I had a bit of a thought this morning. For weeks I’ve been using an app which just sits in the background and does exactly what it’s supposed to. It’s easy to work and fantastically clever. It’s called Llama and, although these screenshots won’t exactly blow you away, it’s something I’d be lost without.
Most people, like myself, have probably found that having a personal mobile ringing in the office is somewhat frowned upon. It’s that embarassing moment when your personal message tone blasts out at full volume across the office, or that cringe-worthy “funny ringtone” kicks in when you’re sat in an all-important meeting.
This app will fix all that. There’s a few similar ones, but this is the best of the bunch in my humble opinion, purely because I’ve never touched it after setting it up. It works by performing different actions based on your location and, best of all, it gets your location from the mobile transmitter you’re connected to – not via battery-hungry GPS.
There’s a mass of actions it can perform, like disabling your Bluetooth, WiFi or sync. It can even adjust your screen brightness and more. First though, you have to “train” it.
This is simpler than it sounds. You simply tell it that you’re at work (for example) and will be there for the next few hours. Llama will then track all the masts that your phone uses who you’re in your office. You could be out on the car-park getting one transmitter, then upstairs in accounts on another one, and at your desk on another, so it’s definitely worth setting this up for a full “normal” day at work. You do the same task for other locations you want to add and then set the actions that you’d like to take when entering or exiting those locations.
For example, when I get near work it disables my Bluetooth, WiFi and reduces the ringer volume. When I leave work it turns Blueooth back on and the volume up, but doesn’t turn WiFi back on until I get home. This saves battery too.
Once it’s done, that’s it – I don’t have to worry about it. It starts in the background and does everything I tell it. For a free app, I’m loving it.
Link – Llama
Far better to use Llama’s WiFi-based location finder (in ‘experimental stuff’). Mobile mast location is far too fuzzy to be useful, otherwise Llama turns on and off all over the place. There are WiFi transmitters absolutely everywhere these days and Llama can learn them.
The only time mast-based positioning could be useful is if you’re outside, away from built up areas and accuracy is not important.