Glympse: The Way To Share Location Data

A while ago Google launched the Latitude service. As usually, I rushed to download and set it up on my BlackBerry. But then soon I realized I was not going to use it... The reason? They moved a bridge too far in the area of privacy (or lack of it...). What Latitude does it allows you to share your physical location with selected friends. At start this model did not look attractive for me. I did not feel comfortable exposing my physical location. Even to a couple of good friends of mine. Later on Google implemented a few changes in the Latitude, on of them was ability to share just a city you were in, instead of your exact whereabouts down to a couple of meters. But it still was not right... I was not sure why, not spending too much time contemplating why I was still not willing to turn the Latitude on.

And then I've come across Glympse. I have to admit I do not use Glympse either, but for a different reason - it is officially available on the Android platform, while a BlackBerry version is in the works. But the information sharing model offered by Glympse is much better. Instead of defining who can access your location information, you explicitly send a "glympse" to selected recipient, having a choice for it to be a one - time only or allowing the receiving party to access your location for specified amount of time. The Glympses you send can be addressed by an email address or a mobile phone number and they carry a link to a map on a web page, not forcing the recipients to have Glympse software installed - another nice advantage over Latitude.

Glympse solves the very frequent problem (or a need) to communicate "my" location to selected other parties. On demand. I am really looking forward to the BlackBerry version.