Gmail feature lets recipients know where you are

Google has added an experimental feature to Gmail that automatically lets the recipient of your e-mails know where you penned your missive.

Gmail Labs announced in a blog posting Tuesday that Gmail users can now append their e-mail signature to include their current city and country location. If you are overly officious, or travel frequently and enjoy "place dropping" to your friends and colleagues that you are in Dubai, Dublin, or, um, Duluth, this feature will appeal to you.

New Gmail feature lets the recipients of your e-mails know where you were when you wrote to them.

(Credit: Google.com)

However, Google software engineer Marco Bonechi acknowledges that because the feature keys in on your IP address, it may not accurately report your location. (To illustrate that point, I should admit that I posted this blog--and captured the Gmail screenshot--from Oakland, Calif., while on a virtual private network attached to CNET's headquarters in San Francisco.)

As a result, Bonechi suggests that users' browsers have a version of Google Gears that supports the location module, allowing Wi-Fi access point signals to pinpoint your location.

To activate the feature, turn on "Location in Signature" from the Labs tab under Settings, then go to your signature preferences and check the box next to "Append your location to the signature."

[loose_screw]

I can't think of the last time that I cared to know where someone was emailing me from.

[Deepdiver47]

This has to be the most pointless piece of appended cr@pware I have ever seen.. I love gmail and use it all the time, but what a waste of cash!!! Obviously Google people have either too much money, too much time or too little to do.

[assman]

It's not a waste. Google lets their engineers produce content in their free-time, it's not like this is some big new feature release, it's just a nice new additive that some people might find useful.

[ktswami]

If you're sending a letter-to-the-editor to a newspaper or online news site, giving feedback to a company, emailing customer service to fix something...there's a million reasons why you may need to include address/location info... This can be a good time-saver -- accuracy without GPS, notwithstanding.

Having said that, we noticed TONS of new improvements by Microsoft after they bought Hotmail in 1997, right? Right? Before Gmail came online? Puh-lease.

[loose_screw]

"f you're sending a letter-to-the-editor to a newspaper or online news site, giving feedback to a company, emailing customer service to fix something"

Right, because we all do that more often than not.../sarcasm