A Thing Of beauty Is A Joy Forever

OK, I’ll be the first to admit that I am a little at a loss as to how this thing is supposed to work. It has gotten a lot of blogger “buzz” in the past few days, as the winner of a Japanese design competition. There’s a graphic that seems to show that each wand both receives location from GPS (easy to do but very, very nicely implemented in this design) and transmits its location up to some satellite (hard to do, expensive and due to frequency and power considerations not something you would want to put in the hand of a little girl or any other human.

But I can see how these would work if the “wanderer” knew the location of “home” … it will find its location, figure the course back to home and light up its little bud and point the way … very nice.

I also feel the implementation of the Bluetooth PC interconnection and the wireless vase for recharging … now why in heck can’t an electric toothbrush be that simple? Hmmm? Is a great design concept. The absolute idiots who give us a household full of cell phones with disparate chargers, multiple laptops all with separate, expensive and always missing charging “bricks, digital cams with one charger, digital camcorders from the same company with a totally different charger, etc., etc. is sick in today’s world.

Matter of fact I could think of something electrical to do with certain body parts of some of these so-called engineers … but since I no longer live in the US I’m not allowed to practice torture.

What about a home charging management center. Something like that vase in the picture that you dropped your cell phone into when you came home, your toothbrush, your laser briefing pointer pen and so on. The device should be able to learn what devices are in the home, maybe by “introducing” them via Bluetooth or RFID link and should know when an item was last charged, etc.

Sounds difficult? Well name me a good invention that isn’t … that is until the problem gets solved, then it’s simpler and everybody has one. Electric power needs are something pretty easy to define and standardize, it merely requires a couple of the industry giants to actually care about the consumer and the rest of the copycats will fall in line.   RIS  (rechargeable idiocy slaves) of the world, Unite!

GPS for Teens — How To Save Lives

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.

GPS For Road Safety — Is The UK That Much More Advanced?

Here is a most interesting report … and a great business opportunity, should there be anyone out there who can hear the knocking in the US:

GPS-based camera detectors are in the clear
6 October 2006

Under new proposed laws, which are having their third reading in Parliament on Monday 9 October, speeding motorists will incur fines and penalty points that more closely reflect the severity of their offence – the greater the speed over the limit, the bigger the penalty.
The good news for motorists is that the Road Safety Act 2005 also officially endorses the use of GPS-based speed camera locators such as those pioneered by RoadPilot. The clarification in the law is expected to boost demand for the latest generation of GPS-enabled units, including the new RoadPilot microGo, the world’s smallest camera locator with an LCD information screen.
According to the new Road Safety Act, GPS-based systems will remain fully legal, as they “…compliment the Government’s policy to ensure that camera sites are visible and conspicuous to drivers, and so help deter excessive and inappropriate speeds on the roads.”
“The number of speed cameras on UK roads is set to rise further still in 2006, and this change to the law will mean motorists can now incur severe penalties for excess speed,” comments James Flynn OBE, CEO of RoadPilot. “Our products are designed to aid road safety and protect the user’s licence by making them more aware of their speed, by reminding them of prevailing speed limits and by giving advanced warning of potential changes to the traffic flow at speed camera locations. The data is refreshed frequently and even includes temporary speed restrictions, for example at roadworks.” … Full Report Here:

Here in the US we currently seem to be spending a lot of time worrying about the wrong things when it comes to road safety and deaths. In spite of continuous safety improvements in our vehicles, significantly better roads and much better emergency and advanced medical care we still kill nearly 45,000 people per year on the road. To put that into perspective, recall that that is nearly as many US folks as were killed in all the sad and despicable years of Vietnam. It’s roughly 16 times the number of people killed in the 9/11 attack. yet it goes on and on and on and no one seems to care. Imagine an average of 1.3 9/11 attacks every single month. Bust went to “war with the world” over 2500+ deaths and a majority of Americans feel we did the right thing … yet 16 times that many casualties (inappropriately biased toward our young folks, by the way) go on and no one even shrugs their shoulders.

In Great Britain they have taken the root cause of the majority of traffic deaths much more seriously … speed cameras that monitor vehicles by the thousands and read the license plates, issuing speeding tickets to those who won’t play by the rules. Do we want to do that in the US? Obviously we don’t, choosing to just watch while about 135 die every single day. In the 30 or so minutes I’ve spent researching and writing this post between 4 and 5 people have died. depending upon how fast you chose to read it, likely at least one person will have died in just that short time. I don’t propose to have the answers, but I do know that I feel just as bad for each of those folks who have had their lives snuffed out in a car wreck as I do for those who perished in the Twin Towers.

The GPS connection is obvious, In the British case the government has decided that allowing private enterprise innovators like RoadPilot to continue to operate will help reduce deaths. The speed cameras don’t exist to give people tickets, they exist to attempt to control speed and the tickets are a consequence that helps them do the job.

Next post I’ll bring up something even more intelligent and with much more life-saving potential … think about this … what if there were no speed cameras at all?

GPS for Teens — Some Updates

There are “rites of passage” for every teenage child, the majority of which give parents new reasons to worry each time one is reached. The first date, the first day of high school, the first time driving without the supervision of an elder.

