Neat Technology

There’s a niche inside the GPS/Geographic tech industry that works with something called Location Based Services (LBS).  Basically what they do is work with technology that knows where you are, or knows where things are in real time.  On-Star is a  good example of this, as your car might have a GPS receiver, so that when you get into trouble, people know where you are.

Cell phones are increasingly getting that way as well.  GIS Monitor looked at one company, SquareLoop, that deals with providing technology that filters out what can and can’t use the location information that gets collected in your cell phone.  They wonder that as central systems become increasingly aware of where you are because of devices you carry, how can you protect yourself against being tracked, or being beeped every time you get close to a shoe sale or traffic congestion?

It could be conceivable that in the future, you can have your phone alert you to certain things, like set up a service that alerts you when you get near something of interest to you (as opposed to something of interest to your phone provider).  It could also be conceivable that the government could automatically send messages to the phones of people within a given area if need be.  Think that if a chemical spill, or something else toxic, happened.  Your phone knows where you are, and the government sends a request to your provider that alerts all the phones that fall into a certain radius around the event.

Just interesting stuff.