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Google Latitude Alternative for Android and iPhones

Google Latitude alternative Android Iphone

If you have ever shared your location on a mobile device, you may have used Google Latitude. Google Latitude allows users to find friends and family on a map as well as share where they are with friends and family. The user controls who gets to see their location and at what level of detail.

Google recently announced that they are retiring the Latitude service as of Aug. 9. According to Google, “Products being 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.”

If you used Google Latitude with your iPhone or Android device, the retirement means you’ll no longer be able to share your location using Latitude. Also, Latitude is no longer a feature on the latest version of Google Maps for mobile on Android and will be removed from iPhone on the App Store. That and your list of Latitude friends will be deleted.

You can read more about the change and what it means here.

Using the MamaBear App as a Google Latitude Alternative

With Google Latitude’s retirement, other location tracking apps will attempt to fill the void. While there are many choices for Latitude alternatives, for families there is no better replacement option than MamaBear. The MamaBear Family Safety App offers the best Google latitude alternative for Androids and iPhones.

Adding MamaBear to your iPhone or Android device provides you a way track your children’s locations, making sure you are aware of where they are and where they’ve been. The app also allows you to schedule alerts for location activity and it gives your kids a one-click opportunity to check-in, or send you an emergency notification. This gives your children a sense of freedom while also easing your own worries and enabling you to keep the whole family safe and secure. In addition, you can selectively share your current location with your children.

For concerned parents wanting to protect their growing children and give them the freedom they need to roam and explore, MamaBear goes a step further than Google Latitude.

MamaBear doesn’t just tell you where your kids are on a map. The app alerts you if they leave school or a scheduled activity early or they visit a restricted place you set. MamaBear monitors your kids’ social media behavior with notifications about new friends or followers, photo uploads, tagged photos or posts and restricted words you deem as signs of bullying or inappropriate on Facebook and Instagram. MamaBear can even let you know if they are in a speeding vehicle.

Without Google Latitude, parents still have options for sharing their location and tracking their children. MamaBear is one GPS tracking system for mobile devices that offers the same features at Latitude, along with so much more.

MamaBear is available for download on Android devices here and Apple devices here.

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How Can You Monitor Your Child’s Facebook Page Easily and Effectively?

monitor your child's facebook

It’s time consuming to monitor a child’s Facebook activity! If kids are spending 50 hrs a week on social media, parents are easily overwhelmed thumbing through the daily LOLs and happy birthdays just to get to the important stuff on their child’s Facebook page. As most social activity happens from their mobile device, it’s recommended to limit screen time. Also, it’s more than common for kids to have multiple profiles. Ask your kids about it and pay close attention to their profile names. When you need a little help keeping up, use MamaBear to monitor and navigate complex social media networks like Facebook.

The MamaBear app is available for parents using both iPhones and Android powered smartphones with several options to effectively monitor a child’s Facebook account making the Facebook experience safer for children and less time consuming for parents. MamaBear Facebook monitoring is so easy with email and push based notifications related to friend activity, restricted words and tagging.

Facebook Friend Monitoring

Be aware, the average 12-15 year old is friends with at least 72 strangers on social media sites! MamaBear will send parents an email or push notification when their child adds a new friend, giving parents a chance to see who our kids are communicating with online. MamaBear also allows parents to select specific friends as “restricted” so they know when these so-called friends are in contact. This gives parents an opportunity to talk to their kids about who they are communicating with via Facebook.

Restricted Words Monitoring

Cyber bullying and other inappropriate behavior is widespread on Facebook. MamaBear monitors words used on Facebook programmed by the parent to help combat these unfortunate interactions. Parents can choose specific words and phrases to monitor on their child’s Facebook page. Parents receive an automatic alert when their child or any other Facebook friend uses the restricted word, or words, on their child’s Facebook wall. This language based alert option can help parents start some really necessary conversations to stop bullying and other inappropriate behavior as soon as possible.

