InstaMapper is a free real-time GPS tracking service. Use it to track an iPhone online, share your location with friends and family, and record tracks for later analysis.
Free registration is required. See http://www.instamapper.com/iphone for more details.
FEATURES
- Track your phone on Google Maps from the Internet. Positions are updated as often as every 5 seconds.
- Record up to 100,000 positions per device.
- Embed a map with your current location on a web page, blog, or your Facebook profile page.
- Export position data in CSV and KML formats.
- Access data programmatically via an API.
NOTES
Because of limitations imposed on third-party applications by Apple, GPS Tracker must run in the foreground to transmit position data. Expect about 5 hours of continuous tracking on one battery charge.
iPod Touch works only in some places in the US. Be sure to set the accuracy threshold to "Any" in settings.
This does NOT work on Touch! Advertised as workable with Touch but does not. No return e-mail from Dev in regards to his nonfuntioning app. Developer needs to remove it from the decription or fix the problem. It's been released since July 29. This says the developer has no intention of changing or doing anything regarding this app (?). Save yourself the time and don't download this. If it's suppose to work as advertised on Touch then this is a non-working application.Update: To the developer and his friends or dev's paid personal: Please stop slamming my "not helpful" button when its useful information to other people that have Touch ipods. If you'd spend as much time fixing your app as to hitting the "not helpful" buttons on all of these 3 star or less reviews you'd have a workable app. Thank You.
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Version 1.2.2
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Jan 1, 2009
- GPS Tracker review by
Coldar
Pretty much perfect! In spite of a few grumbles by folks who don't understand the limitations of the platform, this is an excellent app. My son drove from college to his grandparents house yesterday, and my wife and I watched his progress on our big screen TV, complete with satellite background imagery. We were able to follow him from door to door without a hitch. All for free. How can you complain about that? (Incidentally, I bought a Zoombak prior to finding this app and ended up returning it). So, for those who want background operation - well, who doesn't ? But Apple says no, so complain to them. Thanks Instamapper, you have produced one of my top three favorite iPhone apps !
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Version 1.2.2
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Nov 26, 2008
- GPS Tracker review by
rwizard
Great app, does what you want (but has a few limitations). GPS Tracker essentially allows you (or someone else) to track your iPhone on a map. The website will draw your most recent location and will annotate it with the speed and the direction you had. You can also have it draw a "trail" of locations so that you can see the entire route you rode/drove/walked. You can also "share" your location (or your "trail") with others, without giving them a password to your instamapper.com account; the website will even explain to you how to embed the map into your own webpage.It appears that all this is done anonymously; the identifying token between the phone and the website is a random number---not your phone number.There are some limitations, also, some of which are inherent to the iPhone, and some are not. First of all, your iPhone has to be running the GPS Tracker application non-stop. You cannot run it in the background and do other things in the meantime. This is an intended limitation of the iPhone, not the fault of this app. Because the screen has to stay on, however, your battery drains very quickly (i.e., roughly in 3-4 hours). In other words, unlike what people seem to believe, this app cannot be used to find your iPhone if you lose it (unless you were running the GPS Tracker app when you lost it, nobody stops the app in the meantime, and nobody moves the phone after the battery dies!).The instamapper website is very basic and rudimentary; sometimes even slightly un-intuitive, which is why I rate this app 4 stars, and not 5. It may well become 5 starts in the near future, though. This great app and website are clearly under active development and it appears the developers are working hard to add features (such as being able to download recent locations in various formats). There is also a forum where you can do feature requests which the developers seem to take seriously.In summary, a really great app that will hopefully become even better in the near future. - GPS Tracker review by lemondbiker
Not for ipod touch It would be nice if this didnt say it was compatible with the ipod touch.. it isnt. - GPS Tracker review by Yay for Touch
IT Director This is awesome! Spent 6 hours locating my lost iPhone yesterday in a huge parade grounds field and really could have used this then! Excellent for hiking, hunting or fishing if your phone gets lost. Simply turn it on when heading out, set the interval to like once every half hour to save battery life and if you ever lose your phone you can look up it's location and find it with another gps device! Would also be great if stolen! Or if traveling to let loved ones know where you are. I'm leaving this app running all the time now! Wish apple would let it run in the background or at least be invoked remotely when needed. - GPS Tracker review by Myllrth
Best GPS tracker for the iPhone Excellent for tracking hikes or getting data to be used to for later geotagging of events. The website exports to both simple text files and to the XML-ish Google Earth KLM format. Can store 100000 points at various rates (an unreasonable 5 sec rate giving over 5 days worth of data!).The forums at their website are lively, and admin's seem very responsive.Based on the application rules imposed to Apps, the backgrounding requires some trickery, but works just fine.Once you know the following few tricks it is a breeze to use. - To backround the App: start the iPod, play some song in a loop, start InstaMapper, put phone to sleep. It worked for 5.7 hours before draining my batteries. YMMV. - When stuck in "Locating..." check how the iPhone Map app is doing: Big blue reticle without a blue dot in the center is synonym to problems getting a pure GPS fix. In this case, the Map App benefits from the Assisted GPS, which the next version (v1.1) of InstaMapper is supposed to correctly exploit.This App + iPhone avoids me having to carry around my dedicated GPS tracker (Holunx M-241)--GloobyBoolga - GPS Tracker review by jpa468
Works well, needs features. I just tried this app on a hike I often take. It recorded the waypoints well enough, though it took half a mile to begin recording, despite the fact that it accurately recorded my position when I began. We live in the mountains and there is very spotty cell coverage. Features I'd love to see from an app like this:- save and name various routes and retreive distance traveled, altitude charts etc.- Ability to have up to 10,000 waypoints. This compensates for areas with poor or no coverage far better than 100.- Ability to turn off live updating to concerve battery for low/no coverage areas.- ability to track and view saved topo maps.Also, in the span of 100 feet, my GPS Tracker showed my altitude jumped from 6600 ft. to 8600 ft. -- an impressive climb (it wasn't, but on paper -- wow! Grin.) I'm not sure if this is GPS Trackers issue or the needed improvements from the next Apple update. - GPS Tracker review by tohmamhoid
like some of the others said doesn't work for me... simply says locating .. forever - GPS Tracker review by br0ken1128
Pretty accurate; useful information. I just downloaded this app and thought I'd try it out going from one location to my home. When reading up on this (before the actual release) I had originally thought the "map" part would also be shown on the iPhone, but you have to create a free account on the InstaMapper site in order to see the data mapped there...That being said, it was surprisingly accurate! It got my speed right, tracked me on all the twisty side streets that I take and even showed the shopping center parking lot I had to cut through! Pretty nice.Good job InstaMapper! - GPS Tracker review by genshi
The best free tracking program Everything great the only problem is that it doesn't run in the background you have to open the app to keep it on - GPS Tracker review by Hunt black
I'd pay for this app. I took an 8 day road trip and used this app along with the embedded map on my blog and the app functioned flawlessly for me. The map in my blog was always up to date, so much so that friends would call me and ask about whatever location I was in at that moment.
