I’ve been looking for this for a while.
I often create my own 3-5 hour rides, leaving the house well before sunrise. My gorgeous and incredibly tolerant and supportive ironwidow (Honey…quit looking over my shoulder and go back to reading) is often asking for that day’s route that she can locate me if something happens that requires assistance. On the longer rides, I turn left here or right there or up da hill. If I’m stranded, it could prove difficult to say ‘turn left at the boiled pnut sign and turn right at the raccoon carcass’ and expect her to find me. MapMyRide is good but too time consuming. I have found other GPS apps that work, but run my battery down. So, the ‘search’ continued, hopefully never needing this kind of assistance.
Now, Apple has a ‘Find my iPhone’ option in the settings of the phone that is synced with the MobileMe online access. Setup to help an iPhone user to locate a forgotten phone at a mall or doctor’s office or wherever, I can easily use this as a GPS tag that can be located from the computer, providing a mapping system for my help to find me.
Again, I hope I never need this. But, I dig how ez this was to set up, don’t have to set anything up everytime I head out, and doesn’t run my battery down.
Just thought that there might be someone out there who could use this info.
If you dont have mobile me, then just use the loopt app. Its free and can always tell where you are. Its kind of fun. Be careful though. One of my buddies got busted the night before his wedding going to a strip club. He forgot about the app and when she called to ask, he made the bigger mistake about lying where he was. oops.
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Instamapper is also a nice app for iPhone. Ties in with a web app. You can send the URL to other folks for a breadcrumb trail. You can set update notices for different time lengths - if you are going for a looong ride make sure to reduce update frequency to make sure you dont run out of juice.
the data presentation can be a little glitchy - if it misses a point (reception), etc as you can see below - but i think the extra bells & whistles make it worthwhile.
don’t think you guys followed what he was saying.
Instamapper and those others use the gps and transmit data over the data network(edge or 3g) on the phone and they eat up the battery.
they send location information periodically(5 seconds or more) which uses power.
What hes talking about is opposite more of a poll type application where he can leave the phone in standby mode(low power) then his wife or anyone else with permission can go online it then pings the iphone and gets the location that one time as opposed to continuous broadcasting at intervals therefore will last longer.
So basically only when someone wants to know where he is does it get information your not really following it everywhere it goes and in his case thats not whats needed but
at any one instant when someone wants to know where you are(with permission) they can locate the phone…
you can set instamapper to update every 5 minutes. with a full charge it will last 5 hours at least - enough for most rides. gps and 3g is a downside for power consumption i agree.
if you are riding out in the boonies, and you cant get that one magical update, the one time you need it because you are out of range, you will have no idea where they are.
with instamapper, you email wifey/SO a url and all she has to do is click on it to see how youve been doing the last xx minutes.
i think that gives a bit more safety and something to work with if something bad does happen.
finally, not necessarily saying instamapper is better, but just showing alternatives that people might not be aware of.
going to give it a shot, thanks for the advice
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What if you just leave your phone at home and grow a pair of balls? Do you think that might work too?