With YouPosition.it you can very easily create an online logbook of your trips, just by sending SMSs with your cell phone. Now you can also send positions via email. See instructions below.
If you include in the SMS the coordinates of your position (latitude and longitude read from a GPS or a Navigator like TomTom or others), your message will be displayed on Google Maps, so your friends will know where you were when you sent the message.
It's much the same as writing on your own blog, but here your messages are also geo-localized
Registered users can also write comments to your posts, and you can answer to them.
Later, when you're at home and you have an internet connection, you can also upload a picture for each message that you sent.
If you want to see an example now, you can view the last received SMS.
To start sending your SMSs, you have to register to YouPosition.it, then create a trip and start sending your SMS. The registration process is very fast and easy: you only need to provide us with your email address and your cell phone number.
Note that the cell number that you will enter will be the only one allowed to send SMSs. If you change the number, please be sure to change it in your profile, as well.
Don't worry: your privacy is our main concern. Your email and cell number will never be visible to others.
You have to send the SMS to the number +393408163375. Store it now in your cell! Note that it is an italian number, so make sure to include "+39", that is the italian international code. Use it exactly as it is written here
It's very important that the SMS is well formatted, because it will be received and interpreted by a computer software, and not by a human. Badly formatted messages are the main reason why you don't see you SMS appearing online.
If the SMS is also including your position, this must be in the first part of the message: first latitude, then longitude, then the rest of the message.
Latitude and longitude must be separated by a semicolon (";").
Look at the following example:
45 12.3;9 21.45 Hello world, I'm here!
Or:
45 12 21;9 21 42 Hello world. I'm here!
Please note that you can enter coordinates in different formats. See the next FAQ.
You can also send messages without coordinates. In this case they will be considered comments to your trip and will be displayed in the comment section
You can use one of the following formats:
- DDD.ddddd (Degrees and decimals. Example: 45.37645;10.763456
- DDD MM.mmmmm (Degrees Minutes and decimals. Example: 45 12.5412;10 21.4565
- DDD MM SS (Degrees, minutes and seconds. Example: 45 15 25;10 01 34
You must always enter a blank (space character) to separate degrees from minutes and minutes from seconds.
It's easier to do it than to explain it!
If you use such a program on your cell phone, I will be happy if I can add support to its SMS format.
So please contact me and let me know which program you are using.
At present, I support SmartCOMGPS SMS format. So if you use this program, you can start right now sending your positions.
So far, these are the supported SMS formats:
If you have a Windows Mobile cell, you can download a program to send SMS to Youposition.it It will read the coordinates from the GPS (internal or bluetooth) saving you the time to copy them into the SMS message. To download it click here
It's enough to use negative values.
For example: -5.82;-35.225 means 5.82 South and 35.225 West (Brasil)
Yes. I wrote a program for Windows Mobile cells. You can download it here. It's in italian, but it's so easy to use... ;-) Please let me know if you find any bugs
For Symbian cells (for example Nokia) there is a version that has been developed by third party (open source). I cannot give any support for this version. You can download it here. Be careful to read installation instructions very well before installing it.
For Android, search the keyword 'youposition' on the Android Market (Play Store)
The iPhone App is available on iTunes. You can download it here
The tags are some comma-separated words that can help other users to find your trip when they make a search.
It's important for you to specify meaningful tags, so that your trip will be easier to find.
It's enough to enter the nickname of your friend in the search field. All his trips will be listed.
Usually this happens when the SMS is not well-formatted, and so it cannot be interpreted by the web site.
When you specify latitude and longitude, be sure to use the correct format, as you can see in a preceding FAQ.
Another very common problem is that some users forget to create a trip, so when we receive the SMS we don't know what to do with it! To create a trip, you have to enter the section My trips. But first you have to register and/or to login
If the SMS is wrong, an email will be sent to you, but probably you won't read it immediately, because you're not connected to internet :-)
You have specified wrong coordinates in the SMS. Check them ;-)
Yes, it is! But you can do it only after sending the SMS, when you are connected to the internet. You have to login to YouPosition.it, display your trip on the map, select the message where you want upload a picture, and then you'll see that under the map you can enter the file name of the picture in your PC.
Note that files greater than 200 Kb are not allowed and will be rejected. So please resize your pictures before uploading them. We suggest to scale them to 300 pixels (points)
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Yes, it is. If you are the trip's owner, then this happens automatically: there's nothing to do.
If however you are not the traveller, then you have to add the trip to your favorites.
To do that, you have to login to YouPosition.It, then open the map of the trip, and finally click on "Add to my favorites" that is located on the left of the map, just above the date list.
You have to check the contract with your mobile company. The number is a standard italian cell number.
Yes, it's all free!
I am doing this because I like to do something that's useful or simply funny for the internet community.
And just because the site is free, please don't shoot me if something goes wrong... I cannot guarantee anything (but honestly I have to admit that it's working very well so far...)
If you have suggestions, comments or you want to tell me about bugs or problems you've had, please feel free to contact me.
