agps
GPS
The Epson Infineon GPS Chip Is Small Enough to Destroy Privacy Forever
11:40PM Mark Wilson | How small does a GPS chip get in its 12th round of development? Look at the match stick. More »
Phones
Sagem Orga Crams AGPS System Aboard SIM Card For Non-GPS Phones
10:06PM Kit Eaton | Sagem Orga, in partnership with BlueSky is targeting the array of mobile phones (and presumably mobile-internet enabled PCs and such) that currently don’t have GPS with this new invention: a SIM card with AGPS aboard. Clever stuff indeed, packing all the chips for a “highly accurate GPS receiver”, wiring and antenna into a thumbnail-sized space. We’ve got to wonder how good its satellite fixes will be with such a small device though, and since it looks like every gadget that comes out has GPS aboard nowadays, adding GPS to a device via its SIM card might just be a temporary stopgap option. But it’ll undeniably have lots of applications when it hits the market. [BGR] More »
Phones
LG Xenon 3G Side-Slider Pics and Specs Leak
8:45PM Kit Eaton | BoyGeniusReports has got hold of some imagery and specs for an upcoming LG slider phone, the Xenon. It’s a side-slider with QWERTY keypad, quad-band GSM and UMTS/HSPDA. It’s only got a 3-megapixel cam, so it’s no Viewty or KC910 but it does pack in AGPS, an accelerometer and proximity detector. More »
Phones
12:04PM Nick Broughall | Telstra just keeps rolling out those extra services to NextG customers. After the QR codes the other week, they’ve backed it up with some location-based software that uses A-GPS to locate where your friends and family are, making stalking your ex-girlfriend monitoring your kids whereabouts incredibly simple.
And once you get past the obvious nefarious uses, there are also some pretty useful practical applications for this. Like if you lose your phone (or it’s stolen), you can use a friend’s phone to locate yours. Or if you’re meeting up with some mates and they’re not answering their phone – you can just use this to find out roughly where they are.
The software itself is a free download, but getting the location of your mates has a fee (of course) – it’s 50 cents for a one-time thing lookup, plus 30 cents to actually receive the location alert. Alternatively, you can pay $2.95 each month and get unlimited searches (although it will still cost you 30 cents for each alert you receive.)
And even though we joked about stalking, you do need to have the person you’re trying to stalk you’re locating to accept your invitation before you can receive their location updates, and that may be kind of hard. I mean, you could always try and do it yourself, but that restraining order just keeps making things difficult, doesn’t it?
[Telstra] More »
Telstra Will Let You Stalk Your Friends With WhereIs Everyone
12:04PM Nick Broughall | Telstra just keeps rolling out those extra services to NextG customers. After the QR codes the other week, they’ve backed it up with some location-based software that uses A-GPS to locate where your friends and family are, making stalking your ex-girlfriend monitoring your kids whereabouts incredibly simple.
And once you get past the obvious nefarious uses, there are also some pretty useful practical applications for this. Like if you lose your phone (or it’s stolen), you can use a friend’s phone to locate yours. Or if you’re meeting up with some mates and they’re not answering their phone – you can just use this to find out roughly where they are.
The software itself is a free download, but getting the location of your mates has a fee (of course) – it’s 50 cents for a one-time thing lookup, plus 30 cents to actually receive the location alert. Alternatively, you can pay $2.95 each month and get unlimited searches (although it will still cost you 30 cents for each alert you receive.)
And even though we joked about stalking, you do need to have the person you’re trying to stalk you’re locating to accept your invitation before you can receive their location updates, and that may be kind of hard. I mean, you could always try and do it yourself, but that restraining order just keeps making things difficult, doesn’t it?
[Telstra] More »
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