Apr 16, 2009
Map Your Family in Realtime
No need to call up your significant other and ask “where are you?” If you’re a customer of three of the biggest mobile phone companies, you can just check their website. AT&T recently announced its FamilyMap service, which you can use to track the locations of family plan members.
The system undoubtedly uses cell phone towers, so we aren’t looking at extreme accuracy. If you live in a city it certainly zeroes you in on an area of town. The technology has existed for years, with Verizon and Sprint each coming out with their version in 2006. Before that it was apparently only used by law enforcement (and law enforcement television shows).
Much like Google’s Latitude, this is starting an important conversation about location. Also like Latitude, I really wish the phone carriers included APIs so I can access my own data.
Hi, I'm Adam. I'm writing a book about developing maps on the web. This site is where I'll share the things I find and help you create your own maps. 