Where is he?
I generally distrust any company with my data, let alone with my geographical position. I don't want them to store where I was, so the only option for me is to do it myself.
I extended Quo by adding server calls, so it can report my current position in nearly real time. I added switch in app settings to enter endpoint URL and to turn it on/off when needed.
- t=2022-08-28T15:30:11+0200<=38.258188&ln=140.877655&a=42&s=0.0&c=317&p=15&b=97
It works well, however it's not efficient at all, sending data sometimes every second, so it drains battery quite a bit. So I had an idea to include battery info in the data as well, so the other party knows there are no position updates because my phone died on my way there :-)
Mapy.cz, circle as precision marker
Quo for iOS
I was a happy user of Moves. After acquisition by Facebook I decided to ditch it and write some tracker myself, but it turned out to be somewhat unreliable, so after a few months I went back to using Moves.
But one day Moves announced it will be shutting down for good. As many other users I started looking for alternative and found Arc App from Big Paua. The author even added an import tool for data exported from Moves, so I have all my history there!
Regardless of notable battery drain on my iPhone SE and fast-filling iCloud Drive I was happy user of Arc and was looking forward to every update with new features. Author decided to focus on the app full-time, which also meant it now became his livelihood and he changed the app accordingly, introducing basically a pay-wall for viewing tracked locations.
This convinced me once again to try writing some tracker myself. I was in no hurry, because recording in Arc was unaffected by the pay-wall and therefore still reliable, so my progress was slow, but steady. This time I used amazing tutorial by Andrew Kharchyshyn as a base-line.
In about two weeks I started testing Quo in parallel to using Arc, until I got confident enough to turn recording in Arc off.
To conserve battery life a bit I mostly use accuracy of hundred meters, which is not great, but it still tells me where I was and roughly what path I took. I added an option to crank up location accuracy into Settings for the app.
A nice bonus of using location API is, when I use another app that requires better accuracy, like car navigation, the iOS provides more accurate locations for Quo as well.
Qui, Qua, Quo
All product names begin with Q and I often look for meanings in Latin. For trip planner I liked “Qua” – “which way?” But when I came up with “Quac”, which I like as well, it created a conflict “Qua” × “Quac”.
If one product's name is a beginning of another product's name, I'd like for the one with the sorter name to be a part of the other with the longer name. “Qui” is a standalone part of “Quid”, but “Qua” has nothing to do with “Quac”.
So I decided to go with the second best name option – “Quo”, which means “where?”. You may know it from “Quo vadis” – “Where are you marching?”. As a bonus, you still type it on a single row of keys and from left to right – it's just a one key away! :-)
Two points to make remains though. First of all, I'm aware now I have two distinct products called “Qui” and “Quo”, which, as I mentioned, are only a key away of each other. Second of all, I'm aware of another naming conflict in “Qui” × “Quiky”. Both of them I've decided to ignore...
Tracking precision
problem with jiggering about, making tons of unuseful logs
precision < distance
Quo
I love traveling and therefore travel a lot, mostly just with my spouse. It all started in 2000s with our trips to the USA and during planing those we mastered our elaborate planning spreadsheets. Because they work.
One of our elaborate itineraries
Besides transport, lodging, tickets and attractions we have a list of other things we need figure out, to squeeze out as much as we can from our time abroad, because it's much more precious than time spent at home.
Many of those other things is possible to automate or use some online queries to get (like upcoming weather). Also many of them are usable not just for us and since we invested a time into finding that, why keep it just to ourselves? The most significant issue though is with things like hours and prices, which gets obsolete rather quickly, but people want it the most.
Quo Logo: a red marker on a blue marble.
So I started to transform the spreadsheet into a web app. I named it “Qua”, which means “which way” in Latin, so it's perfect. I later forced myself to rename it to “Quo”, because I decided products starting with the same letters should be related and this clashed with Quac.
Also “quo” in Latin means “where to”, which may be even better, and I like it uses only a single row on the keyboard and keys from left to right to type it.
Because I write a travelog to Quiky, I decided to embed a lite version of it into Quo and create (yet another) travel portal. I don't mind the vast competition, because none of them were really suitable for my particular needs and if it's just used by me, it's fine.
Traveling is so broad topic there will always be something to incorporate, so it will keep me busy for a long time. There are so many great places on Earth I don't mean to stop traveling any time soon.