Keep track of your loved ones with Google+ Locations
Unless you work with your spouse and children, it’s pretty probable that you don’t know where they are at all times, and sometimes they’re in a position where they can’t answer a text asking where they’re at for legitimate reasons (swimming, the gym, movie, etc).
Unfortunately when you don’t get an answer immediately, you can probably safely assume that your loved ones have been kidnapped, exploded, died in a zombie hoard, or worse yet – their phone isn’t working.
While several carriers sell products aimed at tracking your child or spouse down to the nanometer, Google+ has a free feature called Locations where you can see basically where they’re at rather than having to interrupt them and ask.
The newest version of Google+, when installed, incorporates a feature that used to be called Google Latitude into it, as it’s been removed from Google Maps. This allows you to choose who you share your location information with, although the Locations version of this product is not yet as robust as the Latitude was as there is no web-interface for it, nor ability to share useless city-level information.
Now, if you’re working late your spouse can see that the phone is still at the office. Or if you’re at the gym you know they’ve got a good reason why they didn’t answer/probably are not going to answer.
If you send your tot off to school with their phone, same deal.
See that your loved one is at the grocery store and need a sixer of PBR? Bam!
With Google’s Geofencing API it’s probable that fairly shortly you can receive an alert when your kid goes over to their girl/boy friend’s house at an unsavory time.
So, if the amazing photo features of Google+ were not enough to sway you already, Locations is yet another feature you can use to help your family stay connected.
Google+ is free and available for download from Google Play. Every device that you want to track or monitor from will require it installed, and if you need a good comparison of what it’s like imagine it’s Facebook but as opposed to them stealing all you and your friend’s data it’s you using it.
iDevices have a version of Google+ available also, although I’m not sure if the locations feature works as of yet.
