Google Latitude is dead, long live Miataru!

I am a long time user of Google Latitude – and since I added a Google Latitude Module to h.a.c.s. almost the whole family started using this service. It’s all about tracking your location.

Google says:

“Latitude has been retired

Google Latitude was retired on August 9th, 2013. Products retired include Google Latitude in Google Maps for Android, Latitude for iPhone, the Latitude API, the public badge, the iGoogle Gadget, and the Latitude website at maps.google.com/latitude.

What does this mean for me?

  • You are no longer able to share your location using Latitude….”

We used it for a lot of use cases. If just to know if the other is en-route to a meeting-point or to know if someone arrived safely during a long trip. Or in terms of home automation to let the house know if you are there or somewhere else – for instance to enable or disable the house alarming system or to power up / shutdown the heating if necessary.

After the retirement of Latitude on the 9th of August all those use cases where not doable anymore. Yes there are some tools that do this and that for Location tracking. But when Google Latitude was still active it did not fullfil all use-cases I would have gotten – it was just “good enough”. Now all those subtitutes are not even close to a fraction of the use cases I would have.

Now what? Easy! If nothing works out, you gotta do it yourself!

So I started a new spare-time project I call Miataru. Weird name, eh?

“Miataru or 見当たる is Japanese and means “be found” or “to come across” and it’s meant to be a set of tools to allow the user to track locations and choose how to work with the data as well as how data is stored if at all.” (Miataru.com)

So – this should not be a replacement for anyone for Google Latitude. But the goal is to create a client+server toolset that allows you to cover a lot of use cases around location tracking and the interfacing with other software like home automation.

The server will be written in Javascript using the awesome Node.JS technology and some frameworks along with that. The clients will be written in a mobile client specific language – like Objective-C for iOS.

iOSAppViewsWireframeFor about two weeks I am working on implementing the server and the iOS client. If you want to take part you’re invited! Especially the server and maybe a Webinterface / Web-App will need more love from savvy web developers – certainly more than I am able to give. I am slowly learning my way into all those new (for me) technologies – diving deeper into Javascript and Objective-C was a plan for the longest time now.

So expect some articles here about all the funny things and learnings about NodeJS and Objective-C / iOS development.

Some quick words to all you readers:

If you want to participate in an open source project in NodeJS and Mobile devices you’re invited to join anytime!

Source: http://www.miataru.com