Find my iPhone

Find me on Iphone is an amazing service. Although it is primarily developed for tracking down your lost iPhone, it can be used in other interesting ways. The official descriptipn of the service is here.

The features that I find most useful are :

• Locating the iPhone Apple locates the iphone on the website, The display is “hot” meaning the pushpin moves in realtime as the iphone is moving, so you can actually see direction & guess the speed of the iphone. This is very useful in tracking where the person is or if they are on the “move”. So rather than calling your partner repeatedly to find out far he/she is, One can simply “findmyiphone” him/her. This is safer than distracting/irritating them with repeated calsl. Looking at how fast the dot the moving we can also figure out if the traffic is slow etc. Of course there are privacy concerns, but I think this should be a good way to keep track of family members. I think parents would definitely find this useful to locate the teenagers.

• Display a Message I basically see this a way to SMS the iPhone user for “free”. With iPhone data plans not including any free sms’s, this becomes a very good option ( findmyIPhone is free). It is a good, easy way to send a quick message one way FYI message to the Iphone.

• Play a tone This is probabely the only “conventional” use of findmyiphone. I have used this a couple of times, to locate my misplaced iphone at home. Its really handy if the iphone is in the garage with the car, or hidden under the sofa cushions!

There are quite a few times when I could locate the iphone and based on the location decide, weather to call or just send a message. If the phone is stationary and at a location, I would usually call. if the phone is moving, I tend to just leave a message.

Of Course findmyiphone is risky, it can options like to “remote wipe” & “play a tone at full volume ” at the fingertips. It can be extremely devasating or annoying to do either. so this has to be used with care.