FoxTrax Blog

So I was trolling the web for St. Louis coffee shops that aren't Starbucks and found one called Kayak's. It looks to be pretty knew, and I only mention it here because they have posted on their home page, inexplicably, the GPS coordinates of their shop. For those that need something a bit more direct than Google-Maps, I suppose.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com

Labels: GPS

Welcome back. I've been off getting married, but it's time to re-start the ongoing conversation about GPS devices and what they can do for you. What better way to begin that discussion than with a brief overview of what they can't do for you?

Things you should never do with a GPS tracker:

1. Spy On Your Employees - This is probably the second biggest request we get. The chief problem here is that it's probably illegal, even if you're really only tracking your own vehicles. And even if you're not criminally liable, there's still civil court to deal with. Here's the scenario. You track one of your employees who is having an affair and using the company vehicle to meet up with his mistress. You catch him, he gets fired and subsequently divorced. He sues you. And us. There have been cases like that in which the employee has won.

The other side of the coin is this: what are you going to do when you catch the guy? When you say "hey, I've been tracking you and I caught you driving where you weren't supposed to be", how is that conversation going to go? Will it be any less awkward than saying "we're going to start tracking everyone--gas is $4 a gallon and we need to know what we're spending so we can afford to keep paying you!" before the fact? Isn't the point to correct bad behavior, rather than fire bad employees?

2. Cut Food - GPS trackers are expensive and don't have any sharp edges. This is a task much better suited to a knife.

Okay, now that that bit of silliness is out of the way...

3. Track Packages - Once in a while, people ask us to leave the tracker on while it's in transit so they can track it to it's destination. This rarely works out. There are too many times the tracker will be in a metal building (where it won't work well) or on a plane (where it won't work at all and may or may not interfere with the navigation systems).

4. Spy On Your Cheating Spouse - Biggest downside, again, it's probably illegal. And what are you going to say when you have your evidence? You're almost certainly better hiring a PI, who knows how to spy on people without breaking laws.

Are we noticing a pattern here? Lots of people regard GPS as a weapon for passive-aggression. And it can be used for that, I suppose, but spying on people is almost certainly not going to end well for the spy... spyer... spier... person who is spying.

So, just to contrast, here are some things that GPS is great for:

1. Personal Tracking (of a non-secretive nature) - Got an expensive car and a teenage driver? Maybe a loved one with dementia? Even a pet that's prone to wandering off.

2. Mileage Tracking - Compare it to the odometer, even calculate labor costs.

3. Navigation and Routing - Okay, our system doesn't do this, nor do most systems like ours. There are basically two types of GPS trackers, the type that track or the type that navigate. Ours is the former, but the latter are quite useful as well.

4. Theft Prevention - Enough said.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com

Labels: GPS

Is it just me, or have there been more people pulled-over than usual? The police seem to be out in force, bringing the long arm of the law to, well, to speeders.

I'm thrilled. I'm a long-time believer that St. Louis drivers are amongst the worst you'll find in the country. And I learned to drive in Houston. And I lived in LA. And I've driven in Jersey. But St. Louis has something special: a willful ignorance of traffic laws, the likes of which I've not seen.

I can live with speeding. I can live with the lack of turn signals. It's the utter disdain for consideration that gets me. Texas drivers can be insane, but Texans are normally pretty cordial, and that generally includes time they spend driving. And nobody in L.A. is moving very fast anyway, so they try not to take it out on each other. But in St. Louis, it's every motorist for himself! Nobody lets you in when you try to merge. And the worst: nobody yields for emergency vehicles--and that really bothers me. When you're in too much of a hurry to let an ambulance through...

So hopefully the police are trying to, you know, work on that.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com

Labels: random

Coming Soon: Targeted billboards. A French company called Quividi had been putting cameras in billboards that will count the number of passersby and even record their gender (with 85% accuracy). If a woman approaches, it will show a different ad than it would show to a man. They're also working on the technology to identify relative age and pick out family groups so they can use even more specific targeting. And it doesn't stop there, these billboards are capable of projecting 3D images and sending audio messages as well.

As with many new technologies, this walks the fine line between science-fiction-cool and George-Orwell-scary.

There are already laws in place that will keep billboards from blaring audible messages or projecting 3D images at drivers without certain permissions, shop windows and pedestrian billboards are under no such restrictions (yet), and I think we can expect to see higher-tech ads on sidewalks of metropolitan areas very soon. To the folks at Quividi: here's some advice to pass on to your clients who want to avoid nasty lawsuits.

1. Let's avoid personal products. No one in public wants to be the target of an ad for acne medication or tampons. Possible exceptions: fragrances and body sprays.
2. Tighten up the gender-identification before relying too heavily on it.
3. Avoid 3D images that are likely to scare children (who might then run into, say, the street). I'm looking at you, Orken man!
   

