Whereoscope Shutdown FAQ

Q. Why is Wherescope closing?

A. As much as we have loved providing you with the Whereoscope service these past eight months, we are shutting down the service to move on to new ventures.

Q. What will happen to the Wherescope service?

A. As of February 24^th, 2011, new user registration has ceased, and on March 11^th we will be closing the service completely.

Q. How can we retrieve our personal information?

A. Go to www.wherescope.com/retrieve, log in, and we will email all your data as a CSV file to your registered email address. The last date you can access your information is March 11^th. The CSV download will include:

• All the places you have created
• All your raw location data, with timestamp, latitude and longitude, and accuracy
• All your condensed location, with start time, end time, and description

Q. What happens to our subscriptions?

A. We value our users, and have appreciated your business. Accordingly, we are refunding all paid subscriptions in full using PayPal. The refund should arrive via PayPal by March 4^th.

Q. What if I don’t have a PayPal account?

A. You can create one for free at www.paypal.com. If you haven’t created one within 30 days after the payment is sent, PayPal will automatically retract the payment. If you are sent money using PayPal and do not have a PayPal account, you have 30 days to create an account and claim it. If after 30 days, you have not created an account, the money sent will be returned to the sender (Whereoscope in this case).

Q. What will happen to our personal information?

A. As has always been the case, your personal information is safe and will not be released. We will permanently and securely delete all user information on March 11^th.

Q. What if I still want to be able to track my child?

A.  There are other services that offer a similar product; two of them are Life360 and SafetyWeb iHound.  Please review them to see if they might meet your needs.

Whereoscope 2.1 for iPhone – Control your location algorithm!

Hi all,

We’re very pleased to announce that Whereoscope version 2.1 has been approved by Apple.

There are lots of small changes in this version as well as one big one: you can now control the background location algorithm.

In previous versions we used our own hybrid algorithm to determine exactly when your iPhone will update its location. This would take into account the battery level, your current location, and several other factors.

But due to user demand, we’ve now exposed this as 2 simpler versions:

• Update when I change cell towers:
  Whenever you change cell towers (which are normally around 1 mile apart), Whereoscope will turn on the GPS and get a highly accurate sample. This is very conservative on battery consumption as it will only draw power when you move around. However, if you stay in the same place it will not update your location.

  This setting will prevent your family members from force-Refreshing your phone unless it is moving. Once you stop moving, Whereoscope will go to sleep.

• Update every 1 to 60 minutes
  This lets you specify exactly how frequently you want Whereoscope to update. The default is set to 10 minutes, but you can change it to whatever you want to manage battery consumption and timeliness.

  This setting will allow members of your family to always force-Refresh your device’s location.

You can change algorithms whenever you like.

Version 2.1 also contains an embedded tour to guide users through setting up different elements of Whereoscope such as inviting family members, or adding their Home and Work locations.

I’ve also updated our translations page to reflect the new translations that have come in – thanks Rios & Burak!

Stay tuned for more exciting things coming soon!

Whereoscope 2.0 for iPhone – subscriptions and user accounts!

Hi all,

We’re very happy to announce that version 2.0 of the iPhone client has been approved by Apple.

There are some big changes in this version, the biggest of which is: we are rolling out the subscription-based pricing model.

Our existing 12,000+ users on iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch will never be charged – we are very grateful to all of you for helping us build our product in the early days. As many of you know, our business model for Whereoscope was always based on subscriptions, but we wanted to trust our initial user base and ensure they were rewarded for their trust in us.

For new users, we’re starting off with an introductory rate: $0.99 per month.

• This subscription is for your family, regardless of how many people are in it
• Try it for free (currently 30 days) before you have to pay anything
• You can buy longer subscription periods at discount rates: $4.99 for 6 months, and $19.99 for a lifetime

This subscription is linked to your email address, so if you change iPhones or switch from iPhone to Android, your subscription will still be the same.

