FoxTrax Blog

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.

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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
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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
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www.FoxTraxGPS.com

Labels: current events, GPS

Everyone drive safe over the weekend, and to those of you who won't be able to enjoy the three-day-holiday.

Nya nya nya.

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

Labels: humor

According to an article on NetWorkWorld.com, SkyHook Wireless has released XPS 2.0, the latest version of it's positioning firmware (the previous version can be found on, for example, the iPhone). XPS is an attempt to bridge the speed of WPS, in which a device uses the location of Wi-Fi access points to get a rapid position fix, and GPS, in which a device uses satellite data to get a very precise position fix.

XPS uses data from both to achieve both speed and accuracy, as well as (when necessary) cellular network data. Version 2.0 is supposed to have several improvements in the vein of it-does-the-same-thing-only-better, changes to the algorithm and what not.

GPS and it's derivatives still aren't perfect: there are lots of areas that lack coverage, satellite communication can be slow, and it's often a battery hog. But perfection is a goal, "usable" is what you actually sell, and it's not like cellphones never drop calls or work in the Antarctic. The technology is becoming more and more ubiquitous, especially in handhelds. To quote the article directly: "GPS is very precise, and a rash of specialized location products increasingly smarter versions of it." And while that isn't, technically, a sentence, it is a harbinger of what's heading our way. More and more, portable computers are replacing cellphones. More and more, these are coming with sophisticated GPS built-in.

What does this say about our culture? Well, we'll never get lost on the way to the supermarket again, not so long as the phone has battery. Alas, that it cannot also tell us which aisle has the hot-dog buns! I do worry sometimes about becoming over-dependent on such tools for simple things. I knew someone who, when asked what 10% of 300 was, punched a flurry of keys into her graphing calculator before responding emphatically that the answer was "30" (it is--but you shouldn't need the help for simple math like that). Will it be the same for GPS--will it result in an underdeveloped sense of direction? Will we be able to navigate if we go out into the wild--like people used to do in all those SUV commercials? Assuming there's no coverage out there.

I jest--there's coverage everywhere (right?). And as with all things, you can curse the changes or you can accept them, and I choose to say "thank you, Skyhook". The next time someone tells me to "Get lost," I can tell them that it's not very likely to happen.

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

Labels: GPS, technology

The national average price for gas broke another record today, rising to $4.087 per gallon from the previous record set yesterday, which was $4.086 per gallon.

Thank you CNN.com. It's not enough that we are all already thoroughly depressed by the rising gas prices, but you have to let us know about a record-shattering 1/10th of a cent increase in the average price. You know, on the off chance that someone had forgotten.

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

Labels: current events