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Your BlackBerry Pearl has GPS (built-in or external Bluetooth), so you know where you are. But what if you want others to know where you are? Here is just the application you need: Blip by BlackLine GPS. In this article, I’ll review how to install Blip on your BlackBerry, create a Blip account on the web, and share on the web with others where you are: all for free!

Why share your location with others?

• You’re traveling and your loved ones want to know you’re OK.
• You’re doing a bike race, geocaching, or other travel-oriented contest and you want your supporters to know where you are.
• You’ve dispatched an employee to a customer destination and you need to know he/she is on schedule to complete the assignment.
• You’re taking some kids on a field trip and you want parents to know where the group is.
• (If you have other great ideas, please leave me a comment so I can add to this list. Kelly)

 Before you start

1. You need to have GPS capability whether it’s built-in or external. This article is intended primarily for Pearl 8130 owners although it may apply to many other models. Verizon Wireless customers should know that the built-in GPS capability of the 8130 is intentionally disabled unless you pay $10/month for the VZNavigator service. Since my provider is VZW, I purchased an external Bluetooth GPS receiver (see my review).
2. You need to download and install Blip on your phone. Make sure you check the Blip web site to verify that your model is supported (8130 owners need not check–it’s definitely supported).
3. You need to have an Blip account on the web. It’s totally free, and gets created when you do the Blip setup on your phone. (Be aware that, depending on your wireless provider’s plan and your level of usage, you may incur data charges. When I say “free” here, I mean that BlackLine GPS doesn’t charge you anything. My Verizon “Email and Web” plan, which is not an unlimited data plan, gives me more than enough freedom to use a product like this without incurring charges. You may need to inquire about your plan.)
4. You need to configure your phone’s Blip application and possibly your Blip web account.

Set up Blip account

Start by reading the information at BlackLine GPS’s Blip web page and clicking the button for signup. Don’t be confused by references to the GPS Snitch product. That is a separate, for-pay product by BlackLine GPS. You can create an account and use Blip without any purchase or subscription to the GPS Snitch service. You do receive some free credits to evaluate Snitch, and those credits expire in 90 days. You can ignore everything about Snitch to use Blip. I’ve received an email from Yves Carrier of BlackLine GPS confirming all this. (I do encourage you to look over the impressive products by BlackLine GPS while you’re on their site.)

Download and install Blip

When you read the sign-up instructions, you will see that you need to open your phone’s browser and go to http://gps-snitch.com/blip. That will allow you to do an over-the-air (OTA) download, using your phone, not your computer. The download and installation is intuitive and simple, as the animation to the left shows (selected screenshots, not comprehensive).

Configure Blip

Now that you have successfully downloaded Blip OTA, let’s review how to configure it. To keep this article brief, I’ll limit screenshots to mostly key ones that require you to take some action.

On your Home Screen, you should have a Blip icon. Click it and step through the setup screens, many of which are shown below. Agree to terms of end user license. Create a GeoSociety™ account on BlackLineGPS.com.

Enter contact information. Set password and locale information.

Login to your Geosociety account. Scroll over and click the Add my BlackBerry link to activate your phone.

Name your phone and choose settings. Add returns you to your Blip home.

Blip requests permission to access the output of your GPS receiver. Set Don’t ask this again and click Allow. Make sure you have scrolled over (highlighted) your phone on the Blip home screen, and press the Menu key. Look over the options you have. Let’s check Device Status.

Device Status shows that my phone is online, battery fully charged, etc. Return to your Blip home by clicking the Menu key, Escape key, or the trackball and selecting Back.

Scroll over the Map Last Locations area and click. Blip will open the BlackBerry Maps program and show your location on the map. (Blip will still be running in the background.)

Return to Blip by either using the Task Switcher (shown below) or by pressing the End key to hide BlackBerry Maps then clicking the Blip icon.

Press the Menu key and select Publish Option to set the frequency of updates you want your phone to publish your location to the web. As you see below, settings are 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, or 2 hour2. Note on the menu you can Publish Location Now rather than, or in addition to, waiting for a periodic update.

To keep Blip running in the background, press the End key rather than closing it. But don’t forget to close it later when you are finished using it.

Using Blip

To use Blip, you will need to have your GPS functioning (for me, that means starting up my Bluetooth GPS and pairing it with my phone), and you need to start up Blip on your phone. You can choose to update your location by any combination of (1) Publish Location Now (any time you want), and (2) letting publication run on the schedule you chose (e.g., every 15 minutes).

To track the location of the person with the Blip-enabled phone, you must use your computer to surf to http://gps-snitch.com. Below is what your account Devices page (where you are taken after login) will look like:

As you might be able to see, this account home has navigation bars with numerous links. Out of necessity, I must limit my coverage to only a small portion of what can be done on this site. The most interesting link is the Tracking link where you can see listings and maps of the device being tracked. For this article, I powered up Blip on the phone, did a Publish Location Now and waited for it to complete, then clicked the Tracking link on the web site. Below is the map that came up showing my location (including a balloon with details).

To make this example a little more interesting, I left my computer and took my phone (and Bluetooth GPS) for a little spin in the car. I drove a few miles around a loop that returned me home. The whole trip only took 15 minutes, so rather than wait for the 15-minute automatic updates, I manually did the Publish Location Now on the phone every minute or two to send my location to the web site. When I returned home I refreshed the Tracking page to find the below (two screens to show both a map and the list of location updates):

After scrolling down one screen, I selected (clicked the checkboxes of) all the position updates that corresponded to the time I was doing my little 15-minute road trip. Then I clicked the Display Checked Locations link.

I used the Zoom control to reveal the entire loop (a rectangular-ish path with one little backtrack leg) of my little road trip. You can hover over any point and click to get details (Basic or Advanced).

Below is an example of details being shown for one point (date/time, heading, speed, latitude, longitude, etc.):

If you desire, you can select view options of Map, Satellite, or Hybrid (shown below):

To allow others to track me, I would use the Sharing link to send an email invitation to someone. I haven’t tried this yet, but I presume the emailed invitation provides a link that would allow my friend to create a Blip web account that has permission to track me. And I read that there is a way to change your sharing permissions at any time in case you do not want a friend to track you.

Conclusion

My experience with Blip so far is very shallow, and I have occasional problems with my Bluetooth GPS sometimes losing its Bluetooth connection to my phone. So, I still have a lot of work to do to determine how reliable and useful this Blip service is. But so far I am very impressed with its potential. I hope some of you readers will take the plunge into Blip and return to share what you learn. As usual, if I learn something significant on my own or from readers, I’ll update this article to keep it as fresh as possible.

• Review: GlobalSat BT-359 GPS
• App Review: Google Maps Mobile (with My Location Beta)