GPS Tracking ROI

China launches GPS rival

New navigation satellite goes into orbit

Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 06 Feb 2007

China has launched a new type of navigation satellite to set up a network that will rival America’s Global Positioning System and Europe’s Galileo.

The Long March carrier rocket launched successfully on Friday at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, according to Chinese state media.

The Chinese Compass Navigation Satellite System will provide positioning signals across China by 2008, and will eventually be extended worldwide.

Experts said that the system is operating well and has played a significant role in cartography, telecoms, water conservation, transportation, fishery, prospecting, forest fire monitoring and national security.

There is concern across the world over the dependence on GPS, which the US can shut down or degrade at will.

While GPS was set up for military use, it became a useful civilian tool in 1996 after incumbent president Bill Clinton ordered that accurate signals should be shared with companies for civilian applications… Full Web Article Here:

You know I am sure I made mistakes in the past and, being both human and opinionated, will again in the future. But even when I make those mistakes I really do try to make them from the perspective of missing some technical fact, or missing a plus or minus sign when performing a calculation … normal human inaccuracies.

I don’t make the mistake of slanting my writing to be anti-American or favoring one or the other political party … especially political parties in countries other than my own that I know nothing at all about.

Here’s a fellow who got paid to write a piece on an important technical event and can’t resist throwing in a lot of political inaccuracies just to promote his own agenda … and his claptrap deserves to be debunked. I don’t write very much about PC’s and the computing industry, mainly because aside from being a mid-level user I don’t know very damn much about the subject. perhaps Mr. Thomson should think about his knowledge level regarding space missions and global navigation subjects as well. (more…)

Wow this seemed like great news until I really looked into it and found it will be the Orlando Police Department who will be tracking and errant astronaut. Lately the news just seems more and more bizarre. See the CNN report here and then hurry back.

For years NASA has operated as if the GPS didn’t exist. They can’t put up a space craft or even launch small sounding rockets without huge, possibly health and environment damaging tracking radars which still, in today’s day and age, require obsolete and, frankly, just plain dumb expensive analog circuits to bring that data back to their fragmented operations centers. Ever stop to think why, except for smooching up to politicians, NASA has to control missions in so many places and why astronauts, as just one example, have to travel relentlessly between many training centers? Ever here of consolidation and economies of scale? Economies? We don’t need no stinking economy, we’re NASA and space costs money, how far would you like to go?

Anyway, you can tell from that paragraph what a NASA fan I am not. I worked for years with the 45 Space Wing (the organization that actually runs Cape Canaveral and “does” launch … NASA provides the politics the US Air Force makes the missions happen) parent organization, USAF Space Command and I never worked with another government agency, including ones I am not allowed to mention, who was more resistant to change and more insular than NASA.

Now we see a fine example of NASA responsibility and employee supervision in action. And astronaut … a US Navy captain of all things … runs amok … and before her case is even finished with the filing charges aspect her NASA boss is on the stand telling everyone what a wonderful person she is and how they should release her because “she won’t do it again.” Boy, these officers and ex-officers really stick together and NASA leadership really believes their own publicity, don’t they.

There’s clear evidence that Ms. Nowak went a bit crazy. There’s clear evidence of probably cause to hold her for the acts she’s accused of. I don’t know how this case will play out, but I know one thing … even a “lofty astronaut personage” can exercise bad judgement. When they do, and they almost certainly commit irrational and probably criminal acts, they deserve that GPS bracelet and they deserve to be treated like other “ordinary” Americans accused of crimes get treated. My hat is off to the Florida justice system and I award a big fat raspberry to NASA for defending the actions of “one of their own” even before they have a clear understanding of what those actions might be. membership in NASA and the astronaut program is not some special elite status that brings a person above the law … got that Colonel(ret) Lindsey?

Looks like a cool car, doesn’t it? I know I sure wanted one like this when I was a teen. And I surely had the maturity to drive it safely too … NOT

Lillie Davis of FalconGPStracking Systems said, “The bottom line is that your teenager’s life and safety is priceless. Leave Nothing to Chance!! Know everything about your teen’s driving! Better safe than sorry. Your teenager doesn’t have the wisdom of an adult yet. That’s why they need your close supervision and attention. You can record the whereabouts of your teen’s car including location and speed plus many other features with a GPS system. GPS will help you do your job of being a parent to keep your teen driver safe and injury-free. Peace of Mind is now affordable.”

Now you can discount what this lady is saying, after all, she’s “just a vendor” and there are what seems like a million of them out there. But a lot of people come to this site looking for information on tracking teen drivers so I know that all parents in this world are not more interested in golf or the superbowl or how much their bonus will be this year. But not enough of them are. Here’s the sad story for the US (from 2003 … sad in itself that a statistic this important doesn’t seem to rate highly enough to be more up to date that 4 years behind, but ….)

Less than 60

60 to 69

70 to 80

More than 80

No data available/NSD

here are the figures courtesy of . Pretty shocking, at least to my mind. Nationwide and average of 66 out of every 100,000 kids are going to die from a preventable source, accident, homicide or suicide. And scary as the homicides and suicides may be, auto accidents are way more likely as the cause of death.

Don’t be fooled by the phony privacy claims. don’t give in to the whining and the terrible “hurt” they put on at not being trusted. Haven’t they been manipulating you with their over-acting drama and even tantrums since they were toddlers? It’s just what kids do, and what parents do is bite the bullet, gird their loins and take action to protect their babies. Don’t be one of the sad statistics this year.

