I have used Strava in the past but began using Ride With GPS because of their feature that allows family or friends to track your location in real time. This is valuable to me for the peace of mind it gives my family when I ride in remote areas. I was just revisiting Strava's website and see that in their premium package they have a feature called Active Friends that says you can find and join friends. Unfortunately that is about all it says. I could not find any additional information about how it works. Would Strava allow my family to track my location from a smart phone or pc? If they had this feature, I'd switch back to Strava in a heartbeat, not that I have anything against RWGPS.

Real-time Segments for Android and iPhone is Here | Strava

Little more info here...

It sounds like you are carrying your phone with you regardless of whether or not you have a cycling computer. The two options, documenting your route and tracking your location live, don't need to be combined.

I have a Garmin 800 for tracking my route / stats.

My wife and I both use Life360.com (free app) on our phones to track / stalk each other.

You can also use Find my Friends on the iPhone (free) or Glympse (Glympse) for iPhone, Android or Windows Mobile for free.

J.

Garmin 510/810 offer real-time tracking (if you have a cell phone connected with bluetooth). The advantage of the Garmin approach is that the cell is only used as a light-weight data uplink so there's negligible battery drain.

The only rides anyone cares to track me on are also in areas that don't have cell reception. Anyone solve that?

Check out this link:
SPOT SATELLITE MESSENGER :: HOME PAGE Lots of people use them hunting in remote locations or motorcycling long distances.

I've had fairly good luck with the free RoadID app (iPhone) for my longer rides. My wife gets a text with a link to the breadcrumb trail when I head out. Its not battery intensive and seems to be sufficient.

Glympse has worked fine for me, even in the spotty cell phone service area where I live and ride.