Never Lose Your Car or Miss a Friend With ToothTag

What are the places and who are the people around you right now? With a new Android app called ToothTag, you should be able to get a lot more useful answers to that question.

Not only will this app find nearby restaurants, it can also tell you whether your friends are at the same party — without having to check-in. It knows where the heck you left your car. Most importantly, it is able to do all this without battery-sucking technologies like GPS.

ToothTag is a treasure trove of proximity-based information. It goes beyond regular location services and novel-but-worthless check-ins, showing you what’s in your immediate surroundings and giving you multiple options for how to make that information truly useful. Instead of GPS, it relies on Bluetooth, Near-Field-Communication (NFC), and WiFi. Power management — long the bane of innovative mobile apps — has been ToothTag’s plan from the start.

The app lets you tag Bluetooth and WiFi devices — such as headsets, laptops, mobile phones, and access points. Once these are tagged, you can set up automated actions when you’re within a given distance from them. Automated actions, such as mobile alerts or emails, can occur without your ever having to think about the app.

Here are a few examples:

You’ve planned a night out on the town. You drive your car and street park it, using ToothTag to drop a Google Maps pin at your car’s location. When you’re ready to drive home, ToothTag lets you find your car with ease.

You walk into an event at your favorite nightclub. You’ve tagged the joint in the app and told ToothTag to automatically check you into that location on Foursquare any time you’re there for more than 10 minutes. Hello, Mr. Mayor!
Once you’re in the event, you open ToothTag again to find out which of your friends are already there and how you’re connected. The app shows you a Facebook friend you know well, a LinkedIn connection that you wanted to meet in person, and a Match.com prospect with a high percentage of compatibility with you — all in a single, scrollable list on your mobile.

You’ve been trying to connect with a special someone for a while, and you’ve tagged her mobile in ToothTag. Unbeknownst to you — but knownst to ToothTag — she’s at the same event as you. ToothTag automatically rings your phone to alert you that Ms. Right has entered the building. The app also tells your phone to fire up Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” when your ex walks into the party, a clever alert you set up to avoid drama.