GPS Tracking ROI

Motorola faces heavy legal fine

10th January 2007

By Staff Writer

Motorola Inc is facing a possible heavy fine after a US judge ruled that the electronics giant had ignored a court order concerning a long-running lawsuit over vehicle-tracking technology.

Circuit Court Judge Leroy Moe of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said on Monday he was considering imposing a fine for attorney fees and trial costs, after he ruled that Motorola had willfully violated court orders during a $10bn trial late last year… Read The Full Article Here:

Anyone who reads my blog very often knows I have no love for Motorola. Over the years in my government work I was stymied at many turns by Motorola’s near strangle hold on vehicle and point to point radios. New technology after new technology would come on the market and Motorola would do it’s level best to ignore it and make things hard (read expensive) for taxpayer funded organizations to make any headway in modernization.

When I was first task to research GPS tracking technology for Air Force ground vehicles I thought Motorola would be a valuable resource … after all they are the industry leader and we were a big important customer. Haa. Ignorant me. It was like pulling teeth just to get equipment to look at (not all of it made by Motorola, mind you, just stuff they were ‘partenring” with other firms on). And when it came time to show off proposed systems to high level decision makers only one company left me dangling and looking like a chump in front of the big brass … yep, you guessed it. After Motorola proved themselves hopelessly incompetent with my particular project in 1999 we went with another vendor (at a much lower cost) and were very satisfied.

For along time now I’ve been following the trial mentioned in today’s referenced article and of course not commenting, because I don’t know the company who made the claims against the big “M” and have no knowledge of the real merits of the case. It was a big letdown to me to see it end in a mistrial, because split jury mistrials never solve anything for either party … we’ll never know now who was really right or wrong.

But even with their huge legal resources it now seems Motorola couldn’t play fair in their Goliath versus David game. If they had played fair and followed the judges orders the whole incident might have been over and done with. Now, because they apparently felt themselves above the law they face major economic sanctions and the very real prospect of another long, expensive trial.

For years I’ve watched Motorola do business in ways I wouldn’t and now it looks like the legal system is backing up my personal opinion. Kudos to judge Moe, and Motorola, allow me to give you some free but very pertinent legal advice … even though you’re a “big frog in the puddle”, when a judge orders you to do something, you’d be well advised to comply. What could Motorola’s “real” lawyers have been thinking?

Does this sound like your city?

“I’ve had numerous complaints with regard to buses not running according to bus schedules so I want to find out from transit just how efficiently and effectively it’s running,” he said.

“I think we should look at putting GPS systems on board to help determine whether buses are running on the correct route at the correct time.” (Alderman Andre Chabot)

And does this sound like the genuine bull puckey your transit administrators hand out when asked to justify their level of performance, keep the public (who pays their salary, after all) informed about their transit system?

Calgary Transit spokesman Ron Collins said bus routes are strictly monitored by supervisors to ensure buses are on schedule and all are in constant radio contact.  Full news item is here:

Well I’ve got news for Mr. Collins, and for Alderman Chabot, (who already knows), Calgary, you have a problem, and, like a great many cities you are just sweeping it under the rug.

Facts Of Life (like your mother never told you)

• Public transportation is a necessity in today’s energy deprived world.  A bus is about 40 times more efficient than a driver-only BMW in getting people to and from their work, shopping, doctor’s visits, etc.
• Poor people don’t have BMW’s to drive (and many handicapped people can’t drive anything).  Transportation managers typically have their own vehicles, drive when and how they please (often at city expense) and really don’t give a care about those “second class citizens” who don’t have a car.  Public transit is typically run as a necessary evil by governments and they make no secret of the fact they wish the need would go away.
• The only government officials who don’t want public transport disappear are those dedicated to waiting out their time to collect retirement from the taxpayers … at least that’s my opinion when it comes to cities like Calgary.
• Public Transport does now have to operate at a loss and it doesn’t have to be a necessary evil.  But it does have to be managed.  You can’t manage what you can’t measure and dubious statements which are just personal opinion about schedule adherence and service levels are just that … opinion.  You can’t run a bus line without knowing what your busses are doing.
• Attempting to manage driver performance by sending out supervisors to observe is not only downright dumb, it’s expensive.  Typically supervisors get paid more than drivers and the supervisor should either be performing true management level duties or s/he ought to be driving a bus.  “Spot” checks don’t accomplish much and if you keep a supervisor on the streets you are essentially paying an employee more than a driver to do a lot less work.  Logic, Jim?
• Keeping track of schedules via voice radio is dead wrong.  It costs a lot of money for equipment, it costs a lot of money in labor and the whole procedure is fraught with errors …drivers may give “optimistic” information about where they are and if a driver is lost … well then how the heck can you direct him/her via voice radio.

