Dave:

From today's (UK) Guardian:

Where R U? Text service tracks teens

Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent Wednesday July 20, 2005 The Guardian

It is a familiar dilemma for parents of teenagers testing new-found independence - do you sit at home fretting over their after-school whereabouts or call their mobiles and risk a tirade against over- protectiveness?

The answer, according to one company, is a hi-tech apron string based on the mobile phone location tracking techniques used in police investigations.

The new KidsOK service, sold in shops including Boots and Bhs as the summer holidays start, allows parents to use their own mobiles and their children's to "discreetly" locate wandering offspring (or their phones, at least) to within about 500m in built-up areas.

Instead of dialling their teenager's number, parents subscribing to the service send or "ping" a text message including the child's name to a special mailbox. Within 60 seconds, they receive a map (if they have a picturephone) or a description showing the position of the youngster's phone.

The system uses technology which traces the location of a mobile by pinpointing it within the three nearest mobile phone masts. Because the masts are clustered in built-up areas, the method is most accurate in cities and gives a much less precise picture in rural areas.

. . . . Full story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1532026,00.htm cheers brian -- School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 222 7923 FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/ ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]