Location Based Messaging with BlueGPS

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about the next useful piece of functionality to build into BlueGPS. While I’m not sure this is something that everyone could benefit from, I’m going to post my ideas and gather feedack. The idea is to provide a map interface that can be shared with your friends/family where they can view your trip in progress or current location. Let’s forget about privacy and security for now as that’s something that will need to be resolved at some point.

Jamie calls me every now and then asking how to get somewhere. She’s generally in the car and I’m at the computer digging around Google maps. An interesting app may be to provide a mechanism where I can click an icon denoting her current location and then send a text message saying “Go 2 miles and then turn right on Mockingbird”. Once again, let’s forget that she’s driving and should be paying full attention to the road, not reading text messages. With that being said, I could serve as an almost realtime navigation assistant providing directions and information on her mobile device. Yes there are onboard GPS units we could purchase, but this is simply a brainstorm. You can test the functionality by clicking here and it will actually send a message to my device. Luckily I have free incoming text messages or this could get ugly. You can see a screen of the app below:

I think there are unlimited possibilities with this type of messaging and I’ll continue to explore them. Even a cool social aspect where you select all your buddies on a map and send a message saying “let’s meet at Pei Wei for lunch” may be cool. Think about it…