I was really excited this morning when I read about the new Google Latitude apps (Location History and Alerts) on the Official Google Mobile Blog.

In case you’re not so conversant with Google Latitude, it’s a location based service that runs on top of Google Maps allowing you to track your geographical location and that of your friends. Your friends will also need to have signed up with Google Latitude for you to be able to track them.

One thing though that I would have loved Google Latitude to have is to alert me when my friends are close by without having to constantly check their location on the application. And the good news is that, it is now possible.

Google Location History is a Google Latitude app that allows you to actually see where you’ve been over time. So you can easily tell all those places you spent the most time in and so on and so forth. With Google Location Alerts, you can get an email or sms alert whenever your friends or colleagues are nearby.

One other feature that would really be cool that’s not out yet will be the ability to tell when any of your friends are at a particular location – say the cinema or a supermarket.