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GPS Phone Tells Others Where You Are
An anonymous reader writes, "According to CNet, a company called Benefon has launched a cell phone with a built in GPS receiver — nothing new there. However, this particular GPS cell phone, called the Twig, does something extra. It can send your GPS coordinates to another Twig owner and then that person can navigate directly to you using the preloaded navigation software. Sounds like this could save a lot of time and effort when trying to explain to the in-laws where your new apartment is." The article says that the phone will cost £330 in the UK, or about $625.
"Sounds like this could save a lot of time and effort when trying to explain to the in-laws where your new apartment is."
Actually, I am purposly vague when I give my mother in law directions. If I can just delay her a few minutes w/o being found 'guilty', it helps.
For that $625, I'd rather get her a hotel room.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Can you see me now?
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
What use to me is a cell phone if I have to leave it on the other side of town?
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
...... But what about the privacy issues that would surround this cell phone? Who would get access to this data? Under what circumstances? Can some law enforcement agency use the GPS data to prove that you did something illegal for example?
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
RTFA - it says (hell even the summary says) you *can* send your co=ordinates to the other phone, not that the other phone can get them without your wanting to.
Then again, anywhere with E911 service this is usually already enabled. But you can usually disable it on the handset if you want.
Location awareness is one of the key elements in 4G spec.
It opens several great possibilities for applications using your current location.
At library or movie theatre? no problemo, phone goes in silent mode automatically.
Focused advertising, when going past some store, you get discount offers to your phone.(where permitted by law)
Need to find restaurant but stuck in weird part of city? no problemo, your cell phone
knows where you are and can probably recommend good place, and even give directions how to get there.
You're lost and you fell down and broke your hip/ankle etc and can't walk? no problemo, your phone
can give your location with greater accurancy than triangulating by cell towers.
Those are just some crude ideas, the possibilities are almost limitless.
GPS phones from Benefon aren't that much of news tho, they have been manufacturing them since ~2000 or so.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Ham radio operators have been doing this for quite a while. It's called Automatic Position Reporting System.
It was developed by a ham radio operator and the Naval Academy:
http://www.aprs.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APRS
Libertas in infinitum
The Garmin NavTalk had a phone that did this back in 99 in the US. It was an AMPS phone and sent the positions via quick burst of DTMF tones. It was a cute trick for an analog phone. You could see your position on the map display, the person you were talking to, and get navigation information to lead you to them. They did a GSM version, but if was European only and I never saw that one.
You had some control as to who could poll your position, or you could trigger a "send". A couple companies had web sites that would let you see the position of the phones on a map. They did it by decoding the DTMF tones the Garmin spit out.
http://www.garmin.com/products/navTalk/
Please cram it with the Big Brother bullshit, the Nanny State clap trap and please remove your tin foil hats - unless you're after some free karma which you surely will, while saying nothing.
The slashdot article headline is misleading, it suggests the phone is in control of your private details, rather than you. One quick glance at the article and you can see this paragraph which states:
It's a sodding phone with GPS and the ability to tell others where you are, that's all.
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You may have to win this kind of treatment though. Don't expect employers do just hand this over on a silver platter to you. They won't.
Employers are often dispassionate about their employees, but expect employees to be passionate about their place of employment. It can't work that way. Either both don't care about each other, or both do care.
Employment is like marriage. Would you want to be married to someone, who, the first time you forgot to throw away garbage, divorced you? No? I didn't think so. Then why do you believe it's OK for employers to behave like that? Don't forget though. You have to win good treatment. No one will volunteer to treat you well, because everyone is selfish. And you can't win anything if you're scared to lose.
Really this phone is doing nothing much new, all newly-activated phones in the USA now must have some way of determining the phone location (GPS, tower strengths, whatever) for e911 compliance. This phone is simply giving the user the right to transmit that value to somebody of their own choosing... that's the news.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. And the other person only needs a web-enabled phone to see where I am.
But then again I bought this phone in Japan 2 years ago for less than $200. It only has:
- GPS/Navi
- TV/DVR
- 2 MP camera.
- Music player
- QR Code reader.
- English and Japanese translation dictionaries.
Probably time to upgrade.
It is nothing new. The European version of the Motorola A780 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A780does this. It is a Linux flip phone with GPS and the CoPilot navigation/mapping software enables people the owner authorizes to track the phone on a web site.
Benefon have been making GPS phones with "you are here" comms for many years now.
Engineering is the art of compromise.