RoughlyHere is an application for mobile devices running the Google Android(tm) operating system which allows its users to publish their whereabouts.

Use

A typical use of the application is to allow 3rd parties (friends, family, business partners, ice cream van fleet managers) to track the device's whereabouts as well as obtain status messages from its user.

We feel this application is unique in that it allows users to be anonymous. That is, there is no special registration steps required (generate an ID within the application and off you go) to use it. While each device is only allowed one ID at a time, this ID can be as short or long lived as you wish.

Generate an ID, update your location, copy the URL and send it to the person you want to be able to have a general idea about your whereabouts, and then delete it to disappear off the grid.

While the system keeps a history of your whereabouts (currently 25 locations), you as a user can choose to divulge this history (currently max 20) to third parties, or you can choose not to.

Please note that both the web and Android(tm) applications are in constant development and may change.

Figure 1: Typical usage

The RoughlyHere application was initially written for "coarse" location information, that is, the cell tower GPS information available from "most" mobile operators. The good thing about this is that it works inside buildings, and quite accurately if the phone is associated to more than one cell tower. The bad news is that not all mobile operators provide this information. It seems to work very well in Scandinavia!

Starting from version 0.20b, experimental support for GPS was added; it seems that network based position information is not so common. Pity.

Version 0.30.0b saw the configuration moved to a separate tab as well as the inclusion of a rudimentary map.

The application may tell you to enable network based positioning (Options -> Location -> Use Wireless Networks), or GPS. You must enable one or both of these for the application to have a chance to work.

1) Tap the "Generate ID" button to generate a new ID. The button will change to display your personal ID (generated from a 128-bit MD5 hash of the device's Market identity as well as a random string of characters; the Market identity itself is thus not transmitted anywhere and cannot feasibly be decoded).

2) Tick the "Additional informational messages" checkbox for debugging purposes.

3) Press the "Tap to update location" button. A toast message with your current position should be displayed if all goes well (you may then want to untick the "Additional informational messages") checkbox; the application is rather verbose with this on.

4) Press the top button (which should now read "Tap to copy URL to clipboard") and paste the clipboard contents to your emails, Google Talk(tm), Skype(tm) status messages and so on.

5) The top spinner controls the number of historic locations you wish to divulge to your friends and enemies.

6) The second spinner will (in future) control how often locations will be submitted to the server (if the checkbox "Timed updates only" is ticked) -- this is currently disabled.

i) Ticking "Automatic position updates" will continously update your position without having to push the update button.

ii) "Timed updates only" means that the application will ignore position-based update notifications (nominally, RoughlyHere will update the position every 5 minutes OR every 150 meters).

iii) "Force GPS (ignore network)" should be ticked if you cannot use network based positioning. If you have network based positioning turned off, but have enabled GPS, this option will be ticked automatically for you when you start the application.

iv) "Enable GPS in background" will leave GPS positioning enabled even when the application is not running in the foreground. Normal behaviour is that the application will revert to network based positioning to further conserve battery power.

v) Setting the history spinner to "0" will remove your position from the map without needing to delete your ID. Choose a positive number to become visible again.

vi) Setting the spinner position to "1" will remove your position history (the red lines in the web application).

Web interface

The web interface is currently pretty basic. In time it should become more interactive for the observer.

Currently, an observer who knows a user's ID (for example http://roughlyhere.com/Show?id=hraqspoo) will be able to see the user's trajectory (gradient red line, paler lines indicate older history) and the user's current message. There may also be an indication of whether there are other RoughlyHere users nearby (thin green lines attached to blue markers). Blue markers that have no green lines attached to them indicate users in the same rough location as yourself.

The marker also includes a link to the user's location through http://www.openstreetmap.org; some areas in the world do not appear to have Google Maps(tm) coverage.

Bugs, bugs, bugs..

Surely you mean features? At some point, there will be a list of TODO, CHANGES and KNOWN BUGS. We're hoping for some patience here!

Download the application, play, and send feature requests and bug reports to bugreport(@)roughlyhere.com. We're really interested in those that the application doesn't work for (please provide country and mobile operator information).