Making technology work for you. This post is the first in a series of Fresh Mango articles written to recommend useful and generally free technologies to make your work or personal life easier.
Introducing Glympse
Today, we will be looking at a free application called Glympse.
Glympse allows you to share your location in real time with friends or family, essentially using your smartphone as a tracking device. Like many of the best ideas, its power comes from its simplicity and ease of use.
Some obvious uses for this app are
- Letting your family know how far you are from home
- Letting customers know your progress on a delivery run
- Confirming your friend(s) made it home okay after a night out
- Sending your location in real time when doing sports in case of injury or accident.
Test Results
Personally, I primarily use Glympse while cycling back from work so my wife knows exactly where I am and approximately when I will be home.
What impressed me the most during this process was the ease of setup – with nothing more than an association with my Facebook application, I am able to send my real time location to any contact, Facebook or other.
The responsiveness & accuracy of the tracking was so good that my wife was able to see me slow on hills and stop at intersections etc. This really underlines its use as a safety and security application in my opinion.
Try it Yourself!
To try out Glympse, simply search in your device’s application store (App Store or Google Play) or for more information, visit glympse.com
Another thing that impressed me was that glympse requires no registration from your recipient at all – you send them a Glympse, they click the link in the email or message and they can track you – it’s that simple. The sender can begin using Glympse with a simple association with your Facebook login.
Privacy
Obviously, it is unlikely that you will want someone tracking you 100% of the time. Glympse has made this problem easy to manage by giving all ‘glympses’ and expiration time – this is set at a default of 15 minutes but can be changed according to your requirements. Once your glympse has expired, only a new invitation will allow the recipient to track your location again.
Availability
Glimpse is available on the four main mobile phone platforms
- Android
- iPhone
- Windows Phone 7 & 8
- Blackberry