Got an iPhone? Need to keep tabs on people? Want your spouse or boss or pals be notified when you leave work, say, or arrive home? Then the upcoming version of Find My Friends is for you.
The updated app, which will launch with iOS 6 this fall, comes with a geo-fencing feature -- that is, you can designate an area around yourself, as small as a building or as large as a state. When you arrive or leave that area, your friends can be notified.
As with all notifications in Find My Friends, this can be set for a limited time only. But we hear some Apple employees are already using this feature to let their bosses know when they're arrived at the office -- and even when they've left their house. (After all, it's a long commute from San Francisco to Apple HQ in Cupertino; chances are, you'll be late.)
Call it the 21st century time clock.
Otherwise, there's one major update to Find My Friends: it features the Maps app front and center on your Friends page, a design treatment never given to Google Maps (which Find My Friends used in its first incarnation).
Sources at Apple tell us that decision was deliberate; Steve Jobs, who had vowed to "wage thermonuclear war" on Google, didn't want to give Google Maps any more prominence than was strictly necessary.
It was Jobs, of course, who green-lit development of Apple's own Maps app, a project that is finally coming to fruition.
The late Apple founder also spent a lot of time on the design of Find My Friends, ensuring that the border and stitching on the app looked exactly like a particular notebook he'd bought.