If you ever wanted to share your current location with your loved ones when you are on a road trip alone, this information is for you. There are times when I go on road trips alone and my wife gets worried if I don’t call her frequently to let her know where and how I am. I usually don’t like to talk on phone while driving and yet want to share my current location with selected people. That’s when I found InstaMapper and their ‘GPS Tracker’ iPhone app.
To use this service, sign-up for a free account on their website and download the free application for iPhone. You have to enter you device id to map your web account to your iPhone app. When you are going on a trip and want to share your location, start this application and leave it running. That’s it. It will automatically transmit your current location which can be viewed online on a Google map. You can configure the accuracy you want and the time interval.
As applications can’t run in background on iPhone, you have to keep this app in the foreground to keep it running. If you are worried about your iPhone going to sleep, simply start you iPod app, start playing some music and then start the GPS tracker app. If you have got iPod app playing music in the background, this app keeps sending your location even if your iPhone goes to sleep.
Privacy is a big concern when you are thinking of sharing your location online. Your location is never public and you can share your location to only select people by sending a link to them. Of course you can share your location with everyone if you want to by embedding a map in your website, blog or facebook profile. The best thing about iPhone app is that it can’t run in the background and hence you don’t have to fear that you will forget to turn it off and hence share your location unintentionally. Your location is transmitted only if the app is in the foreground.
The application is not limited to iPhone. They have an application for Blackberry and Android phones too.
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