Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on February 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

GPS, which is known to help navigate you around the world, or create maps, has been expanding in use and usability. You can now find integrated GPS devices in cars, phones, or even watches. Hikers and climbers use GPS to help determine their position, boats and ships use it to guide them through the oceans, and planes use it to get from point A to point B. All of those different uses are good reasons to make use of the satellite navigation system, but what about GPS in your shoes?

Isaac Daniel came up with the idea of GPS devices built right into shoes after he got a call that his 8 year old son was missing. Shortly after he began the process of designing a line of shoes that will sell for $325-$350 which have GPS built right in. The line designed for adults is expected next month, and a children’s line following shortly thereafter.

Aside from the actual cost of the shoe, there would also be a service fee of $19.95 per month.  That covers the cost of the 24-hour monitoring service that would be alerted should the GPS button on the shoe be activated. The main purpose behind the shoe is actually safety should a child or an adult go missing.

Could someone use this to check up on suspicions that their spouse or child aren’t where they say they are? Well, they could, but then they’d be faced with law enforcement costs. It was designed with emergency situations in mind, and no other purpose.

The shoe works by pressing a button to activate a GPS.  From there, details about the location of the shoes are sent to a monitoring service. After the button is pressed, the shoe will continue to transmit information until the battery runs out which means that it could potentially be useless in times of actual need. The  GPS chip is tucked away into the bottom of the shoe, and measures 2 inches by 3 inches.

The Good: This is a potentially life-saving device. If a child is wearing the shoes, and the parent notices the child has gone missing, they can call up the monitoring service and provided they know the password to the account, the GPS will be activated.

Later this year, a “Plug and wear” version will be available which would allow wearers to remove the module from an old pair of shoes and place them in a new pair, cutting back on price of shoes for growing feet in children.

The Bad: The price will probably be enough to keep most parents from making the investment, especially with the additional monthly service charge.

The Ugly: The shoes aren’t actually considered ugly.  In fact they come in six different designs and look more like a running shoe.  But, convincing your child that this is the next “big” name in shoes probably will take a little effort.  Especially if all of their friends are wearing Nike’s.

Source: Associated Press [via Yahoo]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Share your iPhone’s GPS radio with the Wi-Fi iPad

AirLocation is an iOS app that sends GPS data from your iPhone to your Wi-Fi-only iPad. To use it, you activate the Personal Hotspot on the iPhone, connect the iPad to the hotspot and run the app on both devices. Now you can use proper, accurate GPS data to track yourself on the iPad’s large screen. It won’t let you use any arbitrary iPad app with GPS, but once the iPad knows where it is you can flip to, say, Foursquare to check in.

It’s certainly a great idea, as using maps on the iPad is way nicer than peeking at the iPhone’s small screen. And currently it’s the only way I know of to actually send proper GPS data between the devices. some of you may remember a video back in March which tried to show that the iPhone shared its location with an iPad. I was skeptical at the time and rightly so — it turned out to be bunk, with the iPad happily finding itself using Wi-Fi triangulation alone.

I’ll be sticking with my current combo of 3G iPad and crappy, Samsung Beyoncé cellphone, but for those of you convinced about the joys of tethering a Wi-Fi iPad, this app costs a single, solitary buck.

Air Location product page [010 Dev]

See Also:

• Does Tethered iPhone Send GPS to Wi-Fi iPad?
• Bike My Way, a Bare-Bones iPhone GPS-Logger
• GPS Bluetooth Dongle Controls SLRs with iPhone

By now you’ve no doubt heard about a certain iOS database file called consolidated.db. It made quite a splash yesterday when a pair of researchers, Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden, from O’Reilly Media announced the “iPhone tracking software” the duo had “discovered hidden on the phones.” Here’s the problem: they didn’t discover it, at least not originally. The file, known to hold large amounts of geolocation data collected from WiFi access points and cell-towers, has been probed by forensic experts ever since the retail launch of the iPhone 4 back in June of 2010. Hell, Sean Morrissey and Alex Levinson published a physical book on the topic back in December 2010, entire excerpts of which can easily be found on Google. So either the team from O’Reilly is being disingenuous with its claims or it’s being lazy.

Regardless, the story laid dormant for months until the O’Reilly team was able to visualize the data in a very personal way. Running the team’s open-source iPhoneTracker software to see the detailed locations of our worldly travels is absolutely fascinating. Imagining the same data file in the hands of a stalker, misguided detective, or a jealous lover is downright creepy.

But how is it possible that an issue like this has avoided the tech community at large for more than a year? And more importantly, what can you do about it? Read on to find out.

Update: A timely discovery from Vishal — here’s a note from Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell [PDF] to Congressmen Edward Markey and Joe Barton, providing a detailed look at its privacy policy, presumably regarding this issue.

Continue reading The iPhone tracking fiasco and what you can do about it

The iPhone tracking fiasco and what you can do about it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 21 Apr 2011 11:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Robotics experts at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory just taught an old war machine some new tricks, namely radiation detection — a timely acquisition of knowledge, for sure. Swapping out rocket launchers and machine guns for a suite of radiological sensors, digital cameras, and a GPS device, this modified TALON will be used to map the radiation levels (and create a visual output) surrounding the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The newly modified TALON landed in Japan just last week, joining an existing team of robot helpers already in use in the disaster area, including two additional TALONs equipped with sensors that can identify more than 7500 environmental hazards. Guns for Geiger counters seems like a good trade to us; check the video up top to watch the ‘bot try out its treads.

[Thanks, John]

TALON robot gets declawed, helps Japan sniff out radiation (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 16 Apr 2011 23:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Navigon MobileNavigator for iOS updated with augmented reality, safety camera features

Navigon MobileNavigator for iOS updated with augmented reality, safety camera features originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:52:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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