Version 2.0 also has a whole slew of other new features, including:

• Sharing of your profile image between phones (sorry it took us so long!)
• Background location support for iPad
• Searches your iPhone address book by email address when adding family members
• Accept invitations inside Whereoscope, instead of having to switch to email
• See the time you’ve spent in each location

Exciting times ahead, and more news to come!

Cheers,

Mick

Stopping background location applications on iOS 4

As you may already know, iOS4 gives iPhones and iPads the ability to run applications in the background. Most people are also aware of the ‘task manager’ that you can activate by double-tapping the Home button. But how do you stop an application from running in the background?

Delete it. Seriously, that’s the only way (for location applications using the Significant Location Update service).

The ‘task manager’ is not actually managing anything, and the icons in there are not tasks. If you hold down the icons until they start to wobble and then tap the red X, you have terminated that application.

But location apps using the Significant Location Update service get restarted when:

• the phone reboots
• you change cell towers

So even though you’ve just turned it off, as soon as you get in your car and drive a mile, it comes back to life.

There are typically 3 reasons why you’d want to stop a location based application running:

1. To stop it sending your location temporarily or permanently
2. To test whether that has an impact on battery life
3. To make the location arrow go away (this won’t work on iOS 4.1, see my prior post)

For case 1 and 3, you should really do what Apple recommend, and that is use the Settings application. Go to Settings->General->Location Services, and turn off either the specific application or all of them. The application will then be unable to get any location information from the CoreLocation API. This also has the effect of turning off the location arrow.

For case 2 your best bet is to delete the application. Turning off location access will remove an application’s ability to turn on the GPS chip, but that is only one of the ways to drain your battery. Continually sending data over the network via Edge or 3G is almost as bad, and the only way to stop that is to delete the app.

Version 1.6 is out!

Hey all,

Version 1.6 has been approved by Apple! Get it here:

This version is mainly a bugfix release – we discovered that when Whereoscope is open but you press the Sleep button, it enters a state where it stops working. It still worked when you closed the app, but a handful of people were entering this state and getting pretty unhappy.

This version fixes that – it should work all the time!

In upcoming news, it looks like iOS 4.2 is finally going to be released by Apple, which means Whereoscope will soon work in the background on your iPads!

Cheers,

Mick

Thanks to all our translators!

Hey all,

As you know, a month ago we asked Whereoscope users around the world if they could help us out with translations, in exchange for tshirts.

We were blown away by the response, and are proud to announce that as of version 1.5 we have Whereoscope in 7 languages! Download it now at:

Our sincere thanks go to:

• Kanako from California for the Japanese translation
• Zhiqiu from Duke University for the Chinese (Simplified) translation – check out his blog
• Eduardo Martin Pailos from Spain for the Spanish translation – check out his awesome web coach company
• Rafal from Poland for the Polish translation
• Vini from Australia for the Portuguese (Brazilian) translation
• Fon from Australia for the Thai translation
• Jonas Huckestein from California for the German translation – check out his launchpad of awesomeness
• Burak from Turkey for the Turkish translation (since version 2.0) – check out his home page
• Rios Tam from Hong Kong for the Chinese (Traditional) translation (since version 2.0) – check out his home page

Where possible, we’ve also localized the App Store description, although not all languages are supported in the App Store.

We’d also like to thank Chelsea, who’s been working super-hard replying to all our Japanese users on Twitter and email.

James & I are really thankful for all the feedback we get!!

Mick

Version 1.5 is out!

Hi all,

Version 1.5 is finally finally out! Get it now at the iPhone AppStore.

New features in this version include:

• Faster to startup when re-opening the application
• Much more reliable background updating. It should update at least every 10 minutes or so, even when stationary
• On the various map screens you can see a circle indicating the accuracy of the location data. If associated with a ‘Place’, you’ll see another circle for that place.
• On the “Everyone” map, tapping on a particular person jumps to their screen so you can zoom in on where they are.

Thanks for being patient!! I’ll be publishing another blog post soon thanking all our translators for this version!