Maria Kubacki, Ottawa Citizen

Published: Monday, February 05, 2007

the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board says a plan to put Global Positioning System tracking devices in their vehicles is a waste of money and a violation of employees’ privacy rights.
The union representing maintenance workers at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board says a plan to put Global Positioning System tracking devices in their vehicles is a waste of money and a violation of employees’ privacy rights.
The board is facing a funding shortfall of more than $27 million and is considering cuts to special education programs and to school custodial staff in order to save money, said Andrew Horwood of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, who serves as president of the board’s plant support staff unit.
Given the board’s financial pressures, putting GPS in the maintenance vehicles is “a waste of taxpayers’ money” he said.
The board wants to install the tracking system in the fleet’s 85 vehicles at an estimated total capital cost of $12,000 to $18,000, according to board spokeswoman Sharlene Hunter.
The GPS technology would be used to ensure “effective fleet management,” including tracking information on speed and idling times, according to Ms. Hunter.
But Mr. Horwood questions why the board wants to use GPS to monitor the vehicles, which are used by maintenance workers such as electricians, plumbers, and heating and ventilation technicians.
“There’s no requirement for GPS. They have walkie-talkies. They’re handed work orders daily,” he said.
Mr. Horwood is upset the board has not consulted the union on the issue. He also worries the board will use GPS to monitor when workers begin and end their breaks… Full Article Here:

A waste of taxpayer’s money says Mr. Horwood. Well I’m as much against a waste of taxpayer dollars as anyone, but somehow I don’t think Mr. Horwood is really as altruistic as he wants you to believe. The maintenance workers and vehicles being discussed here are what is often called a “white fleet” and let me tell you, in every school district I have worked with they are a huge source of waste .. exactly the waste that causes those cuts to Special Education programs and other funding issues that most school districts suffer with.

Putting a GPS on their white fleet won’t cost the taxpayers of Ottawa-Carleton a darn thing, in fact, it will save them plenty. Here’s how: (more…)

Most people have already forgotten about the terrible storms that battered Florida a couple days ago … after all, it was Superbowl Sunday and the whole world stops for that … NOT …

But looking for data about the actual area of the storm my wife 9and fellow blogger) found this excellent example of a newspaper being more interested in putting out information than in trying to lock its content away in a vault.

Putting the little map pins on the Google Map is simple, they can be located by latitude/longitude (from a GPS), by street address or if necessary even by dragging and clicking with a mouse.

Notice the information “behind” the one dot I showed “open”.  If you were a concerned family member, or a an emergency plan responder you’d get a wealth of information out of this map in just a minute.  (Of course if you were a FEM<A official, you’d be putting out emails regarding the buttoning of shirt cuffs and where to have dinner, but hey, I hear Trent Lott’s house rebuild is coming along fine).

Something I think I said in the earlier post about Google … Organize the World’s Data and Maker It Accessible?

With or without GPS, Google Maps and Google Earth are great tools … GPS can really just add the icing on the cake.

Thanks to a mention by Tim, I found this announcement over at PhoneNews.com.  At first glance it almost seems like just another boring feature announcement.  Well believe me, it’s not only a “feature”, it’s a huge break in the information log jam which has really bogged down the development of handheld and in-vehicle GPS navigation.

Just a very few years ago anyone with the idea of a phone, a PDA, an on-dash navigator box … no matter what the bright idea …. the very first challenge was not the electronics of the receiver, the user interface, the power budget of the battery … the most significant problem has always been the map (or overhead imagery, as many today don’t bother to differentiate).

Google is … well aside from a very rich company and a very good search engine .. a company dedicated to finding and organizing the world’s information, and making it accessible.  For the last few years, even centuries, those who made a map sensed its value but almost invariably refused to let people look at it, believing, perhaps, that each eyeball would take away some of the map’s “juice”.  result?  A population starved for maps, and a lot of map and imagery owners sitting on a rapidly devaluing asset (the only thing duller than yesterday’s newspaper is last year’s map).

When I worked at Air Force Space Command a senior leader there called me in to ask me how he could get a tool made to serve the battlefield commanders around the world who were our customers for satellite imagery.  The tool he had in mind sounded very much like what Google earth has evolved to today. (If you’re not a Google Earth user, become one .. I can’t think of a business manager, a teacher, a travel planner, a network engineer or really anyone who couldn’t benefit).

My first task was to get an expert contractor who knew about building web-based map tools to scope out the project and see what it would cost and how long it would take.  The preliminary result?  Plan at least a couple hundred thousand USD just to find all the data sources, get clearance to use them and to build a plan to convert all the data into a standard format so that the tool would be able to ‘fly’ seamlessly from one area to another.  Oh well, a good idea gone with the wind, no way we had a budget that would get this dream off the ground.

Enter Page and Brin.  Organize the world’s data and make it accessible.  The world at your fingertips and now even on your mobile phone.  Just think for a moment how useful the sample display above is to a businesswoman traveling to the Moscone Convention Center.  Could facilitate a multi-million dollar deal, couldn’t it?  But I prefer to think a little deeper than the dollars.  What would the value this tool be to the cop on the beat, the fireman on a call, the ambulance driver faced with unexpected traffic, even the deliveryman called upon for the last minute doughnuts at that special meeting.

No longer is the worlds data locked away in filing cabinets and dusty disk drives.  What the application designer can envision, Google can provide.  I see a whole lot of data owners out there whose business model has been scarcity suddenly checking out the job opportunities at Google.