GPS Tracking

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Football is a game where a win or loss can come down to a matter of inches. The official who makes that determination can have some of the pressure lifted from his shoulders if a GPS tracking chip is planted in the game ball.

No more questionable overturns on plays buried under a pile of bodies. No arguments about whether a player had control of the ball when he went out of bounds.

It’s not ready to happen in the U.S., where GPS technology manufacturers such as LandAirSea Systems dominate in vehicle tracking and fleet management applications.  But next season, GPS tracking technology could settle a few spats in Australian-rules football. Read the rest of this entry »

You Can Be the First on Your Block to Own a 3D TV

At least three major players in the consumer electronics business are expected to roll out mass-marketed versions of 3D television within the next few months.

Start saving your movie money. Building off the momentum of “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland,” big-screen movies with eye-popping special effects, Sony, Samsung and Panasonic are posturing for market dominance on a household scale. An electronics research firm estimates 1.2 million 3D TVs will be sold globally this year, exploding to 15.6 million units just three years from now (2013).

Depending on who you talk to (and considering the source), this might be the greatest thing to hit the home entertainment industry since the world converted from black and white to color television sets. (And surely, everyone over the age of 50 will vividly remember what lucky family on their block was the first to go color.) Read the rest of this entry »

By JAMES NEELY / guest writer

-        James is a freelance writer for Rocky Mountain Tracking based in Fort Collins Colorado, a provider of GPS tracking products, software and accessories. For information about Rocky Mountain Tracking, Inc. visit www.RMTracking.com.

Some of us have seen video footage on reality TV shows that shows an ATM machine being pulled from a store so that the perpetrators can take it down the road, bust it open and steal the cash inside.  It does not happen a lot in the U.S. but is apparently a big enough problem in Europe that GPS Tracking devices are now being added to the units.

In Greece, ATMs are being outfitted with these devices to help alert police to the location of the units if they are stolen.

The hope is that adding these devices will help to both avert attempts but more importantly, track the stolen terminals.

Location

The GPS Tracking devices will track the location of the ATMs at all times and provide instantaneous location should the unit become stolen.  Plus, with on-board batteries

Sensors

The ATMs will be outfitted with sensors that will detect movement or temperature changes.  Once these have been activated, the GPS device will then send out multiple alarms to a preset list of recipients.

Incidents of ATM theft have increased to 32% in Greece and this has precipitated this use of technology.  These GPS Tracking devices can be retrofitted to any ATM, so there is no need for a financial institution to invest in all new machines just to take advantage of this much needed system.

The fact is that more of these will be deployed in the coming months around the world as economic conditions have created desperate actions on the part of citizenry in obtaining money to buy food for their families.

While that reasoning is understandable, it does not justify stealing.  Many more businesses will be adding additional methods to help prevent crime and recover from it, too.  GPS Tracking devices stand to play a major role as noted here and will continue to be used even in good times.

Not too long ago, when people heard of GPS tracking and navigational technology, they immediately thought of the automated voice in their car dashboard giving them turn-by-turn directions; or perhaps law enforcement or the military, for which the Global Positioning System satellites were designed.

We’ve come much further than that in the last 10 or 20 years. Today, the ever-expanding community of GPS tracking users includes business people, soccer moms, parents of teenagers, and pet lovers, to name a few. Read the rest of this entry »

New York City Transit Authority Tests New Tracking Systems

It has been about nine months since new, experimental tracking systems were put to use in the subways and on the streets of New York City; long enough to do a fair analysis of their benefits versus costs.

The tracking systems calculate commuter vehicle arrival times and display those wait times at train stations and bus stops on overhead  LED clocks. Early conclusions are that schedules run tighter and tempers run cooler, as they have when similar public vehicle tracking systems were introduced in Chicago, Washington, London and Paris. Read the rest of this entry »

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – The GPS tracking feature of a victim’s cell phone helped police in Sioux Falls foil a robbery and kidnapping in progress. A former professional football player is behind bars, accused of the crimes.

A spokesperson for the Sioux Falls Police reported that the accused is Alvin Richard Robinson, 26, who calls that city his home. His charges include aggravated assault, second degree robbery and first degree kidnapping.

According to accounts pieced together from the victim and police, the incident spanned an overnight, Feb. 10-11, 2010, and was essentially a night of drinking that drew progressively more violent. Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON COUNTY, VT – Two brothers are facing up to 10 years each in federal prison for dealing heroin on the East Coast.

They could have minimized the damage to their lives if they had changed their habits after their initial arrests; but they went right back to their routine and repeated the offense.

Police caught the culprits twice in the very same way: with GPS tracking devices on their cars. Read the rest of this entry »

Will Plot Be Believable With Modern Technology?

The rumor out of Tinseltown is that Warner Bros. is planning an adaption of the old TV series “Gilligan’s Island” for the big screen.

Really. Few people remember it being that good the first time.

Apparently, some Hollywood executive figured other 1960s and 1970s classic TV shows were remade with moderate success, including “The Beverly Hillbillies” (1962-1971), “Bewitched” (1964-1972) and “Starsky & Hutch” (1975 to 1979), so why not “Gilligan’s Island?” Read the rest of this entry »

Something fishy is going on in the refuse department in Vadodara, India.

An internal investigation by the city’s governing council, the Vadodara Municipal Corporation, (VMC) seems to indicate that the independent contractors hired to do garbage pickup are padding their wallets by weighing down their loads. The fleet management supervisor proposes to install GPS tracking systems on municipal trucks in an effort to solve the problem.

Vadodara is one of the biggest cities in the Indian state of Guyjarat. It has a population estimated at 1.6 million, and a high industrial base, mostly in chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Garbage pickup is a high priority service in such a densely-populated area. Residents and business owners are not pleased when garbage day passes and their receptacles go untouched. Read the rest of this entry »

The United Kingdom’s inaugural 1,000-mile Sport Relief Celebrity Million Pound Bike Ride got off to a rough start March 1 when the first fundraising competitor took a spill on a steep upward ascent.

Comedienne Miranda Hart started the first leg of the marathon – which promised to be grueling and physically demanding – and shortly thereafter toppled and cut her leg. She passed the accident off as a textbook pratfall, but the challenge has now become a frightening reality for the team.

The goal is lofty: to raise 1 million pounds, which translates to about $1.5 million U.S. dollars, for charity. The team will be traveling non-stop for four days along a course from John o’Groats in Scotland to Land’s End in England, aided by GPS tracking devices. One celebrity sportsperson will ride at a time, with the others resting, recovering and rooting on their peers from a tour bus along the route. Read the rest of this entry »