GPS Tracking ROI

A day or so ago, here, I published a post about an Australian footballer being forced to ware a GPS tracker by his team.  In my American-weighted ignorance I got almost the whole story wrong (the only part I got right was that I’m exasperated by over-paid athletes who argue with the managers and teams who pay them to play).

Australian Rules Football, or just plain “footy” to most Australians is a game combining a lot of the aspects of the soccer kind of football with a few of the aspects of the Amaer4icna style of football … ever notice that the world has too darn many games called football?.  We also have a plurality of AFL’s …The American Football League and the Australian Football League… but being separated by 9 or 10 thousand miles and half a year the games themselves seldom conflict;-), An aspect of the American game that is certainly _not_ shared by the Australian Rules game is having the athletes spend the majority of their time sitting on the bench.  The playing field in Australian football is often four times the area of an American gridiron, there are more players, and they move around one heck of a lot more.

As an advantage in coaching and training, and as a measure of a player’s performance and effort level, many AFL teams have adopted the practice of putting GPS units on their players.  The GPS tracks during the game can then be very accurately played back and studied.  The players and coaches know who ran the fastest and the farthest and if a man is, for example, consistently going to the wrong area of the field, he and the coach can see the difficulty and make corrections in future play.  There’s some real science already taking place using this technology, here’s one example: and some more info here:

My apologies for getting off track.  As usual, if you own right up to a mistake and find out where you went wrong you typically learn a lot more.  The credit for finding the mistake and getting me on the right track goes to my online friend and fellow blogger Brendon Sinclair.  Brendon (literally) wrote the book on running a web design business and he runs a very active marketing and ecommerce firm on Australia’s Gold Coast.  He’s also a marathon runner, registered nurse and, it turns out, knows a thing or three about GPS too.  Thanks, Brendon.

‘Let’s track paedos with chip implants’ - top cop fails tech test

Shall we just believe in witchcraft while we’re about it?

By John Lettice

Published Sunday 16th July 2006 12:44 GMT

Britain’s most senior policeman has, according to a Sunday Times report, suggested that surgically implanted chips could be used in order to track the movements of paedophiles and dangerous sex offenders. “If we are prepared to track cars, why don’t we track people? You could put surgical chips into those of the most dangerous sex offenders who are willing to be controlled,” said Ken Jones, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Well Ken, where shall we begin? Should we explain that the chip you’re talking about would have around about the same capabilities as the RFID chip that’s going into ICAO standard passports? That this is the kind of technology you’re probably going to insist can only be read in close proximity to a reading device? That if you tried really hard (and we’re sure people will), you could read it at maybe 10, maybe 30 metres? That satellites are actually quite far away? Or that what GPS does is it tell a reading device on the ground where it is, which would only help paedophiles if they were lost - if it’s going to help you then you need to insert another bit of technology (A mobile phone maybe? Where would you stick that?) that would pass the location over to you…

Full article is here:

In some ways I don’t even want to write this post. Yet another diatribe about folks who don’t get GPS. In itself, what’s the real problem if people don’t “get” GPS … it’s a geeky thing at best and everyone doesn’t “get” everything … witness me and Australian Rules football.

But here’s the point … what I don’t “get” can’t matter to the world much more than my little government pension and small business income ,,, I don’t even have kids to raise (and possibly screw up) any more. I can get just about everything wrong and the worst that could happen is maybe personal bankruptcy. But the chief of a huge and important police force … regarding important technology investments for his force? I think he is paid to and has a moral duty to “get” it a lot more than Chief Ken Jones does. (And let’s face it, anti-Imperial thoughts or not, dozens of other national police departments still look to the UK for guidance, this guy has a lot of influence.)

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People reading my last post might think I’m totally anti-sport.  Not true.  I like sports that personally challenge the individual.  I especially like such sports that attract a world-wide community.  And I like even more those kinds of sports where American’s have totally dominated for years.

This year Lance Armstrong decided to forego the Tour de France and the French spitting on him in their frustration at not being able to field world-class cyclists.  So, Lance won’t win this year, he’s not competing.

However, the competition to decide the second-best cyclist in the world is still underway.  Here’s a re-post of a really excellent tool that combines GPS, maps, telemetry and one of the greatest sports on earth:

http://www.ubilabs.net/tdf/

Defiant Davis forced to wear a GPS tracker in Wagga

David Sygall

July 16, 2006 - 12:03AM

THE Swans were keeping a close eye on star forward Nick Davis yesterday, even though they were the width of the continent away in Perth.

The outspoken Swans marksman, who was dropped after Sydney’s loss to the Adelaide Crows last Sunday, was equipped with a GPS monitor when he took to the field with the club’s reserves against home team Wagga Tigers.

On a cold, soggy afternoon and in front of a tiny crowd, Davis was among the Swans’ best as they smashed the Tigers … Full Article Here:

One of my categories here at the GPS Blog is “Help or Hurt”. I’m pretty much of the opinion that this story will be posted under that category. I’m less than 100% sure, though, because I find I really can’t decipher the story exactly. Usually I can fathom our Aussie English in print (my ears are old, so spoken strine, especially from women talking 300 miles per hour with gusts to 475 often defeats me).

If I can decode Mr. Sygall’s article properly, it appears a football team with a recalcitrant player whom they want to keep, but keep tabs on. Nothing too extraordinary there, the US has plenty of football players who kick out fellow motorist’s headlights or ride recklessly with no helmet until they crash, landing on their head. Just how utterly _dumb_ is that? It’s got something to do with grown men who would make a career out of booting a ball, round or oval, and crashing into each other …. It beats having a purpose in life, but I’m told it’s insanely easy for them to get girls and they are typically very well fed.