Also, the website let's you export your gps data which can then be loaded onto Google Earth to display your whole path, which is very cool for a posterity-type thing.
I wish the app could run in the background, but that's no fault of the developers; that's an Apple issue.
I can't say enough about this app and how simple it was to use and how much more interactive it made my trip for my friends and family who followed along. I would've payed money for this app for sure. And I'll certainly be using it on all my road trips. - GPS Tracker review by Talkingtojoey
Excellent App - Can have many more features This app is exactly what I wanted - it tracks me in real-time (but I have to keep the app open on the phone which drains the battery) and I can let my friends see me on Google Maps on Facebook or on their site where I have been. The iPhone's GPS is bad indoors but it works great outdoors.Some points:1. When it has no GPS lock, it just shows locating even when accuracy is as high as 20 m. The developer did not provide the user the option to send (approximate) position without GPS lock.2. It buffers the last 100 positions in case you are offline but the GPS is working. This is neat - I wish it could buffer more.3. I wish in place of "locating ... " it showed the actual accuracy and gave me the option to transmit data without GPS lock.4. I also would like to see a trip feature where I can start and end trips and also see my friend's locations.Otherwise, I would give this app a 2 thumbs up. - GPS Tracker review by Wrick
Great gps locate app This app is something I've been wanting for awhile now. When I am on trips, instead of having to update family members by phone about how close I am, I can just refer them to the web page and they can track my progress there.
It would be nice if there was a map mode on the phone so I could see my location and even my friends locations without having to be looking at the web page. Background running ability is def needed but this is a limitation imposed by apple.
Has room for improvement but a very good start - GPS Tracker review by Gizmo8599
Just great Works like a charm; the ability to export to Google Earth is great; and the price is right. Too bad Apple won't let it run in the background. - GPS Tracker review by Homer101
Love it! Very useful and easy to use app. I would love to see you add the capability to e-mail output from InstaMapper web site to others. I look forward to future upgrades. Thanks. - GPS Tracker review by Vegas Gamer
Five Stars hummp...this wasnt the staff pick! This app will actually track and plot the location of the iPhone on a google map...in real time, you can see the google marker move automaticaly. When Apple gets their act together and allow 3rd party apps to run in the backgound this will be a killer app. - GPS Tracker review by Trapez001
A few minor problems and some suggestions I love the concept of the app, I've been looking for something to track trips I go on and such. I've had a few problems with it though. It has a hard time tracking me (iPhone 3G with GPS) unless I go to the Maps application first. Even then, I rode for about 5 miles and it only recorded 2 points which were not very accurate in themselves. Hopefully there's something the app can and will do in an update to be more accurate; possibly with the coming of the 2.1 firmware that has several improvements to the GPS.I'm hoping to see more iPhone based features in the future as well. Seeing the map right in the app would be nice, though I can get to it in Safari so that isn't high on the list. Being able to 'start' and 'stop' trips would be nice though. When I tracked my phone on the website, it had the points that I just recorded then it shot way out of state to a point that I had recorded days before when I was somewhere else. The only options I see on the site are how many points to display (10, 100, etc). Having the 'clear' functionality on the iPhone would be nice so I don't have to go to the site every time I want to track a new trip. - GPS Tracker review by sclyde
great item APPLE hope you see this you guys really get people mad ..not letting appz able to run in the backround meanwhile a freakin tracphone for 40 bux can do that. - GPS Tracker review by iceblu121
Almost perfect I really like this program, and it works pretty well, except that iPhones don't run programs in the background, so if I ever lost my iPhone I would have to have had this program running when I lost it or it wouldn't do me any good. But if I ever need my wife to find me I can turn it on and it will be great. Hopefully Apple will create an update that allows programs like this to run in the background. - GPS Tracker review by nielson98
Great app Does everything it says it will do
If it could only run in the background! - GPS Tracker review by jalexbell
iPhone and iPod Touch Applications from InstaMapper LLC
GPS Tracker - iPhone Navigation Application InstaMapper is a free real-time GPS tracking service. Use it to track an iPhone online, share your location with friends and family, and record tracks for later analysis.
Free registration is required. See http://www.instamapper.com/iphone for more details.
FEATURES
- Track your phone on Google... InstaMapper LLC - Released: August 04, 2008 - Vote(s): 29854
