Latitude, if you’re not familiar with it, is an add-on to Google Maps that (amongst other features) overlays an avatar of your friends on Google Maps. So if you’re out-and-about you can see their location. Or if you’re on your desktop you can see a large Google Map of your friends.

Typically innovative, Google decided to take things to the next level. Wouldn’t it be neat that, if you had sufficient friends each with a T-Mobile G1 (for example), you could position them on the map to spell out a message.

Granted, you’d need to have quite a bit of spare time. But it’s doable, right?

Right.

The Google Latitude team stuck their money where their mouth is and had a bit of fun, thus:

That there is a screenshot of a Google Maps screen spelling out ‘Hi Mom’ across central San Francisco. Each little square you see is an avatar representing a physical Google team member with a phone standing in the corresponding physical location in San Francisco.

The enterprising chaps also made a video documenting the process of setting this up:

There is, I suspect, limited value in spelling out messages using your friends on Google Maps / Latitude. But it’s a super proof-of-concept for the technology.

And a reminder to get on Latitude.

Latitude, of course, isn’t yet available for the iPhone so that’s most of San Francisco ruled out. But for everyone back in Europe sporting your common-or-garden N-Series Nokia device, perhaps it’s time you and your friends spent this Saturday spelling out ‘Hello Your Majesty’ across a map of London.

(You’ll need about 10-12 friends per character.)

Which is fantastic except there are not doing a very good job advertising it to us. In fact this year all the networks and retailers have generally been pretty rubbish at trying to get student customers. I attend Salford University which is located within about 8 miles of another 2 universities in Manchester. Manchester has one of the largest student populations in the country. I have seen nothing, well pretty much nothing from anyone. Are these companies stupid? Students around the country are sitting with about £1000 (I know it may not sound that much however for a student it is) in their bank account in the form of their student loan. I am not saying that students should be ripped off at all, but you would of thought the mobile industry would have thought about having a presence at freshers fair across the country?

In the last two years there was one network that got advertising to students during freshers week correct and they were Dot Mobile, OK they are in administration but they worked on wholesale, just reselling Vodafone airtime at a discounted price. I think they survived as long as they did because of being linked with the NUS.

This year I was looking forward to seeing who would be there in Dot’s place linked up with the NUS and heavily marketing their services, I thought 3 (pushing mobile broadband) and Blyk would be there. I was VERY wrong. Orange was there and I ran over to their stand (yes I am that sad), and I asked what offers they had and the free stuff they had. The reply I got was that the tariffs were the same as I could get in the Orange shop and I could enter to win a blow up orange animal.

I stood there shocked, your kidding me right a blow up orange animal?

Nope I am being 100% serious they had one to give away if I gave them my email address. No special discount if you signed up on the day, no sample handsets real or fake to be seen on their stall. Nothing, except their booklet for this month. No hard sell, in fact they did not even ask me if I had a phone at all or If i wanted a new phone. No mention of Orange Wednesday’s nothing.

I can sum this post up in pretty much one word FAIL.

If you are reading this and work for one of the network operators you really need to do much better at reaching your target audience, you need to use tools like facebook and prize giveaways and get freshers stall stands to sell your products. If you act quickly some freshers week are this week and next week but you failed miserably at getting any customers from the 20,000 students Salford has.

Standby for more posts about freshers week from Dan Pullen, who will be telling us what has been happening at his university, hopefully he will have a better expierance then me.

Over to Dan:

- – - – -

Hi all — I’m Daniel Pullen; I am 18 years old and currently living in Suffolk near to Norwich. I will soon be attending Sussex University in Falmer, Brighton, where key events such Fresher’s Week means that — in particular, Mobile companies — along with banks, sports brands and so on will be lining up to offer discount rates and freebies to new students. I am aiming to bring you reports of these across the coming months.

Over the last few years I have had a great deal of experience with mobile phones and other portable devices from brands such as Sharp, Motorola, Archos and Apple.

My current mobile contract is a Vodafone £35 a month price plan purchased from Phones4U with an LG Prada KE850 handset. My experience of the phone has been generally positive. The build quality is of a very high standard, demonstrated by the solid construction and reflective black touch screen.

The user interface has been relatively responsive and intuitive largely due to the large 3-inch screen and touch icons. The phone also has good quality music player, which is aided, by the micro SD slot, which can support capacities up to 8GB. However while using the phone I have become frustrated with the relatively poor camera (2 megapixel). Even my old Sharp GX took better pictures! Another issue is the phone’s occasional tendency to freeze after excessive use of the phone book application. Other drawbacks also include the lack of 3G support, tendency to pick up scratches and illegibility in heavy sun light.

I am very excited to be working with Mobile Industry Review and hope to have an exciting and productive input into the Website.

If any readers with University experience would like to offer me any advice, I’m all ears… Or eyes.

Daniel

- – - – -

Thanks very much Daniel.

Now then. Advice.

I actually had a phone line installed into my room at University. Broadband didn’t exist and the halls of residences weren’t wired for internet. One or two were, come to think of it, but the connections were dirt slow.

So the first thing I did when I arrived was talk to the site administrator and get a BT engineer in.

And Rugby Shirts. I was absolutely amazed by the effect that a rugby shirt has on members of the opposite sex. Turn up to the Hall of Residence bar wearing a tshirt? Fine. Get ignored by every girl in the place. Buy a £20 Rugby Shirt in University colours and head off the bar… WOOSH. They’re on you like a flash.

One final thing. Practice your patter. The first thing everyone says to each other:
- What course are you doing?
- What A Levels did you study?
- What grades did you get?
- What hall of residence are you in / where are you staying?

Useful to have that speech all planned out.

By the way, here’s a picture of me and two of my good friends from Uni. We, er, weren’t studying on this particular day:

If it’s true, it could mean a significant step for Apple – expanding the channels it sells the device through beyond Apple and AT&T stores (needless to say, this student-targeting initiative looks like it’ll only be out in the States to start with) as tries to embed itself even further into the education market.

Are students in America seriously cashed up? Or is Apple banking that there are enough parents willing to lay down the massive bundle of cash necessary to get an iPhone (Steve Jobs may have cut the up-front device cost by a fair bit, but there’s still a great big data bill to contend with) for their university going kids? If Apple’s smart, it’ll spread the discounts it gives educational institutions on Macs to iPhones too – reel in the users while they’re young, and hope they stay with it for the upgrades.