A few years ago, the FCC mandated that cell phones have GPS capacity or some form of location mechanism to ensure that the phone and its operator could be located in the case of a 911 call. The law took effect at the start of 2005. These days, over one hundred million cell phones in this country have a chip that provides GPS capacity and increasingly, software services are emerging that put them to use.
GPS stands for Global Positioning Software and it merely means that an equipped device can be located by the satellites overhead in geosynchronous orbit that are built to pick up GPS signals. Whilst the cell phone companies initially were reluctant to participate, they have started to develop subscription services which provide software to help you use the tracking system.
The GPS technology without special features simply pinpoints the location of your cell phone. A techie known as Chuck Fletcher created a freeware program known as Mologogo which allows one Mologogo equipped phone to locate other, similarly equipped phones. It has become a method for a couple of thousand cell owners to monitor each other, but has not moved much beyond that.
Verizon and Sprint have developed subscription services that will allow your phone to identify your location, complete with overhead map. It's a mobile driving assistance tool that should enjoy some degree of popularity. The cell phone companies have been reticent to provide general access to the GPS feature in their phones, because it could be a sensitive privacy issue - particularly if you are somewhere you're not supposed to be.
Most importantly, nevertheless, is the fact that the cell operators view the GPS technology as a potential profit center. One way to get driving directions with a GPS cell phone is to subscribe to a GPS navigation service. Nextel offers two: Televigation's TeleNav and Motorola's ViaMoto. Utilizing the GPS and Nextel's network, TeleNav and ViaMoto can send driving directions to a Nextel phone. If you make a wrong turn or miss a street, the service detects that you're off the route and new route is calculated to put you back on track.
Apart from the basic mapping and location support, if you are a Sprint-Nextel customer you can subscribe to a service known as Smarter Agent. This GPS supported technology is tied to a real estate database and can give you information on home sales in the neighborhood where you and your cell phone are actually located. It will identify which homes have sold in the neighborhood in the past few years, and for what price.
Verizon has a service called getGOING. You can download applications such as AtlasBook Places. With AtlasBook Places you are able to get maps and directions and navigate to nearby places. An option is a web-based planning tool. These functions are available on selected Verizon phones.
There's an inherent privacy issue here that's a challenge for the major cell providers. Sprint-Nextel is the only company that has always allowed access to the GPS chips in its handsets. They have a strict privacy agreement with any third party service providers like Smart Agent. If you download software that is not provided through Nextel, nevertheless, you have no such guarantee of privacy. This issue, apart from dollar signs, is what has kept GPS functionality largely an in-house development of the cell phone companies.
GPS stands for Global Positioning Software and it merely means that an equipped device can be located by the satellites overhead in geosynchronous orbit that are built to pick up GPS signals. Whilst the cell phone companies initially were reluctant to participate, they have started to develop subscription services which provide software to help you use the tracking system.
The GPS technology without special features simply pinpoints the location of your cell phone. A techie known as Chuck Fletcher created a freeware program known as Mologogo which allows one Mologogo equipped phone to locate other, similarly equipped phones. It has become a method for a couple of thousand cell owners to monitor each other, but has not moved much beyond that.
Verizon and Sprint have developed subscription services that will allow your phone to identify your location, complete with overhead map. It's a mobile driving assistance tool that should enjoy some degree of popularity. The cell phone companies have been reticent to provide general access to the GPS feature in their phones, because it could be a sensitive privacy issue - particularly if you are somewhere you're not supposed to be.
Most importantly, nevertheless, is the fact that the cell operators view the GPS technology as a potential profit center. One way to get driving directions with a GPS cell phone is to subscribe to a GPS navigation service. Nextel offers two: Televigation's TeleNav and Motorola's ViaMoto. Utilizing the GPS and Nextel's network, TeleNav and ViaMoto can send driving directions to a Nextel phone. If you make a wrong turn or miss a street, the service detects that you're off the route and new route is calculated to put you back on track.
Apart from the basic mapping and location support, if you are a Sprint-Nextel customer you can subscribe to a service known as Smarter Agent. This GPS supported technology is tied to a real estate database and can give you information on home sales in the neighborhood where you and your cell phone are actually located. It will identify which homes have sold in the neighborhood in the past few years, and for what price.
Verizon has a service called getGOING. You can download applications such as AtlasBook Places. With AtlasBook Places you are able to get maps and directions and navigate to nearby places. An option is a web-based planning tool. These functions are available on selected Verizon phones.
There's an inherent privacy issue here that's a challenge for the major cell providers. Sprint-Nextel is the only company that has always allowed access to the GPS chips in its handsets. They have a strict privacy agreement with any third party service providers like Smart Agent. If you download software that is not provided through Nextel, nevertheless, you have no such guarantee of privacy. This issue, apart from dollar signs, is what has kept GPS functionality largely an in-house development of the cell phone companies.
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