Help
Where can I find out more information about echoecho?
Aside from reading this help page or the blog – we have setup an echoecho community which serves as a central point for feature discussion, bug reporting, asking/answering questions. There are separate sections of the community for each of our smartphone platforms.
What does echoecho actually do?
echoecho is an easy way to ask and answer the question
"Where are you?"
With a few simple clicks. So you can find your friends anywhere in the world.
Wait.
You already read that on the home page ;)
So how about this - if you are walking around town and you want to figure out where your friends are but don’t want to call them because it’s too noisy or it takes too long – just send them an echo.
Faster and much more convenient than calling or texting.
echoecho tells your friends where you are.
And it finds out where your friends are. That’s it.
But I don’t want people knowing my location at all times...
Don’t worry. You have full control. echoecho will only share your location when you want it to be shared.
So how does this work?
Every time somebody sends you an echo – they are trying to find you – and you will receive a popup notification message.
To respond – you send them back an echo.
And that’s it – send echo, reply to echo - echo...echo – you see ;)
If you want to see screen grabs and more detailed explanations of how the process works – look at the answer to the first question on this page.
Does this cost me anything?
echoecho will not charge you anything for sharing your location with friends.
However echoecho uses the data services on your mobile. Since most people using smartphones have flat rate data plans – there are no additional charges for data services. (Be advised that in some instances data charges are applicable – e.g. if you are roaming)
There are some rare occasions on which your carrier will bill you for SMS messages sent automatically from your phone - e.g. if you are inviting a new friend to use echoecho.
Do I need a data plan for using echoecho?
You don’t absolutely require a data plan for using Echoecho – but one is strongly recommended.
Besides why do you own a smartphone if you don’t have a dataplan ;)
Do I need to have anything else installed to use echoecho?
As it happens – yes. You need to have Google Maps installed on your mobile phone.
If you use and Iphone or Android – you have Google Maps anyway so there’s nothing to install here.
If you use a Blackberry or Windows Mobile or Symbian (S60) device – you must install google maps for mobile by opening www.google.com/gmm on your mobile phone. echoecho will automatically suggest you do that if you haven’t done it already.
Can I get my friends location without giving away my own?
No you cannot. The whole premise of echoecho is based on the sharing of location.
This means that you can ask someone where they are whenever you like - but only when they answer will they know where you are.
Can people send me echoes if my phone is turned off?
Yes they can. Of course you will not receive them until you turn your phone back on (and launch echoecho).
What will this do to my battery life?
As with most things on your mobile phone – it depends on how much you use it.
echoecho has been optimized to maximize battery life – it does not make persistent data connections to the central locations server – instead it uses an adaptive weighting polling system – making it safe to keep running in the background the whole time.
This is awesome – how can I tell my friends about it?
One of the cool things about echoecho is that it has been designed to spread virally - you don’t have to do anything special to tell your friends about it – just send them an echo ;)
They will receive an SMS from you which will look something like this
“Hey I’m using echoecho to share my location with you. To echo me back go to http://www.echoinvite.com/00000123 and install echoecho ;)”
They click on the link, install echoecho – and they will immediately receive your message.
On a modern 3G data connection – the process should take 1-2 minutes.
On a slower EDGE data connection the process should take 3-5 minutes.
Wow – this is great – what else can I do?
Hey - we just launched so cut us some slack. Easily sharing locations with your friends in a slick way is not enough for you ;)
The good news is we are encouraging various companies to make their solutions compatible with our open API.
So look out for future software versions allowing you to send your location using echoecho to various different non-phone devices (e.g. facebook accounts)…stay tuned, order cabs and take-out food, Augmented reality etc etc.
We welcome suggestions for new features – please use the links in the answer to the first question above.