[emacf1]

Why you should use LittleBrother instead of the original Google Latitude app?

Over the past month the core functionality of LittleBrother has been extended in various ways:

• Inform others that you have entered (or left) a certain Area (=Sector) by eMail or SMS from the first day of LittleBrother
• Make Facebook wall post on Sector IN/OUT Events
• (Semi) automatic checkin on foursquare venues
• Post Sector In/OUT Events in your BBM-Profil

All of these functions have in common, that they are triggered by sector IN or OUT events [Geo fence] (for good reasons) - There was no functionality which had "constantly" posted your location - I am aware that there existing a lot of these Services & Servers - where you can track a device via the web - either on request or constantly. Well if you want to let friends always know that you are just around the corner without the need of any additional client or hardware, then the Google Latitude Service with it's web client becomes very handy IMHO.

LittleBrother was implemented in a way, that it should be almost ZERO-Power consuming when it comes to the point to detect your current location - As you know LittleBrother makes use of the knowledge about CellTower and WLAN locations - and assumes that when you can "see" such a CellTower (or WLAN) this means that you are some sort of nearby the location of the CellTower/WLAN. While LittleBrother is assuming the the locations of a CellTower/WLAN is some sort of constant the application is caching this location information locally (as you could see in your CellTower/WLAN Database) to use this information later when you are returning to the same location. So instead of using the device CPU and Power to detect again and again the location of the device - LittleBrother just makes use of this cached information.

So why not submit this Information frequently to GoogleLatitude?

But why you should use LittleBrother for this job - and not the native GoogleLatitude App?

PRO Latitude

• Latitude allows you to see which of your fiends are nearby - and it seams to be impossible to access the Latitude website from your mobile device. You will be always re-directed to the download-page of the Latitude Client - that's not only the case on the BlackBerry device - it's the same for your iPad. So as long as you can't modify our Browsers UserAgent the native Latitude App is the only way to see which of your friends is where. (Since the Google-Latitude API does not allow a Developer to access the friends list - not getting their location).
• It's made by Google - they should know how to do things right!(?)

Contra Latitude

• You do not have any kind of control WHEN the application is going to submit data to the Latitude Server
• You do not have any kind of control WHAT data the application is going to submit to the Latitude Server - of course Google is telling us "Don't be evil" - and sometimes I would really like to believe them - Google offers a lot of great products and services - no doubt about that. But actually I as a user want to have the control when and more important WHAT kind of data will be send from my device to any server.
  Of course you can argue - why you should thrust me more then Google?
  • Well first of all I am a single independent developer - it's not my core business model to collect and store user data.
  • LittleBrother does not have anything more then the core location information - so all LittleBrother can do is to send an https request (which includes the current device IP) with the current latitude and longitude values plus an additional accuracy value - which is hard coded to 1000m (when the location information is CellTower based) or 50m (when the location information is WLAN based)
• Have you ever opened GoogleMaps and enabled the Traffic information? Have you every asked yourself from where all this real time traffic data is coming from? Even if I currently believe that all the data is coming from users with Android devices who have accepted the Terms of Use of the OS (or some of the additional installed GoogleAps) - I am still concerned that some data just might comes from Google Latitude Clients as well.

So at the end of the day why you should use LittleBrother instead of Google Latitude:

• LittleBrother almost need ZERO-power to know your current location
• LittleBrother will ONLY transfer the core location data: latitude and longitude values - nothing more - guaranteed!
• LittleBrother is fully customizable to give you the full control WHEN you like that your Location will be updated in Latitude
• LittleBrother will only transfer your location is it's changing - e.g. when you stay the complete day at home - your location will be only updated once (if at all)

Get LittleBrother from AppWorld or from emacberry.com

• http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/17760
• http://www.emacberry.com/ota/lbrother.jad

General Information about LittleBrother can be found on the
LittleBrother Homepage

[SCrid2000]

Very cool man!
I'll download the new version and check it out
Agree with you pretty much 100% on all that.
Question though - why HAVE you done so much with LB?

[emacf1]

Question though - why HAVE you done so much with LB?

Actually I had very personal reasons for the initial development...

You can read the details in a forum post I made a while ago @emacberry Why LittleBrother was developed?

And once I had the infrastructure in place I want to use it for some additional things myself [like auto 4sq checkins]...