Here’s a sample of how Calgary Transit “cares” for their riders:

The complete map is here:

Pick a corner, any corner, and tell me how you would get to another location in the city?  The damn routes aren’t even shown … you have to look at what line passes a corner and then look in the little tags to see what other corners that bus route passes.  I mean, we could make a decent map but who cares, my BMW already has on-board GPS navigation.

Here’s a sample of what a city who gives a care could do:

Notice anything different?  yeah they not only show the routes they show the busses and rider’s, those woeful souls who aren’t clogging the freeways in their BMW’s can even see where the busses are.  And they can even tell when they should go out and wait for the bus.  What a concept.  See it live here:

So what will you accept from your city?  More sit on their hands, do it like we’ve always done?  Or visible, publicly accessible proof that your transit management is doing their part to earn their salaries?  As say here in the Philippines, ” ’sup to you”

Just found this article this evening (before you guys in the US even rolled over to Tuesday courtesy of Brian’s Phoenix Insurgent … a quirky little blog with what seemed to me at first to be outlandish ideas, but is a lot better thought out than you might first realize.  We’ve exchanged emails regarding the evilness or goodness of GPS tracking workers and some of the all too real privacy issues.  Some interesting observations and cautions have come from very mainstream folks too, such as the “linkbait” offered up by professor Jerome Dobson, who in addition to having more degrees than a thermometer is also the president of the very “old school” American Geographical Society.  There are some valid pints and counterpoints on both sides of the aisle … but I suddenly see GPS tracking taking off like a new trend on MySpace, so I really feel a lot of the debate has now become moot.

 Here’s a snip from the SF Chronicle article, read it through and figure out what you think:

Missing a buddy? GPS can track him

By Ryan Kim

San Francisco Chronicle

Sam Alton was leaving a computer science class at Stanford last year when he wondered where his friends were.

It’s an age-old question, but it got Alton thinking of a different way of arriving at the answer. Alton’s creation, for which he left school after his sophomore year, is a service called Loopt, which allows mobile phone users to locate friends using Global Positioning Satellite technology on a cell phone.

The service, which is being offered on Boost Mobile, provides a real-time cell-phone map that pinpoints the location of friends who have agreed to be tracked. Their location is accurate to within 30 feet under peak conditions.

The service also issues alerts when a subscriber’s friends are nearby, allowing the subscriber and his friends to call or text message each other to arrange an impromptu meeting…………

Aside from the usual media hubris regarding accuracy of GPS.  No SPS (Standard Positioning Service) devices are ‘accurate to within 30 feet”, whatever “peak conditions” may be … the systems seems pretty straightforward.  A great many phone are now GPS capable (except for Apple’s new iPhone, Apple seems to have consciously eliminated it from the running), the carrier shave mostly figured out how to use their network to get signals back to a server (and GPS phones are a low bandwidth, high profit data source) and it’s pretty simple to build many different flavors of web-based tracking tools … plot locations right on the existing Google Maps/Yahoo! maps or any similar interface.

And the “inventors” have hit square upon one of the true business ROI factors of tracking systems … 80% of the traffic on voice networks (dedicated radios, cell phones, et al, are “what’s your -20″ calls … so if you already know where you are and know where your contact is, 80% of the communication problem is licked.

So what’s your thought?  Will this take college campuses by storm?  Will anyone even listen to Jerome Dobson any longer?  Tell me in the comments, or at: davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or phone me at 1-719-423-8872.

