Gps

Overheard: Location awareness — is it finally here?

GPS brings a whole new level of precision to the mobile experience. Cell phones have been required to be location-aware for several years in order to comply with the needs of emergency response agencies in the U.S. However, the primitive triangulation system that basic phones use isn’t very precise. With GPS, a user’s location could be pinpointed to within a few feet. Paul Gillin, The Promise and Pitfalls of Location-Awareness

If you do a search on Google for location awareness, you’ll find lot of articles written by people who are excited about the possibilities of mobile devices and location awareness. Advertisers, particularly seem excited. If you look at the dates for a lot of those articles, however, you might be surprised to see they were written in 2001. Will the iPhone really be the tipping point for location awareness 3rd party apps? I’m not going to hold my breath.

Overheard: Bullet car chase has new meaning

The Los Angeles Police Department and the Florida Highway Patrol will be the first two beta testers for the StarChase Fixed/Mobile Asset Tracking System.

More cop technology designed to make car chases obsolete. The StarChase system, which is fairly low tech compared to other schemes like HPEMS, lets police shoot a GPS tracking bullet from the front bumper of the police car and tag the back of the vehicle they’re pursuing. The goal? To allow police to follow the bad guys at a more leisurely pace.

On a similar note, General Motors plans to equip 1.7 million of its 2009-model vehicles with an OnStar system that will allow a police officer to remotely slow the engine of a stolen vehicle to idle speed.