Roasted
August 1st, 2011, 05:00 PM
So lately I've grown interest in one of these apps. Mostly because I tend to mountain bike alone and it tends to worry certain family members since I don't exactly ride along the trail at 5 mph whistling a Jack Johnson tune to myself as I enjoy nature. As a result, I began to look into GPS tracking on my phone, just in *case* something crazy happens.
I've looked into several scenarios, but I'm curious if you guys might be able to help narrow down my search.
Glympse - So far it seems super nice. Real time tracking, nice map layout, super easy to use. The downside? You have to specify an expiration time, with a max of 4 hours being the highest on their list. Uh. No. If I'm mountain biking, I might be out there for 8 hours easy. I don't want to be in a position where I'm unable to press the "add 4 hours to timer" button if I'm truly in a bind. This simple feature kinda causes Glympse to strike out hard.
Instamapper - It's pretty much everything that I want. I had to set up an account and tie in my phone to it (very easy), but it's not real time. The user has to F5 the heck out of their browser to see if I'm moving or if I'm stationary, etc. -1 in this department, but so far I dig it otherwise.
Google Latitude - I read a lot about this. I also read a lot about how inaccurate it is, sometimes by hours (saying you're in Virginia when you left Virginia at 2pm and it's now 8 hours later and you're in Florida). However, I also saw a similarity with all of these reviews. They were from February 2009, which sounds like it was about the time Google Latitude was released. I'm going to test it out on my own here to see how good/bad it is. My aunt used it to watch my cousin drive across the country when he came up to visit last week and she spoke highly of it.
That said, has anybody used Google Latitude? Any good/bad things to say? Does anybody know of any other applications that might do the job here? For what it's worth I have an Android phone.
Thanks guys!
I've looked into several scenarios, but I'm curious if you guys might be able to help narrow down my search.
Glympse - So far it seems super nice. Real time tracking, nice map layout, super easy to use. The downside? You have to specify an expiration time, with a max of 4 hours being the highest on their list. Uh. No. If I'm mountain biking, I might be out there for 8 hours easy. I don't want to be in a position where I'm unable to press the "add 4 hours to timer" button if I'm truly in a bind. This simple feature kinda causes Glympse to strike out hard.
Instamapper - It's pretty much everything that I want. I had to set up an account and tie in my phone to it (very easy), but it's not real time. The user has to F5 the heck out of their browser to see if I'm moving or if I'm stationary, etc. -1 in this department, but so far I dig it otherwise.
Google Latitude - I read a lot about this. I also read a lot about how inaccurate it is, sometimes by hours (saying you're in Virginia when you left Virginia at 2pm and it's now 8 hours later and you're in Florida). However, I also saw a similarity with all of these reviews. They were from February 2009, which sounds like it was about the time Google Latitude was released. I'm going to test it out on my own here to see how good/bad it is. My aunt used it to watch my cousin drive across the country when he came up to visit last week and she spoke highly of it.
That said, has anybody used Google Latitude? Any good/bad things to say? Does anybody know of any other applications that might do the job here? For what it's worth I have an Android phone.
Thanks guys!