A GPS Device for Keeping Tabs on the Children

A GPS Device for Keeping Tabs on the Children

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_...-keeping-tabs-
on-the/20070621115509990001
http://tinyurl.com/2u2nju

By SARAH CHILDRESS
Posted: 2007-06-21 11:57:51

Gone are the days when parents stood on the back porch and shouted for
their kids.

The AmberWatch Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on preventing
child abduction, announced the pending launch of a Global Positioning
System software application called AmberWatch Mobile. Parents can use
the application to monitor their children's movements and children can
use it to send an alert to their parents notifying them of their exact
location.

The software enabling the service can be downloaded to a child's GPS-
enabled cellphone. It then allows parents to log on to a dedicated Web
site, amberwatchmobile.com, and quickly pinpoint their child's
cellphone location. The child can also zap his or her location from
the GPS-compatible handset via text message or email to the parent's
phone by hitting a few keys on their cellphone.

The application can also be set up to send an alert to a parent's
cellphone when the child gets home from school, or strays from a
designated area, creating a kind of digital fence.

Eventually, the application could also be linked to a panic button on
the child's cellphone which, when pressed, emits a high-decibel sound
to ward off potential abductors.

It's still unclear when the software will hit the market, and it's
still being developed by WaveMarket Inc., a company that develops
location-tracking technology for cellphones. The foundation says it's
in talks with major wireless carriers to support the service, which
users would be able to download from a Web site onto their handsets
for $4.99 a month. Half of the fee would be donated to the AmberWatch
Foundation. No carriers have committed yet.

The service is part of a wave of new GPS products appearing on the
market, as GPS chips are built into an increasing number of handsets,
partly a result of government regulations that require them for 911
purposes. Other GPS services include navigation tools and "buddy
finders" that help track locations of friends.

A few companies have already developed products that keep tabs on
children, such as Walt Disney Co.'s Disney Mobile and Sprint Nextel
Corp., which both offer similar Family Locator services that let
parents look up their child's location on a Web site or cellphone.

But AmberWatch Mobile will be the first GPS application that also lets
the child initiate the sending of exact GPS coordinates to parents.

2007-06-21 11:55:46

In article . com, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote:
A GPS Device for Keeping Tabs on the Children

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_...-keeping-tabs-
on-the/20070621115509990001
http://tinyurl.com/2u2nju

By SARAH CHILDRESS
Posted: 2007-06-21 11:57:51

Gone are the days when parents stood on the back porch and shouted for
their kids.

The AmberWatch Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on preventing
child abduction, announced the pending launch of a Global Positioning
System software application called AmberWatch Mobile. Parents can use
the application to monitor their children's movements and children can
use it to send an alert to their parents notifying them of their exact
location.

The software enabling the service can be downloaded to a child's GPS-
enabled cellphone. It then allows parents to log on to a dedicated Web
site, amberwatchmobile.com, and quickly pinpoint their child's
cellphone location. The child can also zap his or her location from
the GPS-compatible handset via text message or email to the parent's
phone by hitting a few keys on their cellphone.

Sounds to me like something On Star should have come up with.

Wonder what it costs, plus cell phone plan.

greg

GregS wrote:
In article . com, "Fred Goodwin, CMA" wrote:
A GPS Device for Keeping Tabs on the Children

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_...-keeping-tabs-
on-the/20070621115509990001
http://tinyurl.com/2u2nju

By SARAH CHILDRESS
Posted: 2007-06-21 11:57:51

Gone are the days when parents stood on the back porch and shouted for
their kids.

The AmberWatch Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on preventing
child abduction, announced the pending launch of a Global Positioning
System software application called AmberWatch Mobile. Parents can use
the application to monitor their children's movements and children can
use it to send an alert to their parents notifying them of their exact
location.

The software enabling the service can be downloaded to a child's GPS-
enabled cellphone. It then allows parents to log on to a dedicated Web
site, amberwatchmobile.com, and quickly pinpoint their child's
cellphone location. The child can also zap his or her location from
the GPS-compatible handset via text message or email to the parent's
phone by hitting a few keys on their cellphone.

Sounds to me like something On Star should have come up with.

Wonder what it costs, plus cell phone plan.

greg

Can't we just implant them at birth with a chip that we can signal on
our computer to find out their location, state of arousal, and alcohol
level? Even X and THC levels? How many kids are they engaged with in
what they now call heavy petting? That's why Clinton claimed "I did not
have sex with that woman." To her it was only heavy petting. Or as
Susan Sarandon sang in Rocky Horror, can lead to "seat wetting".
(forget grammar, both Shakespeare and I do)

We never had a watch video for the kids, like the one that recently
pulled in the NASA channel. But we did what is now forbidden, which was
to let our kids sleep on their bellies with their butts in the air,
which they found to be most comfortable. I had a baby nephew die of
crib death a little later and it shattered my half-brother's family. I
was never able to learn any details as the parents went nuts over guilt,
even converting to Christianity. And later selling drugs: a now famous
singer was one of their mules. My kids got out of their early childhood
in great shape, but very different.

Even now in their late 30s, I say, these are *my* kids?

As a young father I wrote a few theses and papers while keeping them
under my eye. They had their run of the house, but I was always
available to fix toys and settle disputes a la Solomon. And make my
world-champion pancakes when necessary.

But a few years ago friends visited with two young daughters. We got
them together on a mountaineering trip. We have a dog, Achilles, whom
they liked to play with, but I kept a watch out, reading at the basement
desk (our basement is 'finished'), as sometimes things can
unintentionally or intentionally get out of hand. The elder sister
foxed the younger sister, then just 4, to come up to my desk and ask
innocently "Why does Achilles keep licking his cock?" Not a question
you expect from a 4-yr-old girl. But I saw that the elder sister was
doing her best to make herself invisible, and so managed with aplomb, as
my kids had asked even more off the wall questions.

Between my two marriages, in Pasadena, there was a rock band called The
Roto-Rooter Band with the lead 'singer' called Awfthe Wally. I saw them
when I could, which is not to say that my dates always felt favored.

jimbat