Wherever you go, this app follows you

BANGALORE, INDIA: Well, if the Internet has magically vanished the meaning of anonymity, this new app makes you feel the world is a tiny place as it stealthily tracks your every movement. It has a sort of negated the need for those suspicious spouses planning to hire a spy to keep tab on their better halves.

Sounds creepy isn't it? But that's what Placeme, the free app, does using the smartphone's sensors and GPS and Wi-Fi capabilities to figure out where the person is and for how long.

Placeme maker Alohar Mobile says its targets are not just marketers but individuals wanting to track movement of their loved ones. Perhaps there is someone in the family suffering from alzheimer's and there could be no better app than this.

Placeme, available for the iPhone and Android phones, requires both GPS and Wi-Fi. When you travel, the app logs the places you visit. Within the app, one can see day-by-day maps of their movements. Also, the time spent at each destination is recorded and you can also check out Google Street View image of the location and add notes about a location.

"Placeme is like a friend who remembers the name of every place you went," says Katie, a Stanford student.

Gathering the data from phone's sensors and GPS and Wi-Fi, the app sends it to Alohar's servers, and then calculates your location. To cut down on battery drain, locations are calculated remotely, and the app only takes GPS data samples at certain times.

Alohar Mobile co-founders Alvin Lau and Sam Liang dream of such apps that can automatically alert emergency services if you're injured in a car crash.

Alohar is of the view that location-based search that incorporates data from the other sensors on a smart phone, such as the accelerometer and compass, can calculate your location more exactly.