Three Ways to Trace A Mobile Phone Location

Today's smartphones can do a lot more things other than make and receive calls. Here are five ways to trace a mobile phone location on the Web. You can use these tools to find out where your friends are located and what they are doing, keep track of your family members, share where you're at, and discover interesting places around your location.

Note: Be sure to check how these applications will work with your specific phone and usage plan.

Standard data and messaging charges from your carrier will most likely apply

Foursquare

Foursquare enables users to find what's interesting around them, based on the recommendations of friends, family, and colleagues. Download the app to your cell phone, connect with friends via various social networking sites and email address books, and you'll be able to instantly see what your friends are doing. Once you start "checking in" to Foursquare locations (automatically done via GPS technology), you can leave tips on places you like or dislike, send messages to friends in the area, and earn badges based on your activity level.

Facebook

Facebook Places gives you the ability to see who is checked in somewhere if they've added their location to their status updates. You can find out who is where by this information, and see who else is there if they've been tagged in a post.More from the info page:

"Place tips show you more info about places you visit, including your friends’ photos, experiences and moments from that place.

Your location is determined using cellular networks, Wi-Fi, GPS and Facebook Bluetooth® beacons.

Viewing place tips doesn’t post on Facebook or show people where you are."

Twitter

Twitter is a great source for looking up where content is coming from, either from a specific person (if they have enabled location tracking) or from a group of people. You can use Twitter Advanced Search to track down all tweets in a specific area. This is especially useful when you're looking up breaking news information; for example, say you wanted to see the latest data on a recent earthquake in Chile, or you wanted to get the latest score of your community baseball team.

Want to get even more specific? Use a service like NASA Latitude and Longitude Finder to plug in an address and search for those coordinates.