Google’s new mobile service allows your cell phone to be triangulated by cell towers so that they can know where you are, and it provides a host of services based on the fact that they know where you are at the moment – or at least where your phone is… Kind of like GPS without the GPS.

Google’s mobile location finding system is now embedded within the Google Maps mobile offering, available to a number of cell phones around the world. Granted, they are not the first to offer this feature, that prize goes to Whereis.co.au, but Google is by far the largest to push into this new region. While many high end phones come equipped with GPS, millions of us rely upon cell phones which are not linked to the satellites above for directions. So Google wants to help us find out where we are, or at the very least, they want to sell that information to any and all advertisers in your market.

Granted, I like the service, and it is fairly accurate; not to mention free, but the implications are huge. Google is a company built on search, but financed on its ad network. Now Google has access not just to my search habits, email, documents and which videos I like to watch, but also where I am sitting now as I write this. How long until Google offers a tab in its AdWords system allowing companies to target my cell phone for a campaign? Will my phone soon be chirping with a SMS offering a deep discount for lunch as I drive by the local sushi bar? Will I get a coupon from a big box retailer in the parking lot?

OK, so that sounds alright to a lot of people, but is this a privacy issue? Or are we just slipping in to a new phase of this Brave New World?

The interesting Website of the day is: FutureScanner, this one is interesting, they are searching the net, or ‘scanning’ it as they call it, and making and index of all references to future dates.  So anytime a blogger, politician, company or even you make a reference about a date in the future, this site adds it. It will be fun to see who is right more often.