Shareloc's blog - Navizon's community weblog

Navizon can now locate your iPhone in the background

One of the main problems with iPhone applications is that they cannot run in the background. This has been very impractical for some of the location-aware applications: while it doesn't matter if you are searching a nearby restaurant, it is a bigger problem for social applications that tend to display were your friends were a while ago and not where your friends are now.

Navizon has found a way to overcome this problem. If you have a jailbroken iPhone, it is now possible to tell the application that you want it to run all the time, even if you are doing other things with your iPhone.

Thanks to this feature, you can:
-    See your  friends’ location  in real time with the Buddy Finder
-    Send a notification (or Navizon Alert) each time on of your buddies enter an area of interest. For example, I have it configured so that I receive an email each time my kids gets to school or when my in-laws make an impromptu visit at home.
Application developers can also benefit from this feature thanks to the FireEagle interface offered by Navizon: just let Navizon update the iPhone’s location in the background and read this location from FirEagle.

Last but not least, this version of Navizon includes MobiFindr also known as Locate-by-SMS, a feature that has been extremely popular in previous versions of Navizon. If you want to read your position remotely while conserving the battery life, just enable this service on your iPhone. It will let you obtain your iPhone’s location by sending a text message with the passphrase of your choice. This is very useful if you happen to lose your iPhone and want to find where in the world you left it. Here's a video that explains it in more details:

This new version of Navizon will work on Jailbroken iPhones and is available in Cydia. It should be in the repositories that come with Cydia (just search for Navizon) but if it is not, just add http://cydia.navizon.com as a new source and find it in the Navizon category.

Navizon now on the AppStore

We just released a version of Navizon for the iPhone. It has most of the features of the previous versions such as:
- display your position on a map even in places where you wouldn't get your location otherwise
- the Buddy Finder to display all your friends on a map
- the Navizon alerts (where you can be notified by email when your parents get closer to home or when they leave work for example)
- the trail logging to keep track of all the places you go

But one of the cool new things is that if you own an iPhone 3G, you are now able to earn rewards just by having Navizon running on your iPhone. Every cell tower that you log, every WiFi access point that you pass by will mean points in your account that you can later turn into cash.
Not a bad thing in these difficult economic times..

We released a Lite and a full version. The Lite version doesn't have trail logging, rewards and has a limited number of alerts monthly. But you can use the first 10,000 points earned to upgrade to the full version and enjoy all of the features of the full version (comparative chart here).

MobiFindr now available for Symbian/Nokia devices

Great news for all of you with S60/Nokia phones: you will never lose your phone again!! For those of you who are not familiar with MobiFindr (or Locate by SMS), click here to see what it's all about. The link contains a video for the Blackberry version but it's exactly similar for Symbian.

To get started, just install the latest version of Navizon by going to www.navizon.com from your device (if you already have Navizon installed you would need to remove both the large and small Navizon icons).

In the "Account" section scroll down to enable MobiFindr: you will need to provide a passphrase that you or anyone you want will need to send via SMS to get the phone's location.

In order for MobiFindr to work when you have lost your phone (or when it is in your pocket), we strongly recommend to authorize Navizon to connect to the network and get your location. In order to do that, just go Tools -> App Mgr, then select Navizon and do the following:

- set the Access point to be your GPRS/3G connection

- set Network Access to "Ask first time"

- set Positioning to "Ask first time"

If you don't do that, you will have a popup that will ask you to Authorize the application each time your phone starts, which is not very convenient if you lost your phone and you are trying to get its location.

Enjoy this new feature!

Track the position of your buddies in real-time

Some of you may have noticed already, but it is now possible to track the location of your buddies in real time on Google Earth. In order to do that, just go in the "Buddies/Groups" menu in your member section and click on the "Google Earth" link for any given group. It will open Google Earth with the location of each marker refreshed every 60 seconds. It will also give you the positioning method used for each marker (G for GPS, W for WiFi and P for phone).
For professional users, this is ideal if you have a fleet of vehicles and want to get their positions in real-time. In order to do this, just create your own private group, give a phone running Navizon to all your drivers and you will be able to see them move on a map.

