IANAD

This is a rewrite of my location script from earlier. It now uses the widget api which is
awesome as it lets you store the id in the db and put it more places than just the footer.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Hello Location
Plugin URI:http://ineedtopostthisplaces.com
Description: shows your latitude location to a city level.
Author: Matthew O'Gorman
Version: 2.0
Author URI: http://b.rldn.net

    Hello Location is released under the GNU General Public License (GPLv3)

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt

    This is a WordPress plugin (http://wordpress.org) and widget
    (http://automattic.com/code/widgets/).
*/

function hello_location_init() {

    // Check to see required Widget API functions are defined...
    if ( !function_exists('register_sidebar_widget') || !function_exists('register_widget_control') )
        return; // ...and if not, exit gracefully from the script.

    // This function prints the sidebar widget--the cool stuff!
    function hello_location($args) {
	extract($args);

        // Collect our widget's options, or define their defaults.
        $options = get_option('hello_location');

	$googleLatID=$options['latitude_id'];
	$url ="http://www.google.com/latitude/apps/badge/api?user=".$googleLatID."&type=json";
        $text="Mog is hiding or turned his phone off";
	if(empty($options['latitude_id'])) {
		$text="I need to be configured to work.";
	} else {
		try{
			$contents = file_get_contents($url);
			$contents = utf8_encode($contents);
			$results = json_decode($contents, true);
			$text="I am in ".$results['features'][0]['properties']['reverseGeocode']." probably...";
		}
		catch (Exception $e){
			$text="Google won't tell you where I am";
		}
	}
        echo $before_widget;
        echo $before_title . $after_title;
        echo $text .  $googleLatId;
        echo $after_widget;
    }

    // This is the function that outputs the form to let users edit
    // the widget's title and so on. It's an optional feature, but
    // we'll use it because we can!
    function hello_location_control() {

        // Collect our widget's options.
        $options = get_option('hello_location');

        // This is for handing the control form submission.
        if ( $_POST['hello_location-submit'] ) {
            // Clean up control form submission options
            $newoptions['latitude_id'] = strip_tags(stripslashes($_POST['hello_location-latitude_id']));
        }

        // If original widget options do not match control form
        // submission options, update them.
        if ( $options != $newoptions ) {
            $options = $newoptions;
            update_option('hello_location', $options);
        }

        // Format options as valid HTML. Hey, why not.
        $latitude_id = htmlspecialchars($options['latitude_id'], ENT_QUOTES);

// The HTML below is the control form for editing options.
?>
        <div>
        <label for="hello_location-latitude_id" style="line-height:35px;display:block;">Latitude ID: <input type="text" id="hello_location-latitude_id" name="hello_location-latitude_id" value="<?php echo $latitude_id; ?>" /></label>
        <input type="hidden" name="hello_location-submit" id="hello_location-submit" value="1" />
        </div>
    <?php
    // end of hello_location_control()
    }

    // This registers the widget. About time.
    register_sidebar_widget('Hello Location', 'hello_location');

    // This registers the (optional!) widget control form.
    register_widget_control('Hello Location', 'hello_location_control');
}

// Delays plugin execution until Dynamic Sidebar has loaded first.
add_action('plugins_loaded', 'hello_location_init');
?>