The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Tracker gizmos coming soon

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 07, 2007
ePaper

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Tracker gizmos coming soon

Rasheed Kappan

BANGALORE: Gift a friend your latest Global Positioning System (GPS) phone, and track his/her movement on a Google Earth map by just sending an SMS with a password. You can also stash it secretly in your partner's car and find out what he or she is up to. Use it intelligently or use it to possibly ruin your happiness, it's your choice.

If this Personal Tracker sounds out of the world, straight from a James Bond thriller, read on: "Send another SMS, await a call to your mobile phone and listen to your friend's conversation even without his knowledge." With a hundred possible applications — some capable of banishing privacy to the bin — GPS gadgets are all set to make a grand entry into Bangalore shortly.

Integrated with GPS software developed by a city-based firm, the gadgets will floor anyone with their mind-boggling abilities.

The Personal Tracker, for instance, can help the police keep tight control over its personnel, call centres keep control of its drivers and parents can closely watch the movement of their children in kindergarten. But the gadget also raises privacy issues, and its record in the United States says a lot: Seventy per cent users there apply it for spouse tracking.

The device can be controlled from any mobile phone, provided the user has access to the Tracker's four-digit password.

The user can even specify a radius around the Tracker's location, virtually drawing a "Lakshman Rekha" and get alerted when the gadget carrier crosses that limit. If the user has no mobile phone, he/she can call the GPS firm's call centre, furnish the password and promptly get a report of the Tracker and carrier's location.

The device is apparently designed to thwart any theft attempt. The logic is simple. The user can get a report on any change in the Tracker's SIM, call up the new carrier and ask him to surrender the gadget.

If refused, the user can track down the thief on a map and catch him red-handed.

If the Personal Tracker requires your friend's permission to be tracked, another GPS device called GP Stick has no such precondition. You can simply drop the GP Stick into anyone's car and keep track of the movement as long as the battery lasts. Later, the device can be connected to a PDA or a laptop through cable or wireless bluetooth to get an instant run-through of the car's course.

What you get

Here's what you get on the PDA/laptop screen: a Google Earth map with a line that depicts the GP Stick's movement. Zoom to any location, and you get the date and time and even the time spent at that particular location. If the Stick had been kept in a car or in any moving platform (or even a man on the move), the screen will even tell you the speed and acceleration of travel. If the platform is an aircraft, the screen will educate you on the altitude and flight path.

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