GPS Tracking ROI

Tuesday, May 9, 2006

By JANET CROMLEY

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Cyclists, runners, walkers, even swimmers and windsurfers have gone global.

Using small, global-positioning devices, outdoor athletes are mapping their routes, tracking their distance, speed and elevation — even creating their own virtual training partners, ones that beep instead of speaking when athletes are ahead of, or behind, their target goals.

“If you’re a gadget person,” says Bruce Mosier, an avid runner and hiker from Santa Monica, Calif., “GPS is one of those things you absolutely need.” … Full Article here:

A rather interesting piece here, much too long to include in my blog post. It’s easy to see that GPS can do a lot for athletes in training. One point in the article though really caught my eye, and that is the practice of using GPS to tracking mileage.

Whenever you want to track miles on the earth’s surface based on signals from GPS satellites in space you need to consider a couple things. GPS is magic, but all magic has its limitations.

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Emily Mathieu, Financial Post

Published: Saturday, May 06, 2006

If packed summer patios prove anything, it’s that Canadians love spending a night under the stars. But unless they’ve read up on astronomy (or astrology, for that matter), not many people know what they’re looking at.

Celestron, a California manufacturer of telescopes, binoculars, spotting scopes and microscopes, has created a “personal planetarium.” The SkyScout is a hand-held GPS system designed to help the astrologically-challenged navigate the universe… Full Article Here

Here’s an excellent little example of connecting one or two technologies to make a result greater than the sum of its components. On the Web they’ve been generally calling this a “mach up”, a term I am not all too fond of, but it does seem to convey the message. This is a nice little “mash up” of astronomy and GPS.

In general, we here in North America are lagging far behind in the sciences (and yes my Canadian friends, you too are “Americans”, based on geography) If we want young people to go into scientific education (as opposed to just another MBA trying to learn Adsense arbitrage) then we have to do something to interest them at an early age. Astronomy/Astro Physics is one of the sciences were we have made many discoveries and do have outstanding scientists. How many more would we have today if we had “tempted their learning taste buds’ at an early age?

Very nice tool Celestron.

Follow that car: tracking devices in need of a host

May 9, 2006

A vehicle tracking device will soon be useless if a new service cannot be found, writes Patrick Gray.

Neil Allard was nonplussed when Thales Telematics informed him in March that the dozen tracking devices he bought four years ago for $22,000 would soon be junk. “When I got the letter, I saw it and thought, ‘You’re kidding me’,” says Mr Allard, who owns Allard’s Plant Hire in Castle Hill, NSW. “It’s not what you want to see.” … Full Article Here:

The story here revolves around a huge Australian defens(c)e contractor who figured to make an extra few bucks providing vehicle tracking services. Nothing at all wrong with that, but I’ve pointed this out before … (@roads’s problems, for one example) … especially when considering those companies that are still “flogging” antiquated analog cell phone system (there are hundreds of thousands of obsolete boxes out there), don’t let the size of the company lull you into a false sense of security.

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Global Positioning System technology exists in nearly all mobile phones, but is obscured from use on most except in emergency situations. Recently, however, the Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) Internet Group announced that its new family-oriented Disney Mobile service will enable parents to tap into GPS location services to determine their children’s whereabouts. Full Article Here:

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A U.K. startup has developed a new active RFID tag to monitor the internal temperature of trucks and truck trailers used for food distribution and storage.

By Jonathan Collins

May 11, 2006—Looking to leverage an RFID security system already installed in thousands of European trucks, a U.K. company has launched a new tag to enable the monitoring of the internal temperatures of trucks and truck trailers used for food distribution and storage.

Purple Reality, a startup aimed at developing machine-to-machine communication equipment and systems, has launched its first tags with built-in temperature sensors. The active tags have been designed to communicate with truck-mounted readers developed by sister company TrackM8. Both companies were formed by International Projects Ltd. (IPL), a research-and-development firm developing telematics and machine-to-machine technology... Source here:

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I posted a few days ago the good news about Yahoo! Maps finally, after some years on line, figuring out a basic way people use maps, by allowing right click selection of start and stop points without going through a series of “hoops” to tell the brain-dead mapping aplication that you just wanted directions.

Now, courtesy of Life Hacker I came across this new startup this morning.  It resembles Yahoo! in many ways but adds quite a few features for registered users that none of the “big boys” seem to have thought much about yet.

A delightful tool.  Posted on my Friday (remember I run this site on Zulu time), always nice to have eye candy for the weekend.  All my candy is always non-fattening.

(by the way, when exploring this tool or most other on line maps, the majority are smart enough to recognize the IATA three-letter designator codes for airports.  It take a heck of alot less time to type in MSP the Minnealpolis-Saint Paul (and if you type like me, even longer ;-)  One good list of these codes is here.   Best regards and wishes for agood weekend, Dave @ COS )