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MrDom -> RE: GPS captivity? (4/12/2008 8:59:44 AM)
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Worked for me as well. For those with issues, here's the article:
IT’S 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? How about your pets? And your car? Skip to next paragraph [image]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/09/technology/09postal.1901.jpg[/image] Lars Klove for The New York Times WHEREABOUTS Chip advances have led to very small G.P.S. units, enabling many novel uses of tracking devices like this one from Zoombak. It is possible to get answers to all these questions instantly over your cellphone or computer, using the same technology that guides you from place to place on a road trip.Tracking devices that use the Global Positioning System have become so compact and inexpensive that some people are using them routinely to keep tabs on their most precious things.Kathy Besa of Broomall, Pa., has a device about the size of a pocket pager attached to the collar of her 5-year-old beagle, Buddy. If he wanders more than 20 feet from the house, she gets a text message on her phone that says, “Buddy has left the premises.” From there she can track his movements over the Web.“Beagles are notorious for escaping,” Ms. Besa said. “They follow their noses. He can go flying out the door, and he’s gone in the woods.”The device she uses, from Zoombak, is about three inches long, two inches wide and an inch thick and weighs about two and a half ounces. It costs $200, plus $10 a month for the Web tracking service. It can run for days without being recharged, and Ms. Besa says she is notified when the battery is running low.The slim specifications, made possible by chip advances over the last two or three years, are enabling many novel uses of G.P.S. tracking, technology analysts say. Some parents are throwing a device into their child’s backpack. An art collector in New York uses one when he transports million-dollar pieces. Every cyclist competing in the Tour de France has one attached to his bike.“Dream up something, and it can be used for it,” said Jon Marshall, the owner of Spygadgets.com, which sells surveillance equipment.He says he sells 50 to 75 tracking devices a month, with prices from $400 to $700, depending on features, like ultralong battery life or waterproof casing.Many businesses are finding creative uses for the devices, too. A home builder is putting them on expensive appliances to track them if they disappear from construction sites. A drug company is using them after millions of dollars in inventory turned up missing. A mobile phone company is hiding them in some cellphone boxes to catch thieves.FedEx and the United Parcel Service use them to study the effectiveness of their shipping routes and reduce bottlenecks. A taxi dispatcher tracks his fleet on a computer monitor so he knows which car is closest to a pickup, at a glance. A plumbing services company watches the movements of its workers to give customers a more precise time of arrival than an eight-hour range.Businesses do not generally talk about their use of tracking devices, because they can be jammed or disabled if thieves know they are there, several analysts and device makers said. They also want to avoid being criticized by privacy advocates: surreptitious location monitoring of adults is generally illegal for individuals, but employers have far more latitude to keep track of the movements of their workers.In Singapore, many buses are equipped with tracking devices, said Kanwar Chadha, the founder of Sirf Technology in San Jose, Calif., which makes microchips for G.P.S. devices. They transmit their location to all the bus stands, where monitors show passengers how far the next bus is. That same location information is sent to the city’s signaling system, Mr. Chadha said, so when a bus approaches a traffic light, it turns green.G.P.S. tracking is especially popular for use with cars. The devices can be hidden easily in the trunk, under the hood or beneath the chassis, and kits made for cars come with special features for safety and theft detection. For example, if a car owner gets a text or e-mail message indicating that the car has been taken for an unauthorized ride, he can disable the engine and report the vehicle’s location to the police. The device can help keep an eye on the authorized drivers, too. Parents of young drivers can tell it to send an alert if the car goes over 60 miles an hour or leaves the neighborhood.
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