location

Police Use Family-Tracking App on Son’s Phone to Show His Dad Was Near Huge Blaze at Ex-Employer

Authorities linked a man to a factory arson that destroyed “well over a million” dollars in property last month by convincing his son to give them access to an app that would allow them to view the suspect’s movements, Forbes reported. Police had already identified Barre, Vermont resident Glenn “Chip” Hill as a suspect after…

Holy Shit, Reportedly

Today, the New York Times published a galvanizing analysis of the location histories of 12 million cell phones, a stockpile provided to them by sources inside an unnamed location data company that harvests data from mobile apps. This shit is real, man, and we’ve long known that telecoms have been selling our location data to…

The Feds, Police Are Using Google’s Location History Feature to Track Down Suspects

Law enforcement queries of Google’s massive mobile device Location History database, which employees call Sensorvault, has “risen sharply in the past six months,” the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing sources at the company. It’s not clear how often police ask Google to produce results from the database, which can be used to narrow…

Use These Six Apps to Track Friends and Family on a Map

Any kind of individual geotracking may sound unnerving at first, but if you can control who is able to see your location and when, it can be a convenient way of keeping an eye on the kids, making sure everyone meets at the same bar, or working out how long it’ll be before your better…

Your GPS Probably Overestimates Distance

Ever thought your GPS system said you’d gone further than you expected? A new study dives into the statistics behind the satellite-based positioning service—and finds that overestimates in distance are inevitable based on the way measurements are currently made. A team of researchers from the University of Salzburg in Austria have been looking at how…

Garmin Rino 650t Review: GPS Navigator And Radio In One

The ultimate way to stay in contact with your friends while in the wilderness? This Garmin Rino 650T allows you to track each other’s positions and communicate by voice or text, outside cell service. What Is It? The Garmin Rino 650t is a combination handheld 5w GMRS/FRS radio and feature-packed GPS unit. This one comes…

New Malware Tracks Subway Riders With Just Smartphone Motion Data

Even when you’re unable to maintain cellular and GPS connections underground, hackers may still be able to keep track of you. Researchers have discovered that they can trace the movements of subway rider with 92 percent accuracy, using just the motion sensing aboard smartphones. A team of researchers from Nanjing University has developed a technique…

How The New Cold War Is Improving Your Navigation

Ever contemplated going to war with America, but been thwarted when the Great Satan switched off your access to its navigation satellites? That’s potentially a real problem for China and Russia, but the real victor in this navigational arms race might be you; it’s improving the quality of location data on your phone and in…

How To Use A Map And Compass

This article will save your life. A basic paper map is the simplest, most reliable and most effective way to find your location and navigate somewhere else. But, in the age of GPS and Google Maps, many people have forgotten how to use one. Here’s how to never get lost again. But I’ve Got A…

Search For Tweets By Location With Castround

There are all kinds of reasons why you might want to filter tweets based on a location—from breaking news to travel tips—and new Android app Castround makes the process much simpler than it is on the Web. Here’s how to use it and several alternative approaches you can try. Castround for tweets Free to install…

Your Android May Be Broadcasting Your Location (and How to Stop It)

Do you own an Android device? Is it less than three years old? If so, then when your phone’s screen is off and it’s not connected to a Wi-Fi network, there’s a high risk that it is broadcasting your location history to anyone within Wi-Fi range that wants to listen. This location history comes in…

Change Your Android Phone’s Settings Based on Where You Are

While you’re waiting for Android L to come down the pipe, here’s a useful hack you can apply to your current Google-powered phone or tablet. You no doubt spend much of your day switching between locations, from home to work to the gym, and reconfiguring your device each time can be a chore. With the…

Location-Aware Wi-Fi Could Send You Free Beer at a Football Game

Potential buzzkill alert: you’re at a concert, and your section runs out of beer. But magically, your phone gets a message that says you should head one section over where there’s plenty of Buds to be had. Thanks to a developing Wi-Fi tech that knows exactly where you’re sitting, that might soon be a reality.…

Twitter’s oft-rumored Nearby function, a timeline showing tweets based on your current location, has been seen in the wild, according to The Wall Street Journal. Twitter wouldn’t comment except to say they’re always testing new stuff. [WSJ via AllThingsD]

And yet another one bites the dust: Google has announced that its local recommendation service Alfred, purchased from Clever Sense back in 2011, is shuttering on July 19th.

Curious travellers rejoice: Wikipedia has launched an official Nearby page, which will provide you with articles based on location.

Watch an Entire Year of Foursquare Check-Ins Light Up NYC and Tokyo

We all see the occasional check-in on our social networks of choice, but Foursquare took a whole year of them, and crammed them into one glorious minute of glowing information. The whole mess of data is condensed down into a color-coded 24-hour span so you can see how people—Foursquarers at least—dart around their home cities…

Can You Recognize a City By Its Foursquare Check-Ins?

If you plotted out all the check-ins made on Foursquare, you should be able to get a pretty good handle on the geographic layout of a city. It’s like modern day map making or check-in cartography. So do you think you can recognize a city just by its Foursquare check-ins? Foursquare slapped together a map…

Some Guy Always Gets Blamed for Lost Phones That He Never Stole Because of a Horrible Location Glitch

Las Vegas, the amazing place that sucks souls, wallets and dignities, is also really good at swallowing cell phones. Drunk, partying, WHOOPS. And whenever a phone is lost, people who use location services to find their lost phones always seem to track it back to the same place: Wayne Dobson’s house. But the thing is,…

Facebook’s Mobile App Just Got Better At Finding New Places

Facebook’s rolling out a nice little update to their iOS and Android apps today that should make it easier to use the service to find new places of interest for you to waste time and/or money at. The update packs a few new features into the app’s “Nearby” tab, including the ability peruse a list…