We can't be more than ten years away from seeing these in major cities, which means we can't be more than fifteen years away from being able to ignore them completely. And I can't help but see the irony of my weekend trip, which I spent on a river, in a canoe, no less than 8 miles away from a single working cell phone.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com

Labels: business, technology

It's iPhone Day. Have you bought yours?

I'm fascinated by the trend towards devices that do everything. It's a phone, it's a music player, it's a GPS device, it's a computer, it bakes cookies for you when you're sick! But there are some inherent drawbacks to having one über-device as opposed to several unter-devices.

And yes, that joke was in German.

1. Power - what kind of a Kryptonite battery must it take to power these things? I know GPS is a battery-killer on phones, not to mention it's an Apple product so it's not like you can run down to the electronics store and pick up a spare (although the 3G can be replaced without a soldering iron, so that's a step in the positive!). I've seen the specs for it, I know what it's supposed to do. 6 hours of internet may seem like a long time, so might 8 hours of a video or 5 hours of talk or 24 hours of music. But if you spend your day talking, texting, surfing, and tuning alternately, you're going to end up killing it quickly, and I like a phone to go for at least 4 or 5 days between charges. Maybe that's just me.
   
2. Coordinated obsolescence - You can't just upgrade the phone. You can't just upgrade your mp3--player. If the GPS chip goes all whopper-jawed, you have to replace the whole device. If you accidentally drop your phone in the toilet, you've lost all of your devices instead of one, and subsequently have to replace all of them.
3. One Size Does Not Fit All - What if I have no use for internet on my phone. I have internet at work. I have internet at home. I have a laptop, and there's still a Starbucks on every corner (well, all but six-hundred corners, now). Is there an iPhone out there for me? Or what if I want something with nicer mp3 player and I could care less about video? What if I want something with extra memory for video but I don't need GPS? What if I want a the internet features but don't ever want to use it as a phone? It doesn't matter--you're paying for all of it or none of it.
   

Now, having said all that, there is certainly something nice about combining tech products into tech product. If you want all of the functionality of the iPhone 3G in separate devices--good luck! It'll certainly cost you more than $199. But I'm fairly certain that I'll never want to watch movies on my phone (Lord of the Rings just loses that epic grandeur when viewed on something the size of an index card). But who knows? Maybe I'll buy one and be hooked. Stranger things have happened.

I just wonder what's next. How many gadgets can you combine? Phone, internet, GPS, audio, video, driving directions, relationship advice, calender, foot massager, flotation device, and finder-of-lost-car-keys all in one? What comes after the iPhone 3G? We'll find out soon enough, I suppose.

Have a good weekend.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com

Labels: technology

A man in Spring, Texas was found by firefighters thanks to the built-in GPS in his cell phone. He was driving his jeep through the woods, got stuck and disoriented, and started trying to find his way to civilization on foot. He wandered about 3 miles before he was found. He called his wife, she called the authorities, and after about half an hour he was found.

My reactions:

First, I used to live in Spring, Texas (it's a suburb of Houston). There are a lot of woods. But there's a lot of civilization too. I don't know if he was walking in circles or just managed to the find the most densely wooded area in town, but 3 miles is a pretty good stretch of uninhabited land for a significant suburb of a major city.

Second, why didn't the man call the authorities, himself, rather than call his wife? Is this just an extreme example of the stereotypical male being unwilling to stop and ask for directions? I can hear the conversation now "No, honey, I don't need to call the police, I have an excellent sense of direction. I just might be a little late for dinner, that's all."

Third, what was he doing driving a jeep in the middle of the woods? Is this what happens when you take SUV commercials too seriously?

Okay, joking aside. Many people don't know that nearly every cellphone made in the last couple of years has a GPS chip in it. It's not terribly sophisticated, but it's there expressly so the police/fire can find you. The jeep, it's worth noting, has not yet been recovered.

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com

Labels: GPS

Kent Couch's second lawn-chair-and-balloon-flight was a complete success. On July 5th, 2008, he traveled over 200 miles from Bend, Oregon and landed in a field in Cambridge. Cambridge, Idaho, that is.

Lawn-chair-and-balloon-flight aficionados were able to watch his progress online via his GPS device. Thank goodness the prevailing wind was Easterly, because if he'd gone 200 miles the other direction, he would have been over the open ocean.

So what did you do with your 4th of July weekend? Some people launch/watch fireworks. Some people dress up in red, white, and blue. Some sing patriotic songs. Some visit their families. Some barbecue and drink beer. And some tie a bunch of helium balloons to a lawn chair and fly across state lines. To quote Pink Floyd: "Shine on, you crazy diamond!"

FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com

Labels: current events, GPS