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Best of luck with your app, but I'd like to take a second to play devil's advocate: what does your app offer me over my existing location sending apps (Latitude

Best of luck with your app, but I'd like to take a second to play devil's advocate: what does your app offer me over my existing location sending apps (Latitude and Glympse)? Latitude being there to let me friends know where I am without me even having to initiate anything (for when I don't care about privacy at the moment), and Glympse lets me send temporary expiring location messages via SMS, Email, etc (for when privacy of my location is a concern).

asmosoinio 15y ago
No need to apologize, this is exactly why I posted the app and the idea to HN! I agree Latitude rocks hard (when you get friends to actually use it), and the idea of Glympse is brilliant. I haven't tried it myself but immediately thought it would be a good solution when I stumbled across it. We may want to implement something similar as well. But they both fail on a few cases: - Try getting your non techie friend with a dumbphone to use Latitude -- not possible as the app can't run on the device. Same with Glympse, however less so because it may work ok with pretty simple browsers on the receiving end. - vs Gecko SMS: If someone can receive SMS, they can receive your location - And then the "rest of the world" -argument: most people don't understand maps, maps are not available to many areas. Maps don't work well in cheap phones with small screens. Landmarks is a simple concept that everybody understands, and it's available everywhere. That's what we offer. I know this partly contradicts with using the Android platform, but that's where we wanted to start. We have a fully working prototype for S60 Symbian as well, but it's no fun to use. :)
- Pewpewarrows 15y ago
  Thanks for the quick reply! I guess I missed the part where Gecko would work with so-called "dumb" phones as well, without any mapping software. That's definitely a good enough reason for me to give it a try this weekend.
  - asmosoinio 15y ago
    Hey, I just submitted something of my own for the first time so what else can I do than sit here replying?-) I don't think you missed it, that information probably isn't available anywhere yet. Unless you read all my comments here, and still I don't think I have really mentioned that. But had you read our business plan, you would definitely be aware of this. -- Update: Just realized you probably meant the receiving end, whereas I was talking about sending these messages from a dumb phone. The former is mentioned in the Market text: This means that Gecko SMS works with standard SMS and MMS, and does not require any special software on the receiving phone.

asmosoinio 15y ago

No need to apologize, this is exactly why I posted the app and the idea to HN! I agree Latitude rocks hard (when you get friends to actually use it), and the idea of Glympse is brilliant. I haven't tried it myself but immediately thought it would be a good solution when I stumbled across it. We may want to implement something similar as well. But they both fail on a few cases: - Try getting your non techie friend with a dumbphone to use Latitude -- not possible as the app can't run on the device. Same with Glympse, however less so because it may work ok with pretty simple browsers on the receiving end. - vs Gecko SMS: If someone can receive SMS, they can receive your location - And then the "rest of the world" -argument: most people don't understand maps, maps are not available to many areas. Maps don't work well in cheap phones with small screens. Landmarks is a simple concept that everybody understands, and it's available everywhere. That's what we offer. I know this partly contradicts with using the Android platform, but that's where we wanted to start. We have a fully working prototype for S60 Symbian as well, but it's no fun to use. :)

Pewpewarrows 15y ago
Thanks for the quick reply! I guess I missed the part where Gecko would work with so-called "dumb" phones as well, without any mapping software. That's definitely a good enough reason for me to give it a try this weekend.
- asmosoinio 15y ago
  Hey, I just submitted something of my own for the first time so what else can I do than sit here replying?-) I don't think you missed it, that information probably isn't available anywhere yet. Unless you read all my comments here, and still I don't think I have really mentioned that. But had you read our business plan, you would definitely be aware of this. -- Update: Just realized you probably meant the receiving end, whereas I was talking about sending these messages from a dumb phone. The former is mentioned in the Market text: This means that Gecko SMS works with standard SMS and MMS, and does not require any special software on the receiving phone.