According to The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, automobile crashes are the leading cause of death for young people ages 13-20. No wonder parents suffer such headaches when their teens take to the streets alone. However, a Birmingham, Alabama–based developer of Web-enabled GPS tracking solutions is working to ease this universal burden…. Reference Here:

So last week I was insulting trucking executives.  This week, it’s your turn, parents.  It’s not my figures, it’s the NHTSA’s figures.  The Leading cause of death for 13 to 20 year-olds.  Did you read the word I highlighted?  Leading.  That means the most common.  So, while you’re outfitting Johnny and Jane with every kind of safety helmet and sports protection gear known to man, while you’re absolutely in a panic to make sure they don’t smoke or take up some other life-shortening habit, what are you doing to monitor their driving?  Hmmm?

“Well gee,” I hear you say, “Johnny and Jane value their privacy so much.  I don’t want to be a bad guy.”  Guess what Mom or dad, your single most important job on this earth is to raise those children to adulthood.  It isn’t paying for mom’s long term care insurance, it isn’t working overtime to impress the new boss so you get that corner office, it isn’t cost-justifying the new satellite service so you can watch 21 NFL games every weekend, it isn’t even monitoring to make sure that Jane isn’t posting pictures of her boobs on MySpace … it is keeping your kids alive.

Here’s one company’s offering:

Here’s another:     (disclaimer .. I happen to sell this one) … there are many, many more. 

Costs? A few hundred or less, monthly costs a buck a day or less.  How much is John or Jane worth?  You can probably track them for less than the cost of that NFL game package … and it will do more for both your lives.  And did you bother to read the referenced article?  Up to 25% reduction in car insurance?  last time I insured a teenage driver that was a non-trivial savings

 

Think about it, I got kept mine alive through their teenage years … will you?

GPS Tracking and Teens — Some Recommendations

I get a lot of searches on “Tracking Teens” and “Teen GPS” so I thought it was time to do a comprehensive rundown on the subject.

It’s certainly a hot item these days. One of the first issues that always comes up is privacy and legality. In these amazing days parents seem to have to live in fear of their children suing them. Of course, parents who let their teens get in trouble also are often in a legal bind as well. Here’s a very interesting article on FindLaw teen tracking Legalities . In general it’s about what you would expect from a lawyer not working directly for you … a confirmation that there is currently very little actual law on the subject and that in general, parental rights are going to trump any rights that children might have. I’ll have bit more to say on this subject in my recommended techniques and implementations at the conclusion of this piece.

Given that you have the right, and the duty, how can you go about it? There are a number of common techniques and services available and I’ll give you my professional opinion on the pros and cons of each one:

• Cell Phone tracking: this is currently a big commercial venture by a number of major carriers. GPS-enabled cell phones are readily and cheaply available and many of the plans are quite inexpensive.
  • Pros:
    • Cheap
    • Readily available
    • Commonly known (the kids won’t have to feel like geeks)
    • No installation, software installs, etc. Buy the phone, buy the service, track the phone
    • Some of the many vendors:
      • ULocate: Available for Motorola Phones on Nextel or Verizon only ~$15 extra per month
      • Mobile Locator this service offered by Sprint is also tied to the Nextel network ~$15 extra per month
      • Sprint also offers a separate Family Locator Service which has been talked about a lot but is hard to find hard data on.
  • Cons
    • Cheap … in the GPS world it’s still very much a case of you get what you pay for. These services use very cheaply-built consumer grade cell phones, somewhat of a “catch as catch can” tracking “back end” and are offered by companies to whom tracking is a very foreign thing.
    • Reliability … poor. In addition to cell phone coverage issues, most of these phones make it amazingly easy to defeat the tracking application. Merely receiving a phone call requires the phone user to manually re-enable tracking … ooops, mom, I forgot.
    • Premise … backwards. You want to track your teen and keep him or her safe. So instead you track their phone. Well if I’m going to drag race at two in the morning I’m going to leave my phone with the ’stake holder’ in the drive in while I go out an run a hundred and fifty through traffic. If I don’t wind up killing someone from the Tongan Royal family, mom will just think I have been in the drive-in drinking Diet Doctor Pepper.

• In Car dedicated GPS Tracker, Live: These typically are the same units used by many small businesses to track employees and trucks. They can be mounted out of sight and semi-permanently so at least you know you’re tracking the kid’s car and not his phone in his girlfriend’s handbag. They send reports back to parents at regular intervals and thus have some sort of monthly subscription fees.
  • Pros:
    • Significantly better reliability. Most install easily and just plain work
    • Much better resolution. If these units say Jane is driving on Maple Street, she’s driving on maple Street.
    • Long-life. One of these systems will last through several teen’s driving careers. A cell phone is out of style in 6 months.
    • Some common sources/systems:
      • Big Brother GPS Cost about $465 USD, around 20 cents per location report
      • Spot Check by Fleet Boss about $450 USD and $40 per month
      • Go Live by GeoTab about $450 and $35 per month
  • Cons:
    • Upfront investment
    • Monthly fees
    • All require some installation work
    • Only track the car and not the driver if s/he goes “walkabout”

