location

An electronics firm has unveiled a wristwatch device that helps parents stay in touch with young children. It's aimed at people who think their kids are too young to have a smartphone. Filip Technologies says its watch, which is called the 'FiLip', ... is aimed at children aged 4 to 11. Although the FiLiP watch uses smartphone technology, it only performs a few functions and has just two buttons. (Source: myfilip.com ) Pressing one button will place a phone call. However, the child can only choose between one of up to five pre-programmed numbers. The phones using those numbers can also call or ... (view more)

A new study shows that it's possible to use mobile phone location data to find an individual. Researchers say that, in most cases, getting four confirmed locations for a person is enough to identify their handset. The study's findings appear in the ... latest edition of Scientific Reports. According to the researchers, most users understand and accept that mobile phone service providers track their locations. Customers are usually 'OK' with this because the data is kept confidential and only provided to law enforcement authorities after a warrant has been issued. (Source: nature.com ) Anonymous ... (view more)

A US Senate committee has approved the Location Privacy Protection Act. It's a bill that would ban the smartphone tools which allow people to track others without their knowledge. The act, introduced by Senator Al Franken, would force companies ... offering smartphone apps to get a phone user's permission before collecting or passing on data about their location. The new rules would also explicitly ban any application that tracked locations without the phone user's knowledge. (Source: govtrack.us ) According to Franken, such measures are necessary to prevent cases of people secretly installing a ... (view more)

British researchers are working on an alternative to Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation that will function when GPS fails. They say the GPS satellite system might not last forever, and could be damaged by a freak space incident or even a ... military conflict. The new system comes from BAE systems, a defense company in the United Kingdom. BAE has for some time been trying to find alternatives to GPS, which works by comparing a device's location to multiple satellites in space. Solar Flare Could Destroy GPS Satellites While GPS functions well for now, it is vulnerable to satellite ... (view more)

The major players in the Internet search market continue to add new tweaks to their presentation: Google is putting more emphasis on local results, while Yahoo has launched a refined image search feature. Previously, Google would supply search ... results based on the location of the IP address. For example: searching for a "museum in Cameron, North Carolina," using a mobile phone would produce results towards the phone's current location. Local Links Without Log-in From now on, people searching from a computer will get their usual results, but for appropriate search terms they'll also ... (view more)