It was an interesting real story of a thief being caught by using Google latitude !!
Google latitude is a location sharing system using which one can share his/her location in real time with the ones in this new variety of social networking. Google latitude comes as an addon to the new Google maps for mobile, once enabled, it detects the location using GPS and updates and shares with the ones who are in the location sharing list specified by the user.
Read the story where Google latitude helped a woman to catch a purse snatcher. http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/when-google-latitude-stalking-isnt-such-a-bad-thing/ .
This lady had her mobile phone inside the purse which was snatched. The mobile phone was running Google latitude, which updated the location in real time wherever the thief tried to go, which ultimately helped police to catch the thief !
Thats about Google latitude, and there is more good news for mobile phone users in the form of wavesecure (http://wavesecure.com/). Wavesecure is another software through which a user can locate his stolen phone and lock the phone remotely. This helps misuse and can help even to find the mobile phone back.
Google latitude is cool, I use Google maps with latitude in my Nokia 5800 !
Even I have lost my mobile phone a couple of years back, I had no other option other than forgetting it and take a new one at that time, but the technology is really improving to help mobile phone users in such situation. I am sure most of us had the bitter taste of losing mobile phones in the past. Lets hope that things like Google latitude / wavesecure improve and help us retreive whatever mobile phones lost !