Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

I was just looking at the location sharing provided by Icecondor, the android app is maybe two dozen lines, if I had the foggiest idea how to write a patch or plugin for an existing mapping app or as a standalone I would.
The location sharing was a useful feature that I miss from my OpenMoko, unfortunately the server is no longer available even if the app were ported.
Icecondor is a FOSS project which is also available for Android phones making it more useful than just sharing between the rare Maemo/Meego device.
http://github.com/icecondor
http://icecondor.com/dashboard/developers

Often we are without Internet especially when traveling where a prepaid local voice/SMS SIM card is purchased at a corner shop. Sending a standardized SMS with GPS information is very useful in this case, this app is already on OVI for the N9. The relevant code could be recycled for a new multi use or an existing app in addition to just being modified and recompiled for Fremantle.
https://gitorious.org/location2sms

Ideally location sharing would work as an optional plugin for an app or perhaps even telepathy.

Is anyone else interested in location sharing as a way to find friends with a mapping app as opposed to having visitors try to explain landmarks over the telephone? I know that I would find this as important and useful upgrade and return of dropped feature as host mode.
Apparently location sharing was supposed to be part of of the N900 telepathy and OVI Maps but was cut before release http://vimeo.com/14631858
What do you think?

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

Is anyone else interested in being able to seamlessly and easily import a friends GPS location into a mapping app to get directions to find them?
Of course making it an opt-in selection to preserve privacy for the majority of people.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

Yep its one of the missing features that i tend to need sometime and it would be even better if it can be called via modrana :)

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

I would love to see it in modrana and have commented in that thread, but something plugged in to Telepathy(or a FOSS replacement) would probably ease the plugin and make it easier to run in "location beacon" mode via icecondor so people can see you even if you aren't running a app to scan and map for them, maybe a daemon that will alert when someone enters a set proximity as in the video above.
I really wish that it could also plug into Sygic but this seems nearly impossible.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

Have you tried Icecondor on Android?

I installed it but when you try to register a new account, registration doesn't work!

So this can be a big issue if our Android friends cannot register.

Btw is it safe to send our positions to the Icecondor Location Storage Provider?

Android app uses Gmaps and no Openstreetmap

in play store no updates since 2013

answers of feedback reports in app service are 4/5 years old

so we have to clarify first if Icecondor is not in abandoned status yet

and then we can try to build something for N900 to connect to ws://api.icecondor.com

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

The N900 can share your location to users via the IM application as part of the nokiamaps-navigation-provider package.
This was broken and has been patched recently by freemangordon.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

Can this be used beyond showing wherever Nokia thinks you are near to in your IM status?

I suggest location2sms and Icecondor as ways to get location into a location and importantly mapping and navigation aware app.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

It uses the nokia servers to provide your location.
I believe it uses lat/long to do this but only outputs "Street/District/City Levels" to the Location Status Message.
I believe the street level option is a pretty accurate way of sharing your location in human readable form.

Maybe now this is FOSS it could be modified?
Freemangordon is the person to ask about that.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

PM'ed Freemangordon so between crowbarring headcrabs and FOSS'ing Maemo5 we will see what he has to say.

I also emailed the dev behind icecondor about servers and stuff so waiting for an answer.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

from Don the icecondor dev

The new API will be the only API available once it comes out in a couple weeks. It'll probably need some changes but I hope its stable for a long time.

Data is stored unencrypted on the server and is available to icecondor
employees, and people the user shares their location with. That being
said, its a USA Company and the USA Government can demand a copy of whatever they want. The source code to the server is also on github so its possible to run a seperate, local server.

Anyone have questions for icecondor?

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

Even if it worked worked for me, it would still be useless for the most obvious use case: family members finding each other again after splitting up at a busy amusement park.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

pichlo, this is precisely what I want, mainly to automagically place their location into a turn by turn mapping app so I can easily find and pick them up.
Most people, especially people visiting as tourists, can't accurately describe nearby landmarks or even read street signs, I would rather let their GPS enabled phone do the work for me.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

While I am certain that Google and Apple already are doing this job for you, the question is, how to access that data?

And suppose it just works: I pulled out several hairs trying to explain over and over how to "share location" via a Nokia "share location feature", to family members with known hardware / software.

People just couldn't imagine how , why and where this feature was supposed to be found and get it to work on the spot. GPS did not lock etc...

Ended up with traditional search and rescue. :rolleyes:

Love the concept though, should not be so hard to program.

One multiplatform GPS app that sends GPS coordinates in standard SMS and can parse incoming SMS for coordinates data and put them on openstreet map with contact name or phone number, save as offline map with the hour date stamp before you hit the road.
No registration or corp server involved, thanks.

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

will the registration from Android app be fixed?

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

icecondor app recently updated in google play

even the website is new and with a blog https://icecondor.com/
i also managed to register

check https://github.com/icecondor/api/wiki/api-v2
if interested in porting to N900

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

This one is promising http://miataru.com/

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

The Mitaru app for Sailfish looks very cool, anyone able to cross compile for Maemo5 or N9?

Re: Location Sharing in Apps and Standalone
 

What about GpsDrive app? www.gpsdrive.de

It has the friends tracking feature:

Possible porting?