Can’t recall the exact movie at the moment but one of my all time favorite actors, Clint Eastwood had a line that stuck in mind mind for years … I believe it was one of his “Dirty Harry” series, but at any rate, Clint’s character is sound asleep and the phone rings, waking him.  Clint reaches out, lifts the handset and speaks into the mouthpiece in that wonderfully intimidating voice, “You’d be well advised to have a good reason for this phone call.”

Lately a lot of people have had to make calls in the middle of the night to their bosses, to their clients, to law enforcement agencies … all with the same subject … “My laptop was stolen and all the company secrets/client billing data/employee’s personal data information was on it.”

This article pointed up some pretty interesting facts to me.  I knew laptop loss and theft was a big problem but I really didn’t know the costs dimensions very well.  As much as $89,000 per machine stolen, millions of dollars per year according to the FBI.

Stop and think for a moment about what happens if a machine goes missing with say 18,000 employee records on board.  Just the paper, envelopes and certified mail postage alone to notify folks of the theft is going to run $70,000 or more.

Now everyone knows I’m a certified GPS “geek”, known to overstate my case at times.  Am I trying to tell you that GPS tracking for your laptop is going to prevent its theft?  No, even I’m not that much of an enthusiast, but do think very hard about installing theft recovery GPS as well as other standard laptop security options.  The faster you can recover the machine the less dollars it’s going to cost and the greater your return on investment (ROI).

This is one interesting service you can use; https://www.mylaptopgps.com/how.php

They say their technique is proprietary and from what I can tell it’s really not GPS at all, but some sophisticated techniques using various IP addresses to progressively pin down the machine.  But I really don’t care about the nitty-gritty of their technology, I care about the results.  You should to.

• It’s cheap.  $9.95 a month and less, depending upon the number of machines
• It’s effective.  The triple combination of shields is a smart way to escalate response.
• It focuses on the most important thing … the data on the computer, which is normally much more important than the value of the computer itself … even if the computer is not recovered, physically, you get your data back in your hands and out of the thief’s hands.  Slick.

I like this idea in a number of ways, I even think the company is perhaps limiting itself too tightly by marketing this only for laptops.  Desktops and servers go missing all the time to, and very few computers that get stolen don’t get used … the thief is either going to crank up the computer for his/her own use (and exploration for vulnerable data) or s/he’s going to sell it to someone else who will.  Either way, in today’s highly connected world, your data stands an excellent chance of recovery.

“Any organization that fails to take the threat of laptop theft seriously is playing chicken with its stakeholders’ data security,” said security expert Siciliano. “Smart companies leave sensitive data off laptop computers and track their machines with GPS.”

Dave says, you better look into this now, before your machine goes missing, even if the technique isn’t really GPS.  Someone will look back at this message a few months from now and say, “Damn, he was right.”  You’d be well advised not to be that someone.

Sprint Certifies New GPS-Based School Bus Tracking Technology

1/18/2007

Overland Park, KS & Concord, MA - Safety of students aboard the school buses is a major concern for school administrators and parents. In a continued effort to offer differentiated safety and management solutions to schools, Sprint announced the availability of iX-3, the next generation of GPS-based school bus tracking technology. The iX-3 system is designed by Everyday Wireless, a Sprint partner, and is certified to operate on the Nextel National Network, one of the largest all-digital wireless networks in the U.S., covering more than 264 million people. This state-of-the-art technology uses the latest Motorola io270 module and allows the iX-3 to deliver packet data and Walkie-Talkie service.

“The development of the iX-3, as with all of our product development efforts, was driven directly by input from the pupil transportation managers,” says Dave Pettine, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Everyday Wireless. “Our partnership with Sprint differentiates our products in the marketplace by providing school districts with additional options that meet their operational, communication and budgetary requirements. Once again, we delivered a solution tailored to the pupil transportation industry.” … Full Article Here:

I’ve been bleating on this subject since long before I started blogging. After I left government service and began my civilian GPS tracking sales career I went into my first job (soon after 9/11) convinced that school districts would make an excellent pool of prospective clients. My new civilian boss didn’t share my enthusiasm and in the long run she was right … I never made a sale to a school district despite the fact that they are the carriers of the nations most precious cargo … and a prime target, if not for terrorists then for a whole panoply of ner do wells who seem to be in love with harming our children.

