Google Latitude on iOS 4 update

Now don’t get me wrong Latitudie does what it says on the tin, but boy…does it drain the battery. I also found that the only way to turn it off was to stop the background app from running, and then disable the location service for it.

The setting I used for background were, Best location, periodic updates when not moving…off. With these settings, a full battery would last around 8 hours on my iPhone 4, and around 6 hours on C’s 3GS.

Now suprisingly I would have expected to App store to be over saturated with Google latatide apps, however I could only find one other, called Device Locator.

Device Locator like Latitudie will track your position, and update the latitude servers, however does so much more.

You initially need to create an account on the Device Locators site, download the app, sign into the app, then your good to setup.

Via the website you can configure how you want your phone to update. The range is as follows

Cell Tower Switch
2 Hours
1 Hour
30 mins
10 mins
1 min (emergency)

Now I’ve been running at the 10 minute interval update, and it’s hardly touching my battery, my battery was fully charged at 8am this morning, and when I write this 3 hours later, my battery is on 99%, which is a vast improvement over Latitudie, this would normally be in the low 80%.

The website also give you a small google maps preview showing you currently location of device, and a history down the left hand side. There is even a graph to tell you how much battery you had at the last poll.

There is also the option to send a text message to your phone (if somebody has swiped it), or set the alarm going (assuming you can’t find your phone).

Now granted, this app is £2.99 however it’s a small price to pay in comparison to the mobileme account which does a very similar job. Judging by the website, this is still in the very early stages (no css on the site as yet), however it works very well.

Tags: 10 mins, 3gs, apps, cell tower, comparison, configure, Download, drain, emergency, google, google maps, graph, iphone, iphone 4, job, last poll, latitude, left hand side, location, location service, Locator, Locators, minute interval, mobileme, option, periodic updates, phone, poll, servers, sign, store, switch, text, text message, tin, Via

Huawei E585 MiFi Router

I’ve been toying with the idea of the MiFi device for a while (while since I moved from Nokia to iPhone and lost the ability to use the joikuspot software)

I get the majority of my internet fix when out and about using my iPhone, however there are occasions when I’m away from home and could do with connecting my MacBook to the web, when I’m not anywhere near a useable wireless network.

I had looked at paying for the tethering on my iPhone for these occasions, however both me and C would need to connect, which would mean setting up internet connection sharing, or something like.

So I decided on the Huawei E585 MiFi Router from 3 on pay as you go, as I only see myself using this on occasions.

The device is pretty awesome, it’s small and apparently will last 5 hours on a single charge.

The LCD display, show data usage, batttery, signal, and messages.

I’ve yet to put this to use as there seems to be a 10 foot “no 3 signal” cloud around my house (according to the coverage map on 3′s site).

All in all, very happy with the purchase, and will update once I’ve had a chance to use it.

Unboxing pics below.

Tags: ability, chance, coverage map, fix, foot, home, house, Huawei, idea, internet connection, iphone, JoikuSpot, lcd display, macbook, Map, MiFi, Network, Nokia, occasions, pay, purchase, Router, sharing, show, signal, software, something, while

Google Latitude on iOS 4

As you may remember from my post on iOS 4, I was looking forward to somebody developing a Google Latitude application.

Google Latitude is a way of keeping your friends updated on your location in real time. If you have a latitude application running on your mobile device, this will poll the Google servers and update your location. This is especially handy if you are meeting with friends, or want to see if somebody is home before popping in.

Google Latitude has been working as a layer on Google Map on the Nokia, Blackberry and Android based phones for some time now, however only worked as a HTML5 version on the iPhone (which doesn’t work as a background application)

Now thanks to the Background location feature on iOS 4, and Google making the Latitude API’s available, developers are able to start work on Location based applications.

The first one that seems to have emerged is an app called Latitudie.

Latitudie is still in it’s infancy stage, (Current version is 1.1) however seems to do the job. Once signed in, it will pinpoint your location on the map and start to poll the Google Latitude server. You then have to option to view your history, and thanks to  iOS 4 it will happily run in the background.

In version 1.0, the application tended to not update at all if your didn’t move locations, which would lead others to think you had the application switch off, also the accuracy would drop, making it look like you were in the middle of a field, and not at home.

In version 1.1 the developer has addressed these issues by allowing you to switch on/off “Low accuracy in background” and an additional feature of “Periodic updates” (when low accuracy in background is switched off).

As I’ve said, it’s still in it’s infancy stages, doesn’t allow you to view your friends on the map, or do much else apart from update your location. I find myself using the HTML5 Google Maps version to find my friends.

If your a data junkie and like to know where you’ve been and when, and have other friends using latitude, this app is a must. I hope as this app grows, it will add all the feature that the HTML5 version of google maps has to offer.

Tags: accuracy, API, application switch, background, background application, Blackberry, current version, developers, feature, google, google maps, home, HTML, infancy stage, infancy stages, ios, iphone, junkie, latitude, Latitudie, location, Low, Maps, middle, mobile device, move locations, Nokia, Periodic, periodic updates, real time, servers, stage, switch, time, update, version, way