When I discovered the aforemetioned, I realized that the key to being able to take advantage of a closed platform(as a software developer, and in this case, the iPhone platform), is to strike a deal with the carrier and put some money in their pockets.

And as a consumer, if I want to run a background application on MY iPhone, which I payed good money for, I need to pay the carrier an additional monthly fee(in this case, per application), and HOPE that the application I wish to background, has a deal with the carrier(so I can pay them money, of course).

Honestly, it is disgusting what is happening in this world. Patents are ubiquitous and exclusivity is everywhere. The DMCA and similar laws cripple consumers’ rights to take control of our purchases.

Attempting to jailbreak an iPhone (and giving a user access to his own phone) can void your warranty. Why? Because Apple doesn’t want you to have control over the iPhone. They want you to use the iTunes store. They want your experience to be guided by their extensive expertise.

I’ll definitely be posting more on this subject soon, but its late now, and I need to sleep.

I will be adding push notifications soon so that when someone pulls up the Live Tracking page on the MoosTrax website, you will receive a notification on your iPhone requesting you to update your location. That is really all I can do for now, as background applications are still not permitted.

If anyone wants to help me test this first version, please email moostraxsupport@gmail.com.

Screenshots:

No automatic location updates

The iPhone OS does not allow applications to run in the background, which means MoosTrax cannot check your location and send it to the server at a fixed interval.

Push Notifications aren’t the whole solution

MoosTrax could send a push notification to your phone, telling it to send a location update to the server, but unfortunately it requires user interaction. It wouldn’t be too convenient to have your phone vibrating every few minutes asking you to update your location.

Manual updates

Initially, MoosTrax for iPhone will have support for sending location updates to the server manually when you open the application.

Stay tuned

Hopefully, within time, Apple will make the push notification functionality more advanced so that MoosTrax can be as powerful as it is on other platforms, such as Android and BlackBerry. For now, stay tuned for the iPhone application. I am waiting to be approved in the iPhone developer program and then you should see the application in the iTunes store soon.

A new BlackBerry client version has been released, version 0.3.3.

Also, existing Storm users that are experiencing update problems should raise their accuracy to 200 meters and see if that fixes the problem.

You can now have your location sent from MoosTrax to Yahoo Fire Eagle.

“Fire Eagle is a site that stores information about your location. With your permission, other services and devices can either update that information or access it. By helping applications respond to your location, Fire Eagle is designed to make the world around you more interesting! Use your location to power friend-finders, games, local information services, blog badges and stuff like that…”

If you have a MoosTrax account all you need to do is login at http://fireeagle.moostrax.com and link to your Yahoo account. You can then choose a device to use for sending to Fire Eagle…that’s it.

Enjoy.

Install the gem

$ wget http://www.moostrax.com/static/MoosTrax-0.1.gem
$ sudo gem install MoosTrax-0.1.gem

Try out this demo script

make sure to fill your API_KEY in.

require 'rubygems'
require 'moostrax'
require 'time'
 
def get_local_date(date_str)
    Time.parse(date_str + ' UTC').getlocal.asctime
end
 
mt = MoosTrax.new('API_KEY')
 
begin
    devices = mt.devices
    devices.each do |device|
        info = mt.device_info(device)
        puts "Device ID: #{info['device_id']}\n"
        puts "Device Name: #{info['device_name']}\n"
        puts "Last Contact: #{get_local_date(info['last_contact'])}\n"
        puts "Date Added: #{get_local_date(info['date_added'])}\n"
 
        location = mt.location(device)
 
        puts "Most Recent Location: #{location['latitude']}, #{location['longitude']} #{get_local_date(location['date'])}\r\n"
 
        history = mt.history(device, Time.now-86400, Time.now)
        puts "Number of location updates in past 24 hours: #{history.length}\r\n"
 
        puts "First Location in History: #{history[0]['latitude']}, #{history[0]['longitude']}\r\n" if history.length >=1
 
        puts '------------------------------------------------------'
    end
 
rescue MoosTrax::APIError => e
    puts "Unable to access MoosTrax: #{e.message}"
end

For more information, check out the Developer API Wiki.