This picture shows the members of the Public group in Europe (click on the picture to enlarge).

I hope you will enjoy this new feature.   

Navizon MobiFindr now available for Blackberry

A couple of weeks ago, we released a video demonstrating MobiFindr for the iPhone. MobiFindr is a new feature that lets you find the geographic location of a mobile device just by sending a text message with a specific pass-phrase to it.
That way, you can see where your kids, friends or co-workers are at any given time, as long as they gave you their MobiFindr passphrase. You can also use it to recover your phone in case it is lost or stolen. Personally, I have been playing with it over the past few days and it is total fun!
Today we are officially launching MobiFindr  for Blackberry.

This feature is free for Blackberry users. You can download it by going to www.navizon.com from your Blackberry.

MobFindr is now MobiFindr

We received a call yesterday from someone who was not too happy about our new tool that is going to help the police track him down.
We tried everything to explain to him that MobFindr had nothing to do with the "Mob", he wouldn't listen.
After making us an offer that we could not refuse... we changed the name to MobiFindr.

Seriously, MobiFindr just sounds better... sorry for the marketing glitch.

How to locate a lost/stolen phone

We often get requests from Navizon users to help them recover a lost/stolen phone.

Navizon has several features that could be used to locate a mobile phone. All or any of these methods could be used to locate a mobile phone:

Locate-by-sms/Mobfindr (iPhone only, will be introduced on other platforms in the future)
As you start navizon, hit cancel in the top right corner and scroll down to enable locate-by-sms define a keyword for locate-by-sms. If you send a text message starting with the keyword to your mobile phone, you will get back a link to the map with the current position of the phone. This is probably the easiest way to locate a phone, and it will also give you the most up-to-date position. And best of all: It does not impact battery life, since it only tries to locate the phone whenever an sms with the correct keyword is received.

Buddies/Map (all platforms, see note)
You can see where your phone is by logging on to www.navizon.com.

Click Buddies/groups and then click "Map". If you want a public URL that always shows the position of your phone, click "Publish location to public url". You will then be able to locate your phone by browsing to the URL given in the "Hyperlink" box.

The trail (premium feature, see note)
The trail makes it possible to see where the phone has been over a period of time.

You enable the trail by logging in to www.navizon.com, then click "My trail" and make sure the trail feature is on.

Note: For the Buddies/map/trail features to work you must have a working internet connection on your phone. You should also configure navizon to send your location back to the server, so that your position/trail can be updated at regular intervals.
On iPhone you do this by selecting to be visible (click cancel when you start Navizon, and make sure "appear visible" is switched on)
On Windows mobile, go to the map page, select menu->buddies, and make sure "send location" is on.
On Symbian, make sure "Appear visible" is selected (menu->buddies)

In order to get the most accurate position available, it is recommended to upgrade your account to a premium account. The premium account uses wifi positioning and cell tower triangulation which is a lot more accurate than the cell ID positioning used in the lite/free version.

Remember that you have to enable the feature(s) you want before you loose your phone. Navizon staff can not provide any more details than these tools can give you.

 

Never lose your phone (or your kids) with Navizon MobiFindr

We just released a new version of Navizon. The most remarkable addition to this new version is a new service called Mobfindr that will let you find the location of a phone just by sending an SMS to it.
So how is this different from the Buddy Finder? Well, there is a major difference: instead of constantly sending your location, this process is running in the background and get invoked only when it receives an SMS with the pass-phrase you entered for this feature. This means that it will have no impact on the battery life or performance of your phone. You can just set it... and forget it! If you ever lose your phone, you will be happy to find out where it is located by sending an SMS to it.
You can also use this feature to find the location of your buddies or your family members, as long as they gave you their pass-phrase to access their location.

