Now that GPS is becoming more commonplace in mobile phones, developers are starting to explore the possibilities of using location for other core Web activities. Now Google has created an experimental feature to include your location in your email signature automatically.

Google has been rolling out a lot of tweaks for Gmail in recent months including offline email access, SMS chat, and animated emoticons. The company also introduced a new location-tracking feature called Google Latitude.

Now Google is adding location as an experimental feature in Gmail. It’s very easy to set up this feature and you don’t have to sign up for any additional services to start sharing your location via email.

To start appending your location to email messages, start out by enabling the feature in Gmail Labs. When you log into Gmail and go to settings, you should be able to find the Labs tab.

Once you find the ‘Location in Signature’ feature, enable it and save your settings. Now that you have the feature enabled, you can go to your ‘General’ settings tab and click the check box to include your location in your signature.

When you compose a new message, you should see your location at the bottom of the message. The first message doesn’t always seem to include the location, but clicking on Compose again should bring it up.

Your location information is in plain text at the bottom of your message. You can alter the city to make it more specific or delete your location from that email altogether.

Google uses your IP address to determine your location on the Internet, which isn’t always terribly accurate. You can make your location more specific by installing Google Gears.

Gears is a browser plugin that can detect your location based on nearby wireless networks. It asks for your permission before ever sharing your location with a Web site and is also used for Gmail’s offline access feature.

Some people are reticent to share their location on the Internet, but at least in Gmail you are sending it to your contacts and it’s not in real time. Do you think it will stop these kinds of services from catching on?

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 11:06 am under Google, Technology, Wi-Fi.

Read more entries by Dave Jeyes.
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