I suppose I should have known that uLocate
was different than most of the technology companies I meet.
The sign on the door had the name of an investment company.
But it did have uLocate sign on it, too.
uLocate is the brainchild of three entrepreneurs, all with
experience in "applied technology" solutions. The
idea of taking advantage of cell phones' soon-to-be supported
location awareness seemed to them to be a natural business
to explore. Their logic goes this way: if there are 150 million
phones in use in the U.S. growing at about 15% per year, and
in time, they are all location-aware, if 1% of users tap into
location-based services at $5 a pop, the
money adds up very quickly. The company began development
last November and started going public with its service in
the last few weeks. I saw a press release about the company's
current offer of free service and noted the address was just
outside Boston. I was invited out for a demo a few weeks ago.
uLocate's system is GPS-based. That means
it supports only five phones: two from Benefon (a Finnish
company) and three from Motorola. The newest Motorola phone,
introduced in the last two weeks, is a big step forward in
that it automatically loads the required Java application.
On earlier models it has to be manually loaded by choosing
an option on a menu.
Partner Alan Phillips pointed out that nearly all location
queries can be done right on the phone - there's no requirement
to find a Web-enabled computer and boot up a browser. Of course
you can do that if you wish should it be more convenient.
He feels that the phone will ultimately be the way most users
- home or business - will be using the service. So, using
the phone, he illustrated a group (a number of people who
want to keep track of each other, in this case, some of the
company staff) and we checked on their locations. The phones
send out location information every two minutes via a data
packet on the wireless service. The latitude and longitude
pairs are reverse-geocoded by MapQuest (uLocate licenses the
technology and runs it on a local server) and displayed on
the phone as text, or alternatively, on a map. Above, are
the locations of several of the uLocate staff members on one
particular evening. The map above shows them, too.
We took a look at Phillips' recent geographic history and
saw the route he took from his home to work. Twenty-seven
dots marked the route and correctly showed the roughly one
hour ride to the office. The system can also interpolate the
route and show a single linear path ("connecting the
dots"). At left, for example, is bike rider Drew's path
in Tennessee, part of a trip across the country. The data
held on the server goes back 90 days, so it's possible to
know where Phillips was on say, Labor Day. History, while
perhaps interesting for family use, is more likely to be of
use to businesses. For example, did the delivery person show
up on time within the hours when the refrigerator was promised?
Typically, when I think of "tracking," I picture
someone keeping tabs on the whereabouts of a person and/or
vehicle. In point of fact, Phillips noted, that's not how
the service is used in practice, at least around his house.
He has a teenage son. The phone can let Phillips know when
his son's soccer team has returned to school after a late
game so that he can go and pick him up. He can get alerts
when his son gets home from school. uLocate uses the term
geofence to identify a buffer around a point. Alerts can be
set up to send messages (SMS, or e-mail for example) when
a particular phone passes into or out of an area.
One burning question I've had of all GPS-based
location devices, especially for children, is what happens
when they go inside and there is no signal? The answer in
the uLocate application is that the system shows the phone's
last successfully delivered location, likely just outside
a building. And, when the child leaves (goes back outside)
the signal picks up again. As Phillips puts it, "I'm
not so concerned about my son is when he's in school, but
I like knowing when he leaves. It's just a service that makes
my life easier."
About half of uLocate's 200 current users are families. The
rest are small businesses that keep track of traditional fleets,
like tow trucks and delivery vans. Why would a fleet maanger
choose a phone location solution over a solution attached
to a vehicle? Phillips noted that embedded dedicated GPS
boxes for fleet tracking typically run about $1000. The hardware
costs for cell phones are roughly zero, since practically
everyone carries one. (And, in time, they'll all be locatable,
though not necessarily using GPS.)
For now uLocate's service can be tested for free, but come
next year the pricing plan will run $12.95/month for the first
phone and $9.95 for each additional phone, with discounts
starting at six phones. Down the road the uLocate team imagines
a freely available "where am I" platform with optional
services that users can pick and choose from an extensive
menu of options (find the nearest ATM, routing, etc.).
Frank Schroth, one of the other partners, feels strongly
that we need to see the "big brother" aspect of
this technology as two-sided. Certainly it can be intrusive
and used in questionable ways, but "big brothers can
also be called upon to keep children safe. We need to see
location-based services as simply that, services
that make our lives easier and safer. Or in the case of business,
services that help insure customer satisfaction and provide
more profit." |
GIS Monitor
