Comments on: The cell phone lifeline challenge: Reader feedback
There have been a few dozen good responses to the post I wrote about new technologies or services that could help find people who get into trouble while traveling.
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Using your smartphone safely
faq Worms, Trojans, and SMS attacks are risks for mobile phones, but the biggest practical threat to users is losing the device.
There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it: -
1) Subject: Emergency number
Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. *Try it out.*
2) Subject: Have you locked your keys in the car? Does you car have remote keys?
This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone:
If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk). Editor's Note: *It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a cell phone!"
3) Subject: Hidden Battery power
Imagine your cell battery is very low, u r expecting an important call and u don't have a charger. Nokia instrument comes with a reserve battery. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when u charge your cell next time. Guys please keep these things in mind or write them down; I have tried them myself and trust me it works.
There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies. Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it: -
1) Subject: Emergency number
Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find yourself out of coverage area of your mobile network and there is an emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. *Try it out.*
2) Subject: Have you locked your keys in the car? Does you car have remote keys?
This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone:
If you lock your keys in the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot from your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other "remote" for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk). Editor's Note: *It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked our car over a cell phone!"
3) Subject: Hidden Battery power
Imagine your cell battery is very low, u r expecting an important call and u don't have a charger. Nokia instrument comes with a reserve battery. To activate, press the keys *3370# Your cell will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when u charge your cell next time. Guys please keep these things in mind or write them down; I have tried them myself and trust me it works.
ubiquity. However, I do believe that an important first step is to integrate
tracking systems into our vehicles. Here's why:
Reading through some of the posts here, I get the feeling that many people
feel that the cell phone needs to have more locator functionality or that GPS
and other satellite tracking units need to be shrunk down to a personal level.
But in a day and age when people are already carrying cell phones, PDAs,
laptops, and more pieces of tech, adding an additional piece of equipment
seems to me, an unpleasant proposition. And even if a personal-sized device
were available or integrated into cell phones, questions abound: 1) What if I
forget to take it with me? 2) What if it runs out of batteries? 3) Is there
enough power and signal strength to work in poor weather (snow storm) or
get a signal through piles of debris (natural disasters)?
Cell phones have limitations because manufacturers must consider size and
shape and battery life and a dozen other factors when designing cell phones.
Keep in mind: THEY ARE CELL PHONES, NOT EMERGENCY TRACKERS! So when
manufacturers go to the drawing board, they are thinking of how to improve
reception while maintaining decent battery life, how to shrink the battery and
phone size without reducing battery life, how to make the phone even
slimmer without overloading it with features that customers don't want. In
short, tradeoffs will be made because they are being designed as cell phones
FIRST. Nextel phones, like mine, have GPS functionality, but the GPS receiver
is fairly weak on my particular model (i870), compared to the GPS receiver on
my vehicle's navigation unit. Why? The GPS antenna in my car is roughly the
same size as my entire phone! My car is NOT constrained by size limitations
or personal portability. The car battery can provide enough power and
capacity to run a GPS transmitter for an extended period of time. And with a
system like OnStar, I can just push the SOS button and an emergency signal is
dispatched immediately. So... larger transmitter and more power would at
least increase the odds that a signal will get through even in poor weather
and other adverse conditions. Personal-sized devices are obviously going to
have smaller and thus weaker transmitters, and shorter battery life, and you
always leave the possibility that you'll forget it.
I believe the Kims' model vehicle/year had the option of OnStar, but elected
not to buy it. Additionally, I believe OnStar has an ongoing monthly
subscription for some of its services. As a consumer who doesn't really feel
that I need such a system, nor wish to pay for monthly service, I would have
made the same decision. Why spend extra money to buy something that you
don't feel is worth it? However, I believe that if such tracking systems become
a mandatory requirement for all manufacturers, then even if that cost must
be passed on to the buyer, AT LEAST it won't show up on the bill as an
additional line item, but as a standard feature that's already built into the
base price of the vehicle. From that standpoint then, it's not a decision of
going out and paying for something that you don't feel you need or don't
want, it simply becomes blurred in with the base price of the vehicle and so
you don't go about thinking of it as extra. *shrug* Hopefully that made sense.
But by making systems like OnStar a mandatory, standard feature, we
increase the odds that stranded motorists will be found right away.
I am by no means knocking some of the other ideas here about personal
locators. I do believe that those options still merit further pursuit, especially
for instances where people are NOT with their vehicles, such as camping or
hunting out in the wilderness. However, the technology to miniaturize those
devices and to improve their reliability and functionality may still be a ways
off due to size and power constraints. With vehicles, however, they do not
have those constraints and can be outfitted with more powerful tracking/
transmitter units. So for families who travel out on the road and find
themselves stuck in a sticky situation, whether it is on vacation or business or
any other reason, the vehicle itself can, TODAY, become its own lifesaving
device.
ubiquity. However, I do believe that an important first step is to integrate
tracking systems into our vehicles. Here's why:
Reading through some of the posts here, I get the feeling that many people
feel that the cell phone needs to have more locator functionality or that GPS
and other satellite tracking units need to be shrunk down to a personal level.
But in a day and age when people are already carrying cell phones, PDAs,
laptops, and more pieces of tech, adding an additional piece of equipment
seems to me, an unpleasant proposition. And even if a personal-sized device
were available or integrated into cell phones, questions abound: 1) What if I
forget to take it with me? 2) What if it runs out of batteries? 3) Is there
enough power and signal strength to work in poor weather (snow storm) or
get a signal through piles of debris (natural disasters)?
