Your Timeline: Revisiting the world that you’ve explored | Hacker News Reader

Your Timeline: Revisiting the world that you’ve explored

google-latlong.blogspot.com

46 pointssagivo19 comments

Easily remember all the places I've been, eh? Sounds familiar. Is it like Google Latitude, which I used to easily remember all the places I had been until it was retired in 2013?

I'm interested to see if this prompts privacy concerns as I feel it should actually appease them.

The problem with location tracking previously was that it was too easy to not notice it. Click through a few confirmations during app setup and fail to dig into menus and you might never know about it.

The more it's front and center (and useful) as a feature the more likely people with legitimate concerns are to be aware of it and the ability to disable or selectively remove data.

I was pleased to see 'delete day' was so prominent in the UI.

If you're into this kind of tracking but don't necessarily want to go with Google, check out the Moves app (available on both iOS and Android). It's pretty no-nonsense and has an API. It guesses at locations based on things that FourSquare has, which would be its main weakness compared to this, I think.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that one of the things that I love that uses the Moves API is Gyroscope (http://www.gyrosco.pe). Development seems to have stagnated a bit, but it's still a really neat site.

One thing to note, Moves was acquired by Facebook a while back. I believe they changed their privacy policy after the acquisition to something a bit more fishy.

Thanks for the heads-up! I had no idea.

Google Now is becoming increasingly impressive to me. For instance, last time I rented a car when it was time for me to return it, it showed me locations of gas near the airport. That's incredibly useful.

Or, you know, one can open their GPS/Maps app and with 1 or 2 clicks (or even a voice command) ask for gas stations near the airport.

Google Now sounds paper-clippy and diminishing returns to me...

I think the point imgabe is trying to make - and I've had a similar experience - is that you occasionally receive information that _you don't even know you need to know_. For example, if I'm familiar with an area, I may have a particular gas station (or whatever) in mind, only to suddenly be given information that shows there is, in fact, a better option available to me. It's not (just) a question of saving clicks, it's the idea of giving you information off the cuff that is contextual to your situation.

Just my two cents.

Usually, the information is just noise though. And the information is never essential. That combination makes it something I'd rather not use.

Well, it's not exactly hard to disable: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2824784?hl=en

I'm getting tired of disabling stuff. I want my services to stay unchanged, unless I tell them otherwise.

I've been really happy with its bundling of information. Taking a trip soon. Booked a flight for me, a flight for my girlfriend, a car, hotels on various nights across the vacation period, etc.

Google grabbed all the info and bundled it, put it onto my calendar, and into my email in a specific place. Saved a bunch of trouble, now I have reminders on my calendar of when I check in, where, when and where my flights are, etc. And it will tell me when its time to leave for the airport, though I find this last thing a bit buggy as it will tell me when to leave as if I wanted to arrive at the airport at the time my flight leaves, and not an hour before (minimum).

I'm really enjoying what Google is doing to make my life easier.

Previously, I would have manually moved each email into a trip folder then spend time adding each item to my calendar along with confirmation codes, etc. That takes a while.

Not like Google and the (in the UK) the coppers don't already track our movements - so it's nice to see what they can see.

"Show this ad to people who walk past my coffee shop on the way to work, at a date and time when they are walking to work, and haven't already stopped at a coffee shop." -- Future Google Ads Feature in 2016

To be honest, I'd be alright with that as a consumer.

It's a bit surprising they didn't implement this long ago. I quit like this google tracking feature, I can see how some people might have privacy concerns but I don't personally care at all.

Location history has been available for at least two years on Android, but without many of the bells and whistles described here such as location-delete and photo location-marking. But recording where I am at every waking -- and sleeping, for that matter -- moment and storing it in google's cloud for it to be analyzed, correlated with my search history, sold to advertisers, and possibly hacked or subpoenaed seems shamelessly intrusive and voyeuristic. So no, I am not signing up for this. If I forget where I parked I'll just walk around in concentric circles of increasing radius while repeatedly activating my remote until my car chirps its presence. Small price to pay for maintaining the last vestige of privacy I think I have.

super interesting...Google's really digging into mapping, first with the revamped MyMaps and now with this...I'm just wondering if a timeline is the best way to see places...If I had a great date with my girlfriend a few months ago, I don't remember the day or even month...there's gotta be a better UX, no?

They write:

"Your Timeline is private and visible only to you"

I would like to challenge Google to provide proof for this: make it work without needing to login anywhere and without sending data to any place.

This will be great marketing and it is heavily needed to restore trust into a US based company after it has been destroyed completely by authoritarian lunatics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com