To set it up, just install the latest version of Navizon and enter the pass-phrase that will need to be sent in order to access the location. Turn the service on... and that's it.
If you plan on giving this pass-phrase to other people, make sure it is different from your Navizon password. Otherwise, if it's just for you, it can be just anything.
You can test it to see if it is working by sending an SMS to yourself (it can be from the same phone) with the pass-phrase. It should receive a reply by SMS with your location.

MobiFindr is included in the latest version of Navizon for the iPhone and will be released as a separate application for Blackberry and Windows Mobile very shortly. A version for S60 phones is currently in the works.
The free version will return your location based on the cell tower triangulation (approximately 1500 meters accuracy) and if you have the premium version of Navizon you will be able to get the location of your device with a better accuracy thanks to WiFi triangulation.

Enjoy this new service!

Update: MobiFindr is now available for Blackberry. Just go to www.navizon.com from your device to download the latest version.

Watch our coverage grow

No, this is not the new map of red states and blue states but Navizon's global coverage map. Cellular coverage is in Blue and Wifi coverage is in Red.

You need to have Google Earth on your computer to view it.

If you don't have Google Earth, you can click on the pictures above to make them bigger.

Navizon for iPhone - now with the "Slider"

A new version of Navizon has been released today. One of the most interesting features of this new version is the Navigation panel, or "Slider".

The Slider can stay on top of the Maps and  will give you full control of the application while your position is being displayed:
- click on the "Moving mode" and your location will be updated every 10 seconds. That way, you don't have to keep pressing on the "LocateMe" button like a maniac.
- click on the "Buddies" icons and your buddies will be displayed instantly

This new version will also let you run Navizon in the background while you are doing other things with your iPhone.  This means that you can now display the location of your loved ones in real-time with the Buddy Finder and use our exciting new feature called the Navizon Alerts, which will let you receive an email each time you or one of your buddies enters a  geographic area.

If you are reading from an iPhone, you can view the video here.

This new version works on all firmware versions and can be installed by adding our repository to Installer. In order to do that, launch the Installer, go in Sources then "Edit" -> "Add" and enter http://repo.navizon.com

Have fun!!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-->If you need tech support please visit our forum or contact us here

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Navizon alerts now available

We just launched a new feature called the "Navizon Alerts". With this feature, you can create a circle anywhere on the map defining a geographic region (like shown on the picture). Then each time you (or any of your buddies) enters or gets out of this area and email can be sent to the address of your choice with a custom message.

So for example I can
- have an email sent to me each time my daughter gets to school safely.
- I can have an email automatically sent to my wife when I am leaving the office (no more overcooked dinners hehe...)
- I can receive a notification as soon as my parents arrive at the airport so that I don't have to wait endless hours at the arrivals
etc, etc, etc....

To create an alert, just log on to the member section and click on Alerts -> Create alert. You can view all your alerts in the same section.
Obviously, in order to work you will need to configure Navizon on your phone so that you "appear visible" (or "send your location" depending on the version you're running).

This is going to be total fun! Enjoy!!

New rewards calculation

Some news on the rewards front. First we rounded the amount of each reward to $20. No big deal you might say...
But more importantly, we upped the points for the Wifi and Cell towers that you are the first one to map: 3 points per Wifi access point and 15 points for each cell tower. Yes you heard me right: 3 points and 15 points!!
However, you will earn a little less points for Wifi and Cellular towers that have already mapped by other people (2 points per cell site and 1 per WiFi access point) . 

So what does this mean to you:
- if you are mapping a place that has been "unexplored" by other Navizonians, you are going to get much more points than before (50% more to be precise).
- if however you are mapping a place that has been mapped over and over, you are still going to earn points, but a little less. Keep in mind though that there are new Wifi and Cellular towers that are installed every day. So even if you leave in a placed that has been heavily mapped already, you might still be picking up brand new towers in addition to the points for wifi/cell towers already mapped that you will be getting.

So let your Christopher Colombus spirit express itself and enjoy being the first one to explore new territories with Navizon!