• In car dedicated GPS Tracker, Historic (data loggers): These are offered in both consumer and commercial grade. they report the driver’s activity after the fact, such as when the car returns home for the night. This doesn’t sound as “sexy” as real time units but they are preferred by many businesses, security fleets, school districts, etc. they offer the most “bang for the buck” in reporting.
  • Pros:
    • Low initial cost
    • relatively simple installation
    • NO monthly cost
    • Some typical suppliers:
      • Travel Eyes2 The Internet’s low-price leader. List price ~ $200 USD, no monthly cost
      • Shadow Tracker About $500 USD. Reports for free at home on a wireless link
      • GO RF or Key About $500 USD, reports by key chain fob or private wireless
  • Cons:
    • Not real time, only report after the fact
    • Installation is required
    • All cost more than cell phone based solutions

• Non-GPS Services: Typically these revolve around bumper stickers and 1-800 numbers asking fellow motorists to report egregious or even exemplary driving behavior.
  • Pros:
    • No equipment required
    • Cheap .. costs can be as little as the price of a bumper sticker if the parent wants to use their own phone number
    • Many eyes are watching: Parents may get reports of behavior that wouldn’t be noticed by GPS … riding friends on the hood, basting their 20,000 watt stereos in public places, having sex in the school parking lot, etc.
  • Cons:
    • Very much hit or miss. Who among us hasn’t seem a driver doing something dangerous and just shaken our head and gone on our way. In my own experience I would _never_ call one of these numbers on a private car, because the typical parent will want to argue about how good his or her little angel is … not worth my time or blood pressure.
    • Subject to abuse: teens are always getting into disputes with each other … it’s a part of growing up. Billy gets pissed at Frankie, Frankie has a “how’s my driving” sticker, Frankie’s dad is going to get a call … facts of life.
    • Responsibility: If I want reports on my child’s behavior, I am going to gather the data. It is not the responsibility of others to look after my child, nor is it my responsibility to monitor yours. It may “Take a Village” in today’s world, but it takes individual responsibility within that village to make it work.

My teenagers lickily survived into adulthood so I’m not currently faced with the decisons I talk about here.  If I had anew driver on the road toaday i would definetely track him or her as aconfidence tool and a learning aid.  I would not make this a secret, i would start in the eraly days, before actual driving informoing the child that as a condiiton of having the freedom of a car they were going to be supervised, exactly as their mother an dI supervised other activities.  I’d involve the child in the selection process of a device and monitoring system and have the child colaborate on the setting of critera to be monitored and acceptable limts.  The teen should be responsible for pulling reports, presenting them to the parents and explaining discrepancies.  This technique worls well with commercial drivers and should help devlop teen’s reasoning skills while removing some of the “Big Brother” negativity of the situation.

Hope some of these meanderings have given you some insight into the issues and what’s available. Regular readers know that I sell this type of equipment. I am brand agnostic, however, and if you want to call and talk over the options: 1-800-306-1206 , feel free to do so … I won’t hard sell you, it’s very apparent from my bank account I don’t know how to hard sell.

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It’s More Than About Time — ALL Counties Should Have Done This Already

August 3, 2006 by Mr. GPS · Leave a Comment
Filed under: GPS Case Studies, GPS Teens, GPS for Life 

By Allison M. Heinrichs

TRIBUNE-REVIEW

Thursday, August 3, 2006

Kate Watson was pulling into her Dallas neighborhood three years ago when she looked in the rearview mirror and noticed she was being followed by an old, beat-up car that looked out of place in her upscale community.

Nervous, Watson called 911. A chip in her cell phone allowed a dispatcher to map Watson’s location and direct her to the nearest police station. When she pulled into the station’s parking lot, the suspicious car left.

“I was frightened,” said Watson, now of O’Hara. “It was very odd how they followed me — every turn I took, they turned. It was definitely a benefit having the police know where I was.”

Early next year, Allegheny County emergency officials expect to have a multimillion-dollar system similar to the one in Dallas, allowing them to accurately locate cell phone callers.

About 915, or 42 percent, of the 2,190 emergency calls fielded by Allegheny County emergency dispatchers every day come from cell phones. Several times a month, people calling from a cell phone aren’t able to give their location, forcing emergency officials to listen for sounds such as trains and blaring sirens to find the caller.

A $1 tax on wireless bills will pay for the county’s system….Rest of article here:

An interesting article about Allegheny County and overall issues of privacy regarding cell phone tracking. Well worth a read, although I feel some of the writer’s comments are a bit hyperbolic. It’s overall factual and well-written though.

The reason I say “It’s more than about time” is contained in one of the leading facts presented. More than 42%of the county’s 911 calls are already coming from cell phones. Anyone who thinks that figure is not going to climb rapidly hasn’t been watching the number of drivers looking like idiots while they lean on their cell phone hands, or the number of blue-haired grannies meandering down the middle of the shopping aisle at Wal*Mart with their Bluetooth headsets hanging on the rhi9nstone glasses frames.

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GPS Tracking Atheletes

May 16, 2006 by Mr. GPS · Leave a Comment
Filed under: GPS Help or Hurt, GPS Teens 

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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