Mick

Innovate!2010 Pitch Slam in Silicon Valley

We’ve been selected as one of 12 semi-finalists to pitch at the upcoming Silicon Valley Pitch Slam this Wednesday. You can read more about Innovate!2010 at:

http://www.innovate100.com/program/pitch-slams/silicon-valley-pitch-slam/

The Pitch Slam is run by Guidewire Group and I’m pretty excited about it! If you can make it, please come along and support!

 

The location arrow on iOS

Hi all,

I wanted to take some time to talk about the location indicator on the iPhone, as there’s quite a bit of confusion about what it means. Let me start by talking about the 3 main[1] types of location information available on the iPhone.

1. GPS. Most accurate (5m) when outside, with an extremely high battery impact.
2. WiFi. Most accurate (10m) when inside, with a high battery impact
3. Cell tower. Rarely accurate (around 500 to 2000m), with very little battery impact

It’s also important to know about the 2 main[2] types of location services available in the background on iOS 4.0 and above

1. Core Location. This allows you to receive location updates of a desired accuracy or better, ad infinitum. To utilize Core Location in the background you must specify the application as requiring the location background mode. This then informs the user that the application will likely have a high battery impact. This mode is designed for applications such as turn-by-turn directions.
2. Significant Location updates. This allows the application to be notified whenever the device changes cell towers. At that point the application can ask the operating system for a limited time (typically up to 10 minutes) to do any processing. This may include Core Location updates as shown above.

Now, with all that knowledge, let’s look at how things changed from iOS 4.0 to iOS 4.1

iOS 4.0: Show the arrow only when Core Location is running i.e. high battery impact

This really allows user to know when an application is going to significantly impact their battery life, allowing them to turn off such applications. Most application using Core Location will turn it on in such a way that it ends up activating the WiFi or GPS radios.

iOS 4.1: Show the arrow when either Core Location or Significant Location services are running i.e. privacy impact

This educates the user more about privacy – they can know whether any application currently has access to their location. But just because the arrow is there doesn’t mean the phone is actually processing anything, it may be entirely dormant.

Summary

Many people got used to the idea that the little location arrow would only appear when the GPS was running. As of iOS 4.1 this is no longer the case.

Any application that is currently registered Significant Location updates will have the arrow visible at all times, even if the phone is stationary and dormant.

Interesting side note

Turning off Location Services for a given app doesn’t completely turn it off.

For those who don’t know how, the standard way is to go to Settings->General->Location Services. You can either turn off location for all applications, or for an individual application. You’ll also see an arrow next to any application that has requested location data in the last 24 hours.

What it actually does is cause a callback to fire saying there was an error collecting location data every time location data is collected for another app. Let me illustrate.

1) You are running GoodApp and BadApp on your iPhone

2) You turn off Location Services for BadApp but leave it on for GoodApp

3) Every time GoodApp gets a location, BadApp is told “Sorry, no location for you”.

Of course, I would have expected BadApp just not to receive anything at all. In the current framework, BadApp is actually receiving some form of data: that another application is accessing location and the phone is likely to be moving.

Notes

[1]. Yes there are more complexities to interactions between these types, and some cell tower information is available even when no cell signal is available. However I considered that outside the scope of this article.

[2]. There are additional hacks to gaining background location using various other background modes, jailbreaking, or other techniques. The vast majority of iPhone location-based apps use one or both of the 2 mentioned.

Version 1.4 is out!

Hey all,

Version 1.4 has finally been approved by Apple.

We were planning to release 1.3 first, but the issues on OS 4.1 necessitated pulling that release and going with 1.4 instead. So there’s quite a bit in this release!

• Background tracking works again on OS 4.1 devices
• More than 4 people / family allowed – swipe to move between pages on the Home Screen
• iPad support (but no background tracking until OS 4.2)
• iPod Touch support (again, no background tracking)
• You can tap on the Address button on the Place screen to jump straight into the Maps application
• Easier to add Place notifications in the History feed
• Family members always in the same positions on the Home Screen
• Japanese localization
• Other bug fixes

We have several people working on translations for version 1.5 – planning to get them all rolled in by the end of the week so if you can help please contact us. and get a free Whereoshirt!

Cheers

Mick