App Review: Glympse

• Ease of Use
• Utility (usefullness)
• Design
• Compatibility
• Value (price)

I’ve had the opportunity to play with Glympse over the past few weeks, and I would describe it as a truly innovative and well executed take on a navigation app. Why innovative? Aren’t there already five bazillion navigation apps (I counted) available in the App Store? Well, yes. But Glympse isn’t really about helping you, the user, navigate. It’s about letting someone else know where you are and where you’re navigating to. How? Allow me to explain.

The core feature of the app is the ability to send someone – anyone – a “Glympse” of where you are. The difference between a Glympse and, say, a Foursquare check in, is that Glympse will continue to share your realtime location with the particular individual for the specified amount of time you choose. Basically, you choose whether it’s truly a glimpse, or a really long, awkward stare. Okay, no awkwardness required. One of the great things about the way the app is designed is that it can be as simple or complex as you wish it to be. For example, I can, in about 10 or 20 seconds, send my wife a Glympse of my current location that she can see for the next 15 minutes, which will be sent as a link to her e-mail address. She’ll pull it up on her MacBook (or her iPhone – in a mobile-optimized Safari page), and she’ll be able to see where I am, and how fast I am moving, for the next 15 minutes, at which time the Glympse will “expire.” The information is delivered in realtime, as an arrow moving across a map. Alternatively, I can create a Glympse with a more custom timeframe (say, an hour), a desired destination visible to my recipient, a message to my recipient, sent to both their mobile device via SMS as well as their e-mail address, and save this template for instant use at a later date. It makes absolutely no difference whether or not my recipient has the app installed.

Glympse Inc, the developer of the software, makes several use cases for the app. First, and probably the most obvious, is when you’re running late and you do not want to have to call every two minutes and let the other party know how much closer you’ve gotten. Stuck in traffic? The app will show your recipient that you’re only moving at 2 mph, as well as give an estimate of when you will arrive. Second, when you’re out with friends and need to locate each other – what easier way than a realtime location on a map as you stumble about trying to ascertain your whereabouts? Third, and perhaps most interesting, is for peace of mind for parents with teen drivers. Sending your newly licensed teen out to the store for the proverbial loaf of bread? Well, first off, you’re probably going to spend more on gas getting to the store than you will on the bread itself, but that’s a topic for another post. With this app, you’ll know where they are (and how fast they’re driving) the entire time. And it won’t cost $10 or $15 a month, like similar, inferior applications put out by the wireless carriers themselves.

The app itself is free, and it includes additional expected features, like Twitter and Facebook integration, and a settings panel with options for notifications and changing mph to kph (here’s looking at you, Sims), etc. The only real downside? If you are using this in your car and you don’t have a charger, a long Glympse will certainly wear down your battery life very quickly. I did not find brief Glympses to be overly troublesome in that respect, however. A five or 15 minute Glympse on 3G really seemed to have little impact on my overall battery performance.

While you may not use this app on a daily basis (or you may), for the cost of $0.00, it’s a no brainer to download. “Share Your Where,” as the dev says, when you want, with whom you want, for as long as you want. I’m a fan.