any value out of it."

And perhaps one of the key issues that all smart phone users care about: because Latitude is running "all the time it uses some of my precious battery life. Enough said. The value I get out of it isn’t worth the battery savings."

Here's Google's 67-second look at Latitude for iPhone: