No more where are you's – introducing Locatik

Oct 04, 2007

Posted by: Jakub Lipiński, CTO

It all started from the Bruce Sterling's futuristic vision Dispatches From the Hyperlocal Future published in the July issue of Wired. The story he depicts is about to happen in 2017 and is a set of geo-blog posts about technology, media and society of that time. And then, I reached the passage:

The best thing about being a top-tier geo blogger is that everyone knows where you are. When the buddy list tells folks you're in town, they ping to offer you dinner and invite you to sleep on the couch. They're my homies in a world where the entire planet is home.

It made me think. The possibility of sharing your current geographical location with your relatives seemed so tempting. But why I have to wait until 2017? I would love to have it right now.

Today we are announcing the beta version of Locatik. It lets whomever you want to see where you are now. It currently shows the location of happy owners of GPS-enabled devices but in the future will be able to display the approximate position of people with less equipped phones. The service is currently in private beta stage meaning that you need an invitation to use it.

The most frequent first phrase during a phone call is “Where are you?”. We want you to be able to start your conversation with something nicer, like: “Hey, you're just around the corner. What about coffee?”