Find My Friends

Find My Friends Universal (Optimized for both iPhone and iPad) (3.5 stars with 2537 Ratings)
Free
 

Find my Friends is a location based app by Apple released today along with the iOS 5. It is used to find your friends and family at any given time. To install it, you must first upgrade your iPhone or iPad to iOS 5.

You can choose to follow your friends and family permanently or temporarily. But first, you’ll need send them a request to allow you to see their location. They’ll need to have the Find My Friends app installed on their device to accept your request. Once they accept, you’ll be able to track their whereabouts in a list or on the map. It is a great app for parents who want to know their children’s location at all times. It is also a great app for meetings with a friend. You’ll know how far they are from the meeting point without ever calling them. And if you are wondering where your spouse is at right now, this app will show you the way.

Find My Friends: Apple Releases this Location Sharing App to Easily Track Your Friends’ Whereabouts is a post by App Chronicles

The app allows for location sharing in the background, meaning that if you have automatic detection turned on, your friends can track you as you move around the map. It’s a cool function, but you can imagine the trouble people could get in when they forget to “hide their location” at the appropriate times. Google included some multi-level privacy, making it possible for you to just share on a city-level, though that’s not much different than the information anyone could gather from, say, Facebook.

This app could have some great uses for families or close friends. It works in the background, so it will stay out of your way. Just stay on top of updating your settings the way you want them, and as long as that’s taken care of, this app should find a home in your “Google” folder, alongside all the other useful apps they’ve brought us in the past.

Google’s release notes put it like this:

“With Google Latitude, see where your friends are right now. Latitude lets you stay in touch with your friends and family by making it easy to share where you are and see each other on a map.”

Yep, it’s that simple.

Track Your Friends with the Official Google Latitude App is a post by App Chronicles

Do you need to let your friends know where you are quickly?  You should know that your favorite messaging app, WhatsApp, has already integrated Google Maps location sharing into its program.

WhatsApp is a popular iPhone-to-iPhone messaging app.  Most users love it because this app allows iPhone users to chat with each other without paying the carriers for SMS.  It is also easy to use.  There’s no need to remember any PIN or usernames for your friends like many SMS apps.  WhatsApp integrates with the existing contact address book to find your WhatsApp friends.

WhatsApp allows users to share their location with another WhatsApp friend via a tap of the arrow icon left of the message input box.  After tapping the arrow icon, choose share location to immediately send your location to your friend.

Your friend will first get a location sharing push notification message sent to their phone.  After opening the message, your WhatsApp contact will see a square box they can then tap to bring out a Google Maps page containing your approximate location within the WhatsApp.  Of course, the strength of your GPS signal will determine how well the accuracy of your location is presented on Google Maps page.

Share Location with WhatsApp, the iPhone to iPhone Messaging App is a post by App Chronicles

You’ve probably done this before. Telling your friend where you are so he or she can meet up with you.

But you don’t know exactly where you are. Heck you are not even sure which city your other friends took you for the night out. Save some time sharing your location on the phone. Just send them a email that has your location packed into a ready-to-use iPhone Google Map link.

To do that, you need to get the free Here I Am app. Here I am app is location finder that emails your location. It is very simple to use. In fact, it only has one button for you to tap.

When you open the app, wait for a few moments for GPS to detect you with the most precision. Then, by just tapping the Send by Email button, you will be redirected to your default email app with all the email and location information filled out. All you have to do is enter the recipient name and you are good to go.

Your mail recipients will be able to access the Google Map link on their iPhone. When they open the link, it will take them directly to Google Maps with a pin marking your current location.
If they wish, they can start working on a direction to your location right on the Google Maps app.

Yep, it is that simple. If you would rather send your location information via SMS, after the email app opened, just copy and paste the message, including the url, to your SMS text messaging platform.

iPhone’s GPS functionality has opened the door to a new age of location awareness. Being able to send your location to your friends with a tap on the screen should be one of the first trick we learn on our GPS enabled iPhone.

How To: Email Google Map Location to Friends is a post by App Chronicles