Shaloc. Dead simple real-time GPS location sharing

TNW Quick Hit

Shaloc (free) helps you quickly share your GPS location with your friends, your friends can then track your place as you move in real-time.

Hits: Shaloc allows one to quickly share your GPS location using your iPhone with your anyone, with those you share a location with able to track your movement in real-time using a web browser or any web-enabled mobile device.

Misses: Despite the developer’s attempts at easing one’s privacy fears, some will still have concerns about the privacy of publicly sharing one’s location.  Why?  Those you share your location with could betray you by forwarding the information on to another.

Overall: 4.5/5

The Details:

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Location-sharing takes many forms including, but not limited to, Gowalla, Foursquare, Facebook Places, Marco! and more.

Shaloc, a new app from MashSpots, takes a different approach than the aforementioned options.  Shaloc doesn’t require a check-in, but it does share one’s location.

Essentially the app offers one the option of sharing an exact location with whoever you’d like to.  With a single tap in the app a short URL is generated which can be shared from within the app via text, Twitter, and email or through other methods one so chooses.   Once the URL is shared, recipients can track your location in real-time, regardless of where you are, until you disable the location-sharing option.

Why use Shaloc?  The developer offers the following example:

“Let say you are driving to meet a friend, you can share your location using Shaloc, this way you dont have to worry about calling/texting your friend if you are stuck in traffic or running late, your friend can track exactly where you are.”

Once you launch Shaloc the app determines your location and by selecting “Share Your Location” the app generates a short URL that can then be shared with anyone.

If you choose to share your location by Twitter, one sees the following:

Edit as you please and hit send, that is if you want all you follow to know your location and track you as you move.  Your choice.

Once location is shared anyone with access to a web-browser, both on a computer or phone with a web browser, can track your location in real-time.

Some of the app’s other features include:

• Option to share location while app is running in background
• Option to stop sharing when battery reaches a configurable threshold
• Option to set a timer to automatically stop sharing
• Option to show your last position after location sharing is stopped
• Background notifications when sharing is stopped due to any errors
• User notifications every 30 minutes when sharing location in background

Privacy is a concern with any location-sharing app.  To combat this, Shaloc generated URLs are random, when one stops sharing location the URL will cease tracking one and a new, unique, URL will be created every time you start sharing to ensure those you’ve shared a location with in the past will not be able to access your location again.

Shaloc offers real-time location sharing, if you move, the app knows, it’s super simple to use and the ability to access location across platforms makes it an extremely useful app.

Pick up Shaloc here and let us know what you think!

Update: Founder Rakshith Krishnappa notes in the comments that the Shaloc iPhone app is only available in the US AppStore, to get early access outside the US go to http://shaloc.com/beta and use invite code “thenextweb”