Travel App Creates People Map
Five years after the launch of Foursquare, and who even knows how many new location-based apps later, "checking in" is like, so 2010.
No one needs to know if you're the mayor of the Chipotle down the road from your office anymore. (Unless you can get them a free burrito bowl, that is.) Not even your closest comrades care that you're "At New York Sports Club, about to attack leg day!"
But your real friends, both near and far, well hopefully they really are concerned about your whereabouts. Well, what city you're currently living in (or traveling too) at least.
That's the idea behind Connect; a new, free app for travelers that meshes with your social networks to generate an up-to-date map of your contacts around the world. It syncs with everything from Facebook to Twitter and LinkedIn to Google Contacts so you can easily keep tabs on the cities that all of your friends live in.
"As someone who is on a plane at least once per month, I found myself wanting to see which of my friends and contacts lived in the city I was about to land in. In a mobile age, I couldn't keep track of where my friends were. I needed a tool that brought together all my contacts in one place and created an always up-to-date map of everyone I knew," said Connect CEO Ryan Allis.
The app also integrates geolocated posts and checkins to create maps of the places your friends frequented most recently and you can use it to search your network by factors like name, location, groups, and even relationship status.
Other cool features include: updates when out-of-town friends travel to your area, the ability to let friends know how long you'll be in a certain location, and access via your iPhone, Apple tablet, or iOS computer.
Whether you're looking for a (hopefully) cozy couch to crash on during an upcoming trip or trying to round up a list of all the nearby friends you want to invite to your next big shindig, Connect is your one-stop-shop for, as the app's creators so smoothly put it, "keeping track of all your people."