Tag Monitoring

It’s so common for our kids to be tagged in a photo, a post or at a location by their friends. But being tagged by other people can create wider exposure for our kids on Facebook outside of just their friends list. Tag alerts from MamaBear help monitor when others include your child in their Facebook activity. Parents can receive alerts when a child is tagged in a message, photo or a location. While it may seem like a small thing, the information our children’s friends post can provide parents with a wealth of insight in order to take precaution to protect them.

MamaBear is here when you need help monitoring your child’s Facebook account and activities. MamaBear downloads easily from the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store for iOS and Android powered devices. The next time you’re curious about your child’s Facebook activities, you should probably think about saving hundreds of hours by checking out our easy to use family safety app.

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The ages at which children receive a mobile phone

track your kids

With news that the number of mobile phones that exist in the world will exceed the current global population in 2013, it makes us wonder why mobile phones have made such a huge impact on our lives over the past ten years.

I remember my very first phone- a hand me down from my mum, then sister- and strongly recount how grown-up I felt for owning my very own mobile device. However, at 9 years old, I used the phone for nothing but playing games, especially as none of my friends had a phone for me to text or call.

But things today are already very different from when I was 9 years old; it was just last week that I witnessed my 3 year old cousin successfully unlock her dad’s iPhone and navigated her way to a particular app. With children having more and more exposure to technology today, it is hardly surprising that toddlers are capable of handling mobile phones and tablets.

But what age is too young when it comes to children owning mobile phones?

A recent study suggested that 47% of teenagers now own a smartphone, with over half of them considering themselves addicted to their mobile device.

Teenagers activating and looking for the best mobile phone deals on smartphones such as BlackBerrys, iPhones and Androids was at a record high last Christmas, suggesting that the number of young people being bought a mobile phone is increasing year on year.

The report found that over 20% of 13 year olds now own a mobile phone, though the majority of these teenagers don’t have the latest smartphone models such as the iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S3. Many parents even admitted that their children as young as 10 owned a mobile phone, though a high proportion of these owned hand-me-down devices rather than brand new phones specifically purchased the for child in question.

The increase in young people owning a mobile phone can even be seen in the way that contracts have changed. For instance, while pay as you go devices may have become less popular over the past 10 years, pay monthly contracts that can be capped have become more so. In this way, parents find that they are able to track their children’s mobile phone usage insofar as checking which numbers they are calling, and how much money they are spending.

The Pros of young people owning a mobile phone

While critics often focus on the negative impacts of children owning a mobile phone, it is clear that there are obvious benefits of young children being able to navigate their way round technical devices at a young age.

The main pro of a child or teenager having their own mobile phone is an issue of safety; if they can contact you and if you can contact them at any time, it lessens the anxiety that a parent feels if their child is out with their friends, or on a school trip, for example.

Also, by allowing young people to have their own mobile phone, it teaches them the art of budgeting, as well as making them responsible. As mobile phones aren’t always cheap, entrusting a device to a young person is key to their personal development and transition into becoming an adult.

Cons of young people owning a mobile phone

On the other hand, recent reports suggest that out of the all mobile phone thefts last year, a high proportion of them were targeted at teenagers. For example, of the 1,223 mobile phones that were stolen in Nottinghamshire last year, 40 per cent were taken from young people under the age of 21.

However, while this figure may be high, it doesn’t necessarily represent the crime rate throughout the UK. Also, teaching young people about how to stay safe when using their mobile phone is a good lesson learning how to prove their ability to take care of their most prized possessions.

Summary

So there we have it; while the number of young people owning a mobile phone might be on the rise, it doesn’t necessarily mean that our children are failing to learn how to communicate. With the technology dominating our society today, it only seems fitting for the future generation to be at the forefront of the hi-tech revolution. And with ‘text speak’ well and truly out of fashion, mobile phones could even get young people writing the English language more frequently, thus enhancing their education. What is clear, however, is that the pull of mobile phones to young people today seems to be getting stronger for parents to resist.

 

By:

David Khan

http://www.mobilephones.com

The article above was from a MamaBear guest blogger. The MamaBear blog is now accepting guest post from reputable bloggers on a variety of subjects. If you are interested in guest blogging for MamaBear simply contact us here.