MapQuest's Find Me with Explicit Position Sharing and IM

The NYT has a short article “Feeling Lost? Ask Your Cellphone Where You Are” on MapQuest Find Me, even though is is already old news. The most interesting is the plan to integrate Find ME with AOL Instant Messenger later this year and to use explicit position sharing.

James Greiner, MapQuest’s vice president and general manager, said he saw MapQuest Find Me as a tool for social networking. “MapQuest helps people find places,” Mr. Greiner said. “This helps people find places where people are at“.

Sharing location with Find Me is done in push mode. The user deliberately sends his position (no automatic update). This is a design guideline that comes out of CatchBob! also.

It handles the privacy issue pretty nicely also. The positioning is done on the device (GPS) and location information are sent via (encrypted?) SMS. It means it “virtually” does not really on one centralized server.