TomTom for iPhone is one of my favorite apps. Almost a year after buying the app, I finally decided to splurge for the $20/year subscription to live traffic info and I’m impressed.
It sends me to work on the same route almost every morning, the only exception being major road construction or addicents along the usual route.
Every evening, it regularly selects from two different routes depending on the exact traffic conditions.
I’m one of those people that in the past has been cursed to always choose the slowest route, but thanks to TomTom I no longer worry about that.
I figure the $20/year subscription saves me 5-10 minutes a day which works out to a cost of $0.50 to $1 per hour of my time saved. And that’s just on my regular 7 mile commute to and from work – on longer trips to places I’m not familiar with it saves me even more time and I appreciate how it gives me a much more accurate estimation of how long it will take me to get there.
The only cons to the traffic are if you don’t have unlimited data, it does use your data, and it only has traffic data for highways and not for city streets.
More and more people these days have cell phones with a GPS feature and a data plan and location based social networking uses those features to allow you to indicate to your friends where you currently are. The idea behind location based social networking is that your current location is your status update. Rather than telling people where you are, you can show them on a map.
I’m using Foursquare to experiment with location based social networking. I picked it over a handful of other options because it seemed like the most popular network and some places I frequent like Starbucks and Chili’s have discounts and freebies for Foursquare users.
I’ve been using Foursquare for about two and a half months now. It took me a long time to finally join because I was concerned about the privacy and security issues of broadcasting my current location to the whole world. But the fact is you’re not broadcasting it to the whole world.
The Foursquare iPhone app allows you to select various levels of location sharing each time you check in:
- You can choose to check in “off the grid” which means you can see the action in your own history and stats but no one else can see it.
- You can share with just your Foursquare friends. I’m currently keeping this list pretty much restricted to people I know in real life who I trust to know my current location at any time.
- You can send your check in to Facebook. My Facebook profile is also limited to only people I know in real life but I don’t want to flood them with check ins at the grocery store so I rarely use this option but I did use it on my recent trip to New York when visiting interesting landmarks.
- You can send your check in to Twitter. This is the most public of the options if your Twitter profile is publicly visible. I very rarely use this option, but I did use it a lot when I was at #BlogHer10 along with a lot of my Twitter friends.
What I love about Foursquare is the history and statistics. I’m obsessed with personal data collection and love to be able to see the record of my life in numbers.
This is a screen shot of my history page while I was at #BlogHer10. Thursday involved a lot of off site private events at various locations: the Kodak event at Caroline’s, Social Luxe at Arena, and Martha Stewart’s event at her New York office and then I came back to the hotel for one of the conference parties. Friday and Saturday I spent my time in the hotel attending the conference, Friday I wound down the evening chatting with friends in the hotel lobby bar and Saturday started with an early off site breakfast. (Sometimes I forget to check in at places while I’m there which is why Thursday shows me checking in at Martha Stewart and the Hilton at the same time but as far as the privacy and security concerns go that might actually work in my favor.)
This is a screen shot of my statistics for the past month. Again I just love to quantify my life in numbers. Since I was on vacation in New York City for the first time ever, I probably checked in at a lot more places and a lot more new places than normal. As you can see, the graph points towards the end of this 30 day segment are much higher than at the beginning when I was just hanging out around home.
Have you tried a location based social network? What do you like or dislike about it?
Since I’ve got a bunch of iTunes credit saved up now, I decided to splurge on the TomTom for iPhone application that provides turn by turn directions while you’re driving.
My absolute favorite thing about the iPhone is that with it, I only need one gadget in my purse. My iPhone is replacing my need for a separate cell phone, iPod, Kindle, handheld gaming system, and now turn by turn GPS device.
I didn’t get the GPS system in my car when I bought it because it would’ve added an extra $3000 to the cost. At times I’ve wished I would have spent that extra $3000, but now I’ve got that functionality for $49.95 which is a whole lot cheaper.
The TomTom app is normally $99.99 but through December 28, 2009 only it’s half price so I went ahead and grabbed it now. If you’re thinking about getting it, hurry up and save yourself $50.
If you have a 3g or 3gs iPhone, you do not need the TomTom car kit. If you have an original iPhone or an iPod touch, you can buy the TomTom car kit to add real GPS and be able to use the app but personally, I’d just put the cost of the car kit towards upgrading my phone if I didn’t already have a 3g iPhone.
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