Glympse - Since I now have a working GPS antenna in my Nexus I wanted to start reviewing some apps that take advantage of your location. The first app I started using is one that I tried a few months ago called Glympse. This app lets you take a trip and send your real time location to others. Say you are going to see a friend that lives far away. You could turn on the Glympse app and send the trip to your friend, specify the time that you will allow them to see your progress and start on your way. The app will send the friend an email, text, Tweet or Facebook message where they can see your progress. It shows your speed and path. That way they will know how close you are and how fast you are moving.
This app is great for letting friends and loved ones know where you are. There is no sign up and works with any Android 1.5 and higher device. It is private since you specify who can see your trip. Once it is started you don't need to look at your phone to do anything with the app. Since you specify the time it shows your trip you don't need to turn it off either. There are widgets for it and you can create favorites with desktop shortcuts. Since I drive 45 minutes each way to and from work it is nice being able to let my wife or kids see how far away I am in real time.
I usually only post good apps that I find useful but I also downloaded and tried the Car Driving App: Smooth Drive by Driveway. It promises to be a social driving app. It allows you to have your driving rated based on certain criteria. I installed this app and it seemed to just run constantly in the background and use my GPS killing my battery. It did rate a few of my trips for me and told me that I drove too fast the first trip and did the speed limit the other. I am not sure how it judged my breaking and accelerations just using GPS. The idea is to see if you can drive safely and score higher than your friends. I will also try out Waze: Community GPS Navigation which actually helps you with traffic updates and more of a gaming element than Smooth Drive. I do not recommend Smooth Drive. Glympse is a useful app and I do recommend trying it.
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