Marvellous uselessness

As you may have gathered, I love technology, and sometimes I think it's important to celebrate technology - even when it is, to all intents and purposes useless.

Such an example of useless technology has recently been introduced to me by the inestimable Dr Henry Gee aka Cromercrox. It's Google's latest toy, Latitude. It's a little application you run on a suitable mobile phone which puts your current location on a map. And this can be seen by friends who you authorize to see it, either on their computer or their phone. So, for example, in the picture alongside you can see where I was three days ago, on a visit to my daughter's orthodontist.

It's totally useless for two reasons. One is that (certainly with an iPhone) it only pinpoints your location when you ask it to. So it's rarely going to be really where you are. And the other is that there isn't a lot of reason to find out where someone else is anyway, unless you are meeting up when you will probably have arranged a location. Okay you might both find yourself in London, say, and decide spur of the moment to meet up. Then you could even get walking directions to get from A to B. But otherwise it hasn't much point.

But so what? It's fun. I can, both from my PC and my phone, see where Henry was 6 days ago. What is there not to like?