How often you feel need of sharing your location with your family and friends. Few such examples can be – when you are waiting at a place which your friends are not able to find or when you are coming late in night and want someone to pick you up or when you are new in town and need to save a location so next time its easier for you to reach there.
Lets check out which applications allow us to share our location with others, so they can reach you by tracking you on map.
1) Glympse –
Glympse provides a safe way to share your location by controlling the time for which your location will be shared. You can either share your current location or request the other person for his location.
When you share your location which is called ‘Sending Glympse’, you choose the duration for which you want to share your location and choose the contact with whom you want to share. Upon clicking create Glympse, a link will be generated with a short code. This link is sent using sms, so the receiver does not need to have Glympse app installed on mobile. The receiver will open your link in web browser and can view your location for duration of the time specified in Glympse.
Once the time is over, that given link will not work and will not reveal your location.
Similarly requesting Glympse will also send an SMS with a link, receiver can click the link which will open website of Glympse and here they can choose to share location.
Glympse is available for Android , Windows Phoneand iOS.
2) Zippr –
Zippr is one app which is making headlines these days. They create a 8 digit code called Zippr for your location. You can give this code to anyone and by entering this code either in Zippr mobile app or Zippr website, your address can be retrieved.
Zippr is recommending that instead of giving your full address just share the Zippr code. They also claim that it is much faster way to find an address.
Zippr code is a combination of 4 character and 4 digits, so it will look like – abcd1234.
However under the hood, zippr does the same thing which Glympse is doing. It creates a code and when you share your zippr code, it is shared as a hyper link. This link can be shared through SMS or WhatsApp, when user clicks on this link, it shows the location in web browser.
However one thing which Zippr misses is that unlike Glympse your links are not time limited and does not expire with time. Therefore you loses control over the link after sharing it.
Zippr also offer you to get premium zippr by paying them extra. So if you want some fancy looking Zippr code such as – ajay0001, you can purchase it from Zippr.
Zippr is available for Android and iOS.
3) ReachMe –
ReachMe is offered by MapMyIndia. This app also generates a small code for your current location called PIN. You can share this Pin with anyone and he will be able to view your current location.
Functionality is very similar to Zippr app. You can share your current location through sms, email or social networking sites. This sharing will generate a hyper link of MapMyIndia website along with the Pin generated by ReachMe app.
Therefore your friend does not need to have this application on his mobile for reaching you, they can track you on the online map using any web browser.
In ReachMe you can not set expiration time for your links, so be careful before sharing your location.
ReachMe is available on Android, Windows Phone, Mobile Website and iOS.