Follows is a copy of an article from TechWeb News. I thought something like
this would make an interesting (and cheap) application for a vehicle
security device (ala LoJack):
=== The Scoop ===============================
A GPS In Every Pocket
TechWeb News
Jeffrey Harrow
I've speculated before, as I travel with my trusty GPS receivers and
mapping software, that I believe these GPS capabilities will end up on
all our dashboards -- it's just too useful a traveling companion for it
not to happen. But I haven't considered GPS might soon end up in all
our pockets -- that seemed a little too far out. Yet, Moore's Law and
our semiconductor industry has proven again if someone can conceive of
a good idea, it may soon appear.
SiRF Technology has developed a tiny GPS receiver chip that, they say,
can receive GPS signals even through dense foliage and in city canyons
-- and it's specifically designed to fit into cellular phones.
This could mean the day may not be too far away when every pocket cell
phone knows where it is. Every car knows where it is. And if they're
inexpensive enough, everything that is mobile, including our kids.
SiRF offers us several visions of the "location-enabled" future:
Building these chips into a specialized necklace, bracelet, or watch,
along with a special transmitter, could let anyone "push the panic
button" and summon help right to where they're at; your cell phone,
knowing where it is, could use the Internet to easily tell you where to
go to satisfy that craving for a Northern Italian meal; you might never
again have to worry about "losing" your kids at a theme park -- you
could see where they are on your phone's screen.
Your car might sense a flat tire and automatically summon a roving
automobile-club truck to your exact location before you roll to a stop.
And here's a combination-of-services idea I rather like: If you're in a
strange city and want to take a bus or tram somewhere, your
GPS-equipped pocket cell phone could direct you to the nearest stop and
display the routes for the buses that stop there. Then, if you enter
your destination address, it could tell you which bus or tram to take.
And if you're in a progressive city that exposes the (GPS-derived)
location of its public-transportation vehicles through the Internet,
your phone could show you exactly how close the next one is to your
stop (and perhaps advise you that you'd better run if you don't want to
miss it.)
"OK," you may be thinking, "maybe these chips will be available, but
it'll be a long time before they migrate into affordable cell phones."
Well, maybe not. According to Upside, where SiRF has made it into its
"1999 Hot 100," the Federal Communications Commission has mandated that
all U.S. cell phones have GPS capabilities by October 2001, ostensibly
to augment 911 emergency services. And this will likely spread beyond
phones -- companies such as Acer and Umax already say they plan to
GPS-equip some of their consumer-electronics devices.
Of course, SiRF may or may not end up being the company that, er, puts
its GPS chips on the map, but it does seem clear the end result of
location-enabled "things" will occur. And that opens up a vast world of
products and services beyond those we've just explored.
Jeffrey Harrow is a senior consulting engineer for the corporate
strategy and technology group at Compaq.
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