Glympse @ Where2.0 2009

May 20, 2009 · Posted in Companies

So as Where2.0 gets up and rolling there are sure to be a number of new and interesting location aware applications getting their share of the spotlight this week. The first that I noticed was a company called Glympse, created by a bunch of ex Microsoft folks.

The idea of broadcasting out ones location is certainly nothing new and a number of folks have had offerings in this area for a while. For example you can let your social network know where you are on a variety of services like Loopt, Loki, Limbo or Google’s Latitude… evidently if you start such a service, it’s required that you give it a name beginning with the letter ‘L’.

If you’re a corporate type, you can make your employees use a mobile resource management system like Air-Trak to track via a phone or GPS Buddy to track via a personal navigation device. Meanwhile, Sprint has had its Friends and Family Locator and Verizon its Chaperone product for a number of years now.

But, the latest push seems to be more free, downloadable, off-deck services targeted to the mass market via Android and iPhone. With Android currently having the clear advantage for “tracking” applications by allowing applications to run in the background, spitting out GPS fixes without the phone user having to actively do anything for each location fix.

At first glance it seems that Glympse has done a good job of trying to understand how the general public will want to share location with others. with the core components being that people will want an easy improptu way to share their location… with as few steps as possible and without the recipient needing anything more than the ability to receive an email or text. It also seems to expect that people will generally want to share their location for a specific purpose or event, so tracking sessions are able to be turned on for only limited periods of time for up to four hours, so maybe you can help coordinate meeting up with a friend, or allow friends and family to monitor your progress on a trip to see if it looks like you’ll be in home in time for dinner. If you’re indoors and out of GPS coverage, no worries Glympse uses cell ID and wi-fi positioning systems as back up when GPS is not available.

I am sure 4 hours of continual tracking could become an issue for battery life which probably has everything to do with Glympse putting a four hour limit on the length of time the service will transmit location per session.

The service is currently only available on Android on T Mobile for the G1 so I haven’t had a chance to play with it first hand, but its free and seems to make a lot more sense than some of the other attempts at similar services like PocketFinder which is trying to charge big money for a similar application on iPhone which can’t transmit location in the background while the phone is used for other things.

If you don’t have a G1 you can at least check out the video below!