How often do you answer the simple question - “Where are you?”. And how long does it take to you to give the answer? I think, such situations occur very often. For example, you call a friend to appoint a meeting and hear a well known question “Where are you?”. I always have a feeling to answer - “somewhere” or in other variations. Am I a cad? No, but often it is very difficult to describe where i am. It is good if I now where i am, so I can somehow explain, but if no? And what to do, if a friend doesn’t know the city? And it is very terrible if he is lost in the city. There is a good proverb - “a clever tongue can lead you anywhere”. But that’s when you have a clever tongue, and what if not?
Some time ago i have taken a part in development of mobile app, targeted to serve a short and good way to ask “where are you” question. There is 21 century and mobile technologies are infiltrated in our lives.
What is the main problem to answer a “where are you” question? We believe that this can be either inadequate knowledge of area (for example, unknown city) or lack of knowledge of the area landmarks. It is wonderful, that modern smartphones (iPhone, Android, etc) have a GPS receivers and maps. This is what we need to give a good answer for “Where are you” question.
And really this is very simple - switch on the GPS, determine coordinates and … Oops, how can I send retrieved coordinates? For example, on Android i can use some sort of dark magic and send this coordinates via email or SMS, but this is only if you can use this sort of magic.
So we have developed our humble app, that can help you:
1. Ask a friend about his location and be sure to receive his or her answer
2. Give a proper answer for question “where are you”, and be sure, that your friend understand your answer.
So, lets look how to solve some usual problems, shall we? To avoid writing lots words, let's look on some situations. All this situations are fiction.
John went to celebration of christmas to the central square of the city, where he had to meet with his girlfriend Mary. When he went to square, he couldn’t find Mary. So he called to her and started to ask where she was. She gave him some landmarks, but he couldn’t find her.
Lets look what will happen if they have our app.
John sends to Mary a “where are you” question inside app. Mary receives it and answers it by means of our app. Thanks to that they are in the square and have access to GPS, John can receive proper location of Mary and find her with map.
So, another situation.
Denis went to his parents, but in the way his car was broken. He immediately called his parents, but there was a problem, how to say them where he was. Last that he knew that he drove along the petrol station, and it was named “The ermak”. There is a forest around with mushrooms. So his parents have to drive around and search him.
But if Denis has our app, he simply sends his GPS location to his parents, and they can find him easily. They can type coordinates into GPS navigator and drive to rescue their son.
