By Jolie O’Dell,

Early release of a recommendation engine based on location fed “by friends.”

you and Google has taken the veil has stew, it is painfully obvious that the location is one of Googles rapid technological advances the industry’s fastest growth has been rapid in this iteration with improvements to facilities, images, and other services Latitude location functionality.

Its newest foray into the world of location-based services is Hotpot.

Hotpot takes all of Google Places’ ratings and reviews features and adds a more personal touch. Currently, Place Pages mostly aggregate review data from sources such as Yelp.

With Hotpot, users will be encouraged to rate and review businesses directly from their Google-linked profile. Users’ ratings and reviews are tracked with a counter at the top of each profile, and likes and dislikes are remembered and used in Google’s recommendation engine.

Unlike the just-the-facts, business-friendly interface of Places, Hotpot has a distinctly user-friendly UI that mirrors current trends in web app design.

In other words, it’s aimed directly at average consumers, not web junkies who live to search. While Hotpot works well with Places data, its presentation is entirely fresh, both visually and functionally. It presents high-impact data (star ratings and images) for each place in a grid format without introducing too many details — such as phone number or URL — that might not be needed until the user decides to dig down another level or two.

Another part of Hotpot is its social features. Users can create a profile nickname to separate their Hotpot account from their general Google profiles (the whole web can see the Places nickname, but only friends will see the linked Google profile and the user’s real name).

Google uses Google’s Gmail and related enabling users to find friends. Individual ratings and reviews are displayed, and users receive recommendations based on what their friends. When looking for specific places, such as “sushi, Berkeley” in the hotpot, you can filter your search results to see businesses or other places you have not classified above, you can also select only in areas that are classified as hotpot your friends.