Glympse is rolling out a new feature this week called “Tap-n-Track” that allows Android phone users to easily share locations on a map with friends and family by bumping two devices together.

Founded by former Microsofties Bryan Trussel and Steve Miller, the 4-year-old Redmond startup plans to showcase the technology at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week.

Trussel, who previously spent 16-years at Microsoft, said he was unaware of any rivals who were using Android devices in a similar way.

Here’s more on how Tap-n-Track works:

“Tap-n-Track uses Android Beam to establish an instant connection between two Glympse users who wish to share their location with each other. With Tap-n-Track, users need only touch their devices together to initiate an instant Glympse that lets them see one another’s location for the time period they choose.”

 

Tap-n-Track utilizes the proximity sensors of Android Beam so users of Glympse can tap phones together to exchange location information.

“If you and I are meeting and we want to get together later or our spouses are going to split up for a while or you have the kids at Disneyland — any scenario where you want to split up for a while but you want to keep track of one another for a period of time — you just have to tap the phones together,” Trussel tells GeekWire. “And then you will have real-time access to each other’s locations during set periods of time associated with that.”

In addition to Tap-n-Track, Glympse is announcing new calendar integration so that users of the app can send easily send their current location to meeting attendees with a “couple taps.”

“It will just be standard protocol when people are heading to meetings, going to meet somebody, with just a couple touches of a button to send a Glympse to everybody so everybody knows — they can see on a map in real-time — the attendees and where they are,” said Trussel.

Glympse also announced that it has recorded more than two million downloads on Android to date, up from one million just three months ago.  Android is now a bigger platform for the company than Apple’s iOS, with Trussel saying that the technology capabilities on Android devies “are a little bit more open.”

Glympse has been growing rapidly in recent months, now employing 15 folks. (That’s up from just three a few months ago). The company also just moved into new office space in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood, with Trussel saying they are still unpacking boxes.

Previously on GeekWireRunning late for a meeting? Glympse attracts $7.5M to help mobile phone users share locations with friends 

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