Find My Friends – Free (iPhone, iPad). The Apple-style social networking app Find My Friends lets you quickly locate your friends and family using your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Install this free app on your iOS 5 device and sign in with your Apple ID for iCloud. Adding a friend is easy – just send a request to see their location. Once your friend agrees to use the Find My Friends app, you can track their location in the list or on a map. You can also choose a setting that allows you to share your friends’ location data with your company over a period of time. Use the Find My Friends app while on vacation to keep track of your traveling companions’ itineraries. Or to find out if your kids are home from school. Or to find friends you’re meeting at the airport.
The Apple Find My Friends app will work via iCloud, the new cloud-based free service from the Curtin company for iOS devices.
The main task, which the application performs, is the ability to quickly locate friends or relatives, also owning iOS – devices, using the built-in GPS and 3G functions. Apple believes that the new program for sharing location data and some control over the privacy of their loved ones will appeal to users and will be an important part of the cloud services in iCloud.
The new app extends the capabilities of the current Find My iPhone feature, which provides sending smartphone location data using GPS or WiFi between two devices. Now, instead of sharing location information only between two devices under one Apple ID, Find My Friends will allow location data to be sent to any iOS device.
Announcing the new feature, Apple named the following features of the new Find My Friends app:
- easily locate friends and family;
- settings allow you to show the location temporarily or for a specific group of people;
- privacy controls ensure the device owner’s safety;
- parental control features provide additional security for children.
The application works in conjunction with contacts and maps, so the user gets the opportunity to “catch two birds with one stone” – to lay the best route and show it to a friend. This will be useful if the invited guest does not know the way to the place of event, and gets a detailed map with instructions, and the invitee has the ability to ensure that the guest did not go astray.
For security purposes, there is a “time window” during which the user will want to share information about his location with a specified circle of people. The time interval can vary from a few hours to a few weeks, at the end of which the data transfer stops. In addition to setting the time window, the user can completely “hide” and stop broadcasting his location to everyone.
The app also has a “follow” function whereby you can send your location data to a friend with whom you are scheduled to meet. If the user allows someone to “follow them,” they send their location data for a set period of time, with the option to stop broadcasting at any time.
The Find My Friends app will be part of the new iOS 5 operating system and will be available from October 12, when the new iCloud cloud service launches.
