While bumping into friends spontaneously is more than welcome, wouldn’t it be great if we could arrange some of these meetings? And we haven’t really heard of any location based service alerting users about friends in their proximity. Doing just that, the Loopt blog announces an all new Friend Alerts function which pings users whenever there is a friend in the vicinity within the range of a mile.
The Loopt is a cellphone-based GPS sharing software which operates on BlackBerry, iPhone and Android platforms. With this function users may avoid being alerted when one of their buddies is at the dentist several miles away. The Friend Alerts only notifies the handset owner when their pals are really nearby and an impromptu get-together is possible. Through this software even one of the most boring days could actually be fun by bumping into friends anywhere, anytime.
In order to access this location based feature, users and their friends both have to trigger the background location sharing and Friend Alerts functions present in Settings. With the latest iOS 4 the software will run in the background whereas in iOS3 it will function in the foreground. The software even operates on Android and Blackberry devices which support apps running in the background.