SHAPE Services officially announced the release of their location based social network, GPSed, on Thursday. Still in beta, the site launched quietly last November.

GPSed’s application is an outgrowth of the Stuttgart, Germany-based company’s core business as a cross-platform software developer for mobile devices.

Similar to tracklog competitor MobileTracker (which costs about $24), GPSed’s free application allows users to track their trips in real time from their mobile devices and then share their trips and photos with friends online. Routes are traced onto Google maps and include altitude and speed data as well.

In about a month, members will be able to add photos to their trip tracks, said company representative Helen Khais. The geotagging feature will assign the precise latitude and longitude to the photos according to synchronized time stamps from members’ digital cameras and GPS enabled devices.

A frequent traveler, Ms. Khais said that this technology is great for sharing pictures with family members. “When I visit a place my family would never be able to visit…I can share with them exactly where I’ve been.” The so-called GPSed Photo Take ‘n’ Pin is also great for avid photographers who want to log the precise time and location a photo was taken, she said.

Nanomatic’s Myrimis, Loopt, bbPlaces, and Trackut are among the other internet and mobile social networks focusing on the location-obsessed.

According to the web site, GPSed is compatible with mobile devices equipped with internal GPS receivers, including N95, latest BlackBerry models, and Windows Mobiles. It’s also compatible with mobiles that can connect to external GPS receivers via Bluetooth and with any GPS receivers (like Garmin, TomTom, and others) that can record tracks in GPX, PLT, KML and other formats.