When she told me not to focus on school districts my former boss was basing her decision based on the well known common fact school districts almost universally have budget issues and transportation is not the place school administrators want to spend what dollars they have available. At the time I had products to offer, some of which could have given every school district a return on investment (ROI) but none of which was truly configured to integrate seamlessly into the day to day operation of school bus service.

I was immediately captured by the featured article because one of the highlighted satisfied customers is my old “home” district, Colorado Springs District 11. For many years they “weren’t interested”, “couldn’t afford” tracking. But now the right solution has popped up, meeting their needs and the needs of thousands of other districts. Go take a look at: http://www.everydaywireless.com/realtime.html

and tell me why your district can’t ‘afford’ to save $750,000 a year, why they can’t ‘afford’ to save big on labor costs, communication costs and accident costs.

I have no connection with the Everyday Wireless company, I receive nothing if you explore their solution, but I’m highlighting them because the “get the flick” when it comes to school transportation and this year is the year … you must take action now.

I’m renewing my weekend eye candy tradition … this isn’t directly GPS related but oh can you do things connected with the latitude/longitude basis of GPS.

The Internet is full of sometimes little-known treasures. One of them is at:

http://gc.kls2.com/

here you’ll see how far it is from one point to another, what airports are available, how airlines have to use distance and time in planning flights, how to draw a radius around a point as see how far an airliner can fly … the list goes on. Explore the whole site including the lists of airlines of the world. fascinating stuff … I’ve used the site for years and have neglected to mention it or to give its hardworking founder, Karl Swartz credit. Go, spend an hour or two, enjoy.

A lot of folks don’t think much about time … is that true?  Seems as if most of us are almost obsessed with time … rushing out the door, always late … happens to you, doesn’t it?  It certainly does to me.

But when I said think about time I was talking at the lowest, most basic level, where most of us never give it a thought.  “Standard” time.  When you set your Rolex the time Windows shows down in the bottom right screen corner will be just fine.  When you want that time to be a little bit more accurate that your office mate’s clock you can use a great little program called AboutTime from an amazing fellow name of Paul Lutus (you should read some of his thoughts here).  Paul’s amazing little program will keep your computer clock accurate to within +/- 50 milliseconds or so, so that should be good enough for even a Rolex owner.  It’s certainly useful to have on a home network so that you don’t sit across from your partner and debate whether is’ 19:21 or 19:22

But in many areas of science and in practical world-wide networking, 50 milliseconds (50 thousandths of a second) is like a century to a normal person. Those of us who know the GPS specs are aware that the standards for GPS are supposed to guarantee that SPS (Standard Positioning Service … the one ordinary civil users access) has an accuracy of +/- 170 nanoseconds (millionths of a second), 95% of the time.  That’s getting pretty darn accurate in my book.  But there’s a lot more accuracy needed by some … enter smart, cooperative sharing networks like today’s featured GPS use … Reference Source Here:

Using the Sistema Interamericano de Metrologia (SIM) network, countries throughout the Americas can readily keep their time standards within 50 nanoseconds .. about 3 times better than GPS data alone will do the job.  Kudos to the folks who put this together instead of sitting in a corner and moaning about the money they didn’t have, or the fact it should have been someone else’s job or even that they didn’t like the GPS system because it was US military based and controlled.  Just like a choir only sounds good when they are singing from the same sheet of music, science can only advance when all the players can get on the same page.

International networking has improved significantly since GPS (and GPS-enhanced) timing sources have come into play.  It wasn’t many years ago when entire areas like the Hawaiian islands had no master clocks and thus everything sent between Hawaii and the US mainland had to be reduced to serial analog signals and then reprocessed into digital form that the distant ends.  For years in Cheyenne Mountain, missile warning center for the free world, computer systems were all synchronized to a rubidium crystal (good to a few milliseconds) master station clock.  really smart.  Except that for ’security’, the clock connected to no one in the outside world … it was set buy the building maintenance folks to … you guessed it, the colonel’s Rolex.  Time marches on, to a GPS cadence.