just saw this at here (drliew), here (tvsmith) and here (arni). now, this is basically a service that allows people to keep track of the location of friends. just send an sms with the phone number of the person, and the service will detect the location of the phone, and returns it to the person asking for it.
now, it looked like an ingenious product, until they realized (like the articles i mentioned above) that it could be used as a stalking tool. come on, think of it. u can find out anybody's location, WITHOUT PERMISSION! so to solve the stalking problem, they implemented the asking-permission thingy.
BUT. now it's a useless-seemed-like-an-ingenious-product. if u had to send an sms to the service, and the service had to send an sms to the intended person asking for permission, and the person has to sms back to the service giving permission, and then only the service will return the location to the asker, why don't the asker just call the person to find out where [s]he is? why take this long way? it's like trying to touch your nose with your arm around your back.
and don't even think about "oh, this is a good tool for preventing spouses/bf/gf from cheating!". yuckie. it's too damn obvious. yes, it's a good tool. you want to know whether your other half is really where [s]he claims to be. so u send this sms to the service, and your other half HAD to give an OK. if [s]he don't, u can say they are afraid of u finding out where they are. so, they're forced to OK it. then the service can report the location to you, and everybody happy, right?
WRONG. first, they can turn off their phones if they want to go undetected and claim that there's no reception. i always use this excuse anyway, heh. secondly, which is GLARINGLY obvious, is that by doing this, rather than keeping your spouse faithful, you're actually driving him/her away from you! with all these checking and charades of insecurity, do you think your spouse will still be happy with you? sooner or later [s]he'll get tired of you and wants a break up. it's like being in a prison for goodness sake. no matter how close we are, we still want some personal space to breathe.
so it defeats the whole purpose. the tool that is supposed to keep your spouse faithful, backfires.
another white elephant.
unless of course, they find another use for this service. it's a good tool, i have to admit, but unsuitable for this business model.
