How many miles do you walk to get to work, how many hours do you spend at home, and where do you spend most of your time over the course of a week, month, or even a year? Track My Life has all of those answers. But these aren’t just any general statistics; these are your statistics, calculated on your own phone automatically.
[do action=”boxout”]Download Track My Life
- Press the Search button on your Nokia Lumia and then tap Vision
- Scan the QR code
- Tap on the link when it appears on the screen
- Install the application from the Windows Phone Store[/do]
The genius of this app is that it tells you an awful lot about your life with little to no involvement from you. It does it all for you.
In fact, we’ve received word that Nokia’s CEO, Stephen Elop, uses this app to keep a close eye on where he’s been and how much time he’s spending at any given location.
“Nokia is a global company that does business in many, many parts of the world, and I frequently spend time visiting with our teams, partners, developers and consumers around the globe,”
Stephen reports.
“So, I’ve become a big fan of the app to keep tabs on my travel statistics. Since January, it tells me I’ve already travelled more than 250,000 kilometres, with of course ample time spent in Finland.”
All you need to do is install Track My Life and every 30 minutes it collects your location information and compares it with previous data to calculate where you are, how long you’ve been there and how far you’ve travelled.
This may sound like it’s going to be a huge battery drainer, but it isn’t. During an entire 24-hour period it uses less power than switching on your display does once.
Each automatic calculation only takes about 50 milliseconds and over the course of a day data is collected 48 times.
But what does Track My Life do with all that data?
Firstly, it’s important to say that your location is never shared with anybody. All the calculations are performed locally on your Lumia so you’re safe in the knowledge that the information gathered is personal and remains that way.
When it comes to presenting the data to you, the first thing you’ll see is a map – powered by HERE – with location pins plotted on top of it – if you’ve travelled around at all.
The larger the pin, the longer or most frequent, you’ve been at that location. There are also lines connecting each pin together which show you the route that you took, and again, the thicker that line, the more you’ve used that route.
Secondary to the map view is the statistics panel, which can be found by tapping on the pie chart icon at the bottom.
This shows you in some detail how far you’ve travelled in the past 24 hours, 7 and 30 days, as well as the total from when you first activated the app.
Track My Life also takes note of the places you’ve been to and gives you a running score, including the place you’ve spent your most time.
Sliding across the screens to the right you’ll see a list of places you’ve been to, your journeys, and countries you’ve visited.
If the time comes and you want to change device, from Nokia Lumia 800 to Nokia Lumia 720, for example, your data can be backed up on SkyDrive and restored to the new device.
To ensure that the app is still needed and doesn’t continually run without you wanting it, the developer has programmed an app time-out of two weeks. That means to keep the app running you must open it once every two weeks. The easiest way to do this is to pin a Live Tile to your Start screen and tap it when it alerts you to do so.
While the data collected may not be useful in itself, it can alert you of any unnoticed habits or behaviours that may be useful. You may discover that you’re spending half your life in the pub, for example. In which case, you may want to address that – unless you work there, of course.
Track My Life runs on Nokia Lumia smartphones running Windows Phone 7.x and Windows Phone 8, such as the Nokia Lumia 800, Lumia 620, Lumia 920 and Lumia 720.
Are you tracking your life?
Image credit: MSVG