One of the more simple navigation applications on the iPhone is an application called GPS Tracker created by InstaMapper, a small, privately owned company based in Bellevue, Washington.
When GPS tracker is running, the iPhone transmits data to InstaMapper every 5 seconds by default, though it is possible for a user to specify tramsmision frequency. The data sent to InstaMapper includes latitude and longitude along with speed, a timestamp, and a randomly assigned id.
Once the data is transmitted to InstaMapper, a user is able to see location updates via Google Maps in real-time. Unfortunately, a major weakness of the iPhone is that it is impossible to run two applications simultaneously; using Google Maps and GPS Tracker at the same time is hopeless under the current iPhone 3G configuration.
GPS Tracker allows you to export up to 100,000 recent locations per device and the track can be download as either a KML or CSV file.
While the GPS Tracker interface and InstaMapper’s website are minimalist, there are countless opportunities to expand services from spatial data processing (density maps, calculating trip lengths, average speeds, etc) to marketing to social networking… the possibilities are endless.
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