Making Technology Work For You: Glympse

This is the first in a series of Fresh Mango articles written to recommend useful (and generally free) technologies to make life or work easier.

Introducing Glympse

Today we'll be looking at a free app called Glympse. In summary, Glympse allows you to share your location in real time with a friend or friends, using your smartphone as a tracking device.
Like many of the best ideas, its power comes from its simplicity. Some obvious uses for this could be:

- 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 ok after a night out

- Send your location in real time when doing sports (cycling, running, etc) in case of injury or accident

Tracking Someone with Glympse

Test Results

Personally I've used Glympse primarily when cycling back from work so my wife knows exactly where I am and when I'll be home.  

What I've been most impressed with is the ease of setup of the app - with nothing more than an association with my Facebook app, I am able to send my location to any contact (Facebook or other) via a variety of methods (SMS, email, Facebook, etc).

The responsiveness and accuracy of the tracking was so good that my wife was able to see me slow down on hills, stop at intersections, etc. which really underlines its use as a safety and security device.

Give It A Go!

To try out Glympse, search your device's app store (iTunes for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices, etc.) or for more information, visit the Glympse website at www.glympse.com/what_is_glympse

Another big thumbs up from me is that Glympse requires no registration on the part of the 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.

Even the sender can begin using Glympse with a simple association with your Facebook login.

Privacy

Obviously you are unlikely to want anyone tracking where you are 100% of the time, Glympse has made this problem easy to manage by giving all 'Glympses' an expiration time (the default is 15 minutes).  You can set this low and add more time as you go - once the 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

Glympse Video

Informative and a little tongue in cheek, Glympse's promotional video is worth a watch!:

Written by Bob McKay