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Sadly, because of the comment spammers who were up to 70 phony posts per hour last night I have turned comments off until further notice. It’s sad when these idiots have to spoil a good thing, but oh well… You can reach me via the good old method of email: dave (at) satviz (dot) com

Tim Hibbard, whose blog you should be reading and whose location can usually be found here, posted a couple cogent comments to my post on Canadian insurance companies offering cash discounts for GPS use:

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I think this is a good idea, and it helps promote the positive connotation of GPS. This is an example of GPS helping the consumer and we will need a lot more examples of this before GPS can rise above the “track my kid” status.

I believe that the biggest market for GPS is consumer. Transportation companies and assest/vehicle tracking will always have a need for GPS, but there is a lot of money to be made at the consumer level. However, the privacy implications issues will bubble over sometime in the next 3 years. If the average consumer does not see the positive daily benefits of GPS, or is not educated on the potential positive uses of GPS, then the consumer market will shut down. People are willing to give up privacy, but you better give them a good reason to do so. Americans are cheap and lazy efficient. That is why Garmin’s new mobile product that routes you to the cheapest gas station is great for the consumer market.

The cell phone service providers have to get on board and allow us access to the GPS data. Nextel is the only company that will allow a 3rd party java application on the phone to access the GPS chip. If the rest of the companies would follow Nextel’s lead, we can write some killer applications that add value to the average consumers life. Then, when the GPS privacy implications come to a head, the average Joe will want GPS to stick around because it helps him be cheaper and lazier.

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I like what Tim has to say. Especially the part about “lazy”. There’s an old saying about necessity being the mother of invention. Personally, I believe that’s true, and I also believe that laziness is the father. Inventing things to make life easier is rarely wrong … and it usually turns out to have some sort of socially redeeming values as well.

I know Tim and his company have been having a lot of success with java and the Nextel phone systems … but it’s so funny, I was just interrupted by a phone call from yet another dissatisfied Nextel tracking customer asking for a price quote to toss out the NexTel product and substitute a non-Java application on an HP phone/PDA that will provide a much better level of service. Not trying to knock NexTel out of turn, their own clients are doing that … as far as Java in place of a real OS like Windows Mobile … I’ll let the software engineers debate that one.

Anyway, thanks Tim, talk to you soon.

Tracking Device Helps Reduce Fuel Cost, Increases Productivity and Customer Satisfaction for Major Hawaiian Trucking Company Using Internet-Based GPS Technology

WAILUKU, MAUI, Hawaii, July 13 /PRNewswire/ — SecuraCom GPS, LLC of Florida are pleased to announce the successful deployment of their state-of-the-art vehicle tracking and fleet management system in Maui today. With rising fuel prices and increasing competition in the transport industry, trucking companies see the benefit of a real-time tracking and fleet management solution as a way to increase profitability and reduce maintenance and down times.

Trucking owner/operator, Mathew Jantco, states, “After reviewing and testing several GPS products we chose the SecuraCom GPS solution, based on consistent operation and impressive additional features. Monitoring speed, mileage, excessive idle times, perimeter violations, nearest vehicle to a pickup location, and maintenance alerts sold us on this system. I can access my fleet even from my home or anywhere I travel worldwide.” … Full Article Here:

Here goes Dave again, ranting on about the benefits of GPS tracking for business. OK, so what’s unusual about today’s news item? Well one item of note might be that the island of Maui has only about twice the land area as the city of Los Angeles.

Day after day I hear from business owners and government managers how they don’t have any problem keeping track of their vehicles … when they have the whole continental US to roam around in. Apparently, Mr. Jantco likes to run a little tighter ship than some.

• Monitoring Speed
• Monitoring Miles Traveled
• Monitoring Idling
• Monitoring allowed or prohibited Zones
• Choosing the closest vehicle to a pickup or service call
• Maintenance and Fault Alerts.

Believe me; it makes good sense on a 774 square mile island. It makes even more sense (and provides a faster rate of return (ROI) where your trucks drive.

ICBC eyeing black boxes to track driving habits

By Jeff Nagel

Black Press

Jul 12 2006

ICBC is planning to install black box recorders to monitor the driving habits of 400 volunteer motorists.

But the auto insurance corporation says it’s doing so simply to keep pace with advancements in the insurance field – not as part of any plan to make widespread use of vehicle data recorders.

“That’s way down the road for us,” said ICBC spokesman Doug McClelland. “We figured we’d better get some experience working with this.”

Some private auto insurance firms in Canada are already using the devices, offering customers discounts on their insurance premiums in exchange for plugging in the black boxes to record how safely they drive.

Aviva Canada is offering Ontario drivers discounts of five to 25 per cent to participate… Rest of Article here:

For us south of the border folks the first thing that probably comes to mind if, who the heck is ICBC? The answer is, the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. If you take the time to read the whole article you’ll see that a number of Canadian insurance companies are already using GPS tracking to voluntarily give savings to policy holders. Here in the US, I’m sorry to have to say this, but insurance companies just seem to revel in claims. The more accidents the more they can charge and the more they charge the more they make, so what’s for lunch.

This is far from the first time I’ve seen Canadian firms leading the way in the intelligent merger of technology and commerce. Why shouldn’t those who drive more cautiously and practice safe driving habits get a better insurance rate? For those of you who are worried about being spotted spending hours at the bar or visiting your girlfriend while you tell your wife you’re working late, well go ahead and voice your privacy moans. Myself? I’d prefer to save 25%.