If you're trying to target an audience that is sort of anti-Foursquare, it can be tough to get the message out. After all, an app meant to keep one's location semi-private and aimed at a small group of people isn't, by its very nature, going to get a lot of exposure.

That's what Neer is finding as it tries to get the word out about its app. Developed by a small team within Qualcomm Services Labs, Neer gets the benefits of R&D assistance from its big parent company, which happens to employ engineering experts. But that doesn't mean Neer isn't pressured to come up with something that's useful, valuable to people and doesn't drain the life out of their batteries.

The basic idea is pretty simple. Neer enables users to see the location of friends and family members who are part of their inner circle and rather than giving longitude and latitudes, which aren't very useful in everyday lives, it designates locations such as "work" or "home." So a spouse can get an alert letting him or her know that a child was dropped off at school or that a spouse has left work and will be home in time for dinner and bedtime stories.

The coding effort got under way last spring, and the product was out the door by August, according to Ian Heidt, director of business development at Qualcomm Services Labs. Neer was one of the first to develop first on Android because when they were getting started, it wasn't yet possible to offer background location information via Apple's iOS. That has since changed and Neer has an iPhone 4 app.

Heidt says there are pros and cons to both operating systems. With Android, they had a great ability to "turn more knobs" under the hood, which improves the experience, but on the flip, certain things work more gracefully on iOS because Apple is in control.

At South by Southwest last month, Neer introduced a "To Do" list so that users can get a reminder when they're at the store to get paper towels or whatever is on the list that they otherwise are likely to forget. The "monetization" part of the equation comes in when you consider the potential for advertising items or sending a coupon that relates to the shopping list, but Heidt says there's still a lot of exploration going on to make sure all sides in that equation are happy.

While the theoretical part is fairly easy to understand, the tricky thing is putting it into practice. For one, the location information needs to be accurate – you don't want to give bad information when it's all about trust and letting people know certain things are getting done. Plus, you don't want to deplete the battery of a device in two hours. There again, the expertise from within Qualcomm helped get Neer out of the gate.

Generally, the phone is fairly poor at getting a location in the background; it can be off by a mile or so, which isn't good for the use case, and sometimes it can even put you in China. So, the developers for Neer use the accelerometer to understand movement, and it only needs a location fix if the person moves to another place, as opposed to constantly pinging for it. It helps that people are a creature of habit, going to work, school, home and in between, and "we want to minimize to the extent possible asking for location when we don't think you're on the move," he says.

Neer is getting more sophisticated as the team learns more about users' behavior, he says. It is using a combination of technologies, including GPS, Wi-Fi and cell tower network location. Environmental factors also need to be factored in because they can affect location reads.  

Right now, the To Do feature only shows up on your phone, not others in your circle, but the plan is to add the sharing function.

So far, the app is available for the United States and Canada.