LITTLE ROCK — Google Latitude and Apple’s Find My Friends are two free apps that help you, well, find your friends. Find My Friends works only with Apple’s latest mobile operating system, but Google’s Latitude works with anything. Still, if you really want to know what’s going on, you might want a tracking device, like PocketFinder.
The trouble with the two free location finding apps is that if you can find someone, they can also locate you. It’s like seeing someone in a mirror: If you can see them, they can see you. An actual tracking device ramps this up to a whole new level.
You can slip PocketFinder into a child’s backpack, Grandma’s purse, or your teenager’s car. Once in place, load the PocketFinder application into any Internetconnected device and you can then zoom right down to street level to pinpoint your loved one’s location, or track a vehicle to within 10 feet. The map can be customized so that alerts are sent back if the person or vehicle enters or leaves a defined area on foot or in a vehicle. Speed alerts can be set to notify you if a vehicle exceeds set speed limits. The alerts are sent by e-mail, text message and push notification. (“Push” is when a message pops up on your screen.)
The PocketFinder will be sold later this month at the online Apple store or an Apple retail store, in two editions. However, its use is not confined to Apple, but can be used with any device that can connect to the Internet. (The app for using it with Apple devices is simply a new upgrade to already existing software.)
The PocketFinder GPS Personal Locator is $149. The PocketFinder GPS Vehicle Locator is $189. Both carry a monthly fee for tracking but the initial purchase includes two free months. Ongoing monthly wireless connectivity charges are $13. Note: This is not the only device that will do this kind of tracking and send alert notices. We did a search on the Web and found similar services for about the same price, but we can’t review them all. So you should do some Web browsing to find the one that suits you best.
If you just need a device to help you find your own location, like when you’re lost in the woods or the giant downtown parking garage, do a search on “GPS locators.” We did this and noticed that the Bushnell GPS Backtrack got good reviews. To use it, you push a button to mark your starting location. Then go off to the mall or into the woods and the device will keep giving you arrows pointing the direction to go until you’re back at your car or destination.
TEXTING WHILE DRIVING
You probably know that the latest Apple iPhone 4S has Siri, which responds to your voice. Owners of Android phones can get something similar, called Sonalight. Both these apps are free.
Siri is more powerful than Sonalight: It can look stuff up on Wikipedia or search your calendar to see when you’re free. But if you just want to text while you drive, Sonalight works just as well. You just tap the app’s icon on your device and say “Text by Voice.” Then say a name and Sonalight will look it up for you. It will then ask you to say your message out loud. It repeats it back to you for approval before sending. When a new message comes in, Sonalight reads it aloud to you. The app is free for up to 20 texts a month by voice. Then it’s $20 a year for an unlimited number of messages.
BEYOND PICASA
We’re big fans of Google Picasa, the free photo editing and organizing program, but there are a lot of other free programs out there, and a reader recently pointed us to a great one.
It’s Zoner Photo Studio, a free Windows program from free.zoner.com. (There are a lot of links to other programs, so confine your click to this one.) It’s superb at organizing photos. It keeps the familiar Windows file structure off to the left of your screen, making it much easier to find stuff. By contrast, Picasa annoyingly lists photos by date, and for some reason, it doesn’t even list a 2011 folder on our laptop, making it difficult to find our recent shots, except by going to the “File” menu and choosing “Add file to Picasa.”
Like Picasa, Zoner Photo Studio has a “quick fix” photo editing button, which produces great results. It easily corrects red eye, blurring, and other picture defects. A “tutorials” link shows you how to create photo name tags for gifts, make a photo calendar, show off stuff on eBay, create panoramas and other projects. Type “3D” in the help menu to learn how to make three-dimensional photos. All in all, big thanks to our reader and a nice find for the rest of us.
HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU
In a recent Harris survey, 50 percent of all Americans admit they would like to use smart phones to take secret videos.
Like what?
People in embarrassing outfits.
A sexy waitress at a restaurant.
A shirtless hunk mowing the neighbor’s lawn.
Their boss sneaking a second doughnut.
Harris polled 2,361 adults that were representative of the country by age, gender, income level, marital status and region. (This is a large enough sample to be considered statistically significant.) Fifty-seven percent said they’d be interested in watching videos shared by a co-worker on the company intranet. The respondents top choice (30 percent) would be watching someone pulling a prank on a co-worker, followed (27 percent) by someone imitating the boss. Last but not least, they would like to watch a video of a high-level executive making his own coffee.
NOTE: Readers can search several years’ worth of On Computers columns at oncomp.com. Bob and Joy can be contacted by e-mail at bobschwab@gmail.com and joydee@oncomp.com.
Business, Pages 24 on 10/24/2011