Cell phones have limitations because manufacturers must consider size and
shape and battery life and a dozen other factors when designing cell phones.
Keep in mind: THEY ARE CELL PHONES, NOT EMERGENCY TRACKERS! So when
manufacturers go to the drawing board, they are thinking of how to improve
reception while maintaining decent battery life, how to shrink the battery and
phone size without reducing battery life, how to make the phone even
slimmer without overloading it with features that customers don't want. In
short, tradeoffs will be made because they are being designed as cell phones
FIRST. Nextel phones, like mine, have GPS functionality, but the GPS receiver
is fairly weak on my particular model (i870), compared to the GPS receiver on
my vehicle's navigation unit. Why? The GPS antenna in my car is roughly the
same size as my entire phone! My car is NOT constrained by size limitations
or personal portability. The car battery can provide enough power and
capacity to run a GPS transmitter for an extended period of time. And with a
system like OnStar, I can just push the SOS button and an emergency signal is
dispatched immediately. So... larger transmitter and more power would at
least increase the odds that a signal will get through even in poor weather
and other adverse conditions. Personal-sized devices are obviously going to
have smaller and thus weaker transmitters, and shorter battery life, and you
always leave the possibility that you'll forget it.
I believe the Kims' model vehicle/year had the option of OnStar, but elected
not to buy it. Additionally, I believe OnStar has an ongoing monthly
subscription for some of its services. As a consumer who doesn't really feel
that I need such a system, nor wish to pay for monthly service, I would have
made the same decision. Why spend extra money to buy something that you
don't feel is worth it? However, I believe that if such tracking systems become
a mandatory requirement for all manufacturers, then even if that cost must
be passed on to the buyer, AT LEAST it won't show up on the bill as an
additional line item, but as a standard feature that's already built into the
base price of the vehicle. From that standpoint then, it's not a decision of
going out and paying for something that you don't feel you need or don't
want, it simply becomes blurred in with the base price of the vehicle and so
you don't go about thinking of it as extra. *shrug* Hopefully that made sense.
But by making systems like OnStar a mandatory, standard feature, we
increase the odds that stranded motorists will be found right away.
I am by no means knocking some of the other ideas here about personal
locators. I do believe that those options still merit further pursuit, especially
for instances where people are NOT with their vehicles, such as camping or
hunting out in the wilderness. However, the technology to miniaturize those
devices and to improve their reliability and functionality may still be a ways
off due to size and power constraints. With vehicles, however, they do not
have those constraints and can be outfitted with more powerful tracking/
transmitter units. So for families who travel out on the road and find
themselves stuck in a sticky situation, whether it is on vacation or business or
any other reason, the vehicle itself can, TODAY, become its own lifesaving
device.
It is not healthy to smother people with attention, checking, cross checking and validating their location. That only serves to reduce their sense of and attention to personal responsibility - and the potentially fatal consequences of their actions. It develops (or, rather, further develops - this exists too much already) a misguided sense of somebody else always being responsible for your difficulties, your safety and the consequences of YOUR actions.
The "developed" world is already just about the lowest risk environment mankind has ever lived in. Even so people manage to get into difficult and dangerous situations - without being sufficiently prepared. Always have, always will. And yet we also become obsessed with trying to eliminate the 1 in millions risk of (name your problem here) with complex and expensive technical solutions when a little forethought and personal responsibility would have done the job.
ANY death of a young man is to be lamented. I feel deeply for his family, friends and colleagues - and yet I can imagine the conversations that may have gone on in that car, stuck in the snow, as he and his wife debated exactly how they came to be in that situation. All of you who are married, in a long term relationship or part of a family that ever got even slightly lost when travelling know what I mean!
US culture is too obsessed with technology as the solution to all problems and too obsessed with passing off personal responsibility to technology and, via law making and litigation, to any suitable target - such as, in the future, the maker of the newly defined "safety cell phone" because, on some occasion it did not work as hoped for.
A gentle focus on personal responsibility, living with the consequences of one's actions and accepting that risk is part of life would be cheaper, more effective and also honour the rights and integrity of individuals.
It is not healthy to smother people with attention, checking, cross checking and validating their location. That only serves to reduce their sense of and attention to personal responsibility - and the potentially fatal consequences of their actions. It develops (or, rather, further develops - this exists too much already) a misguided sense of somebody else always being responsible for your difficulties, your safety and the consequences of YOUR actions.
The "developed" world is already just about the lowest risk environment mankind has ever lived in. Even so people manage to get into difficult and dangerous situations - without being sufficiently prepared. Always have, always will. And yet we also become obsessed with trying to eliminate the 1 in millions risk of (name your problem here) with complex and expensive technical solutions when a little forethought and personal responsibility would have done the job.
ANY death of a young man is to be lamented. I feel deeply for his family, friends and colleagues - and yet I can imagine the conversations that may have gone on in that car, stuck in the snow, as he and his wife debated exactly how they came to be in that situation. All of you who are married, in a long term relationship or part of a family that ever got even slightly lost when travelling know what I mean!
US culture is too obsessed with technology as the solution to all problems and too obsessed with passing off personal responsibility to technology and, via law making and litigation, to any suitable target - such as, in the future, the maker of the newly defined "safety cell phone" because, on some occasion it did not work as hoped for.
A gentle focus on personal responsibility, living with the consequences of one's actions and accepting that risk is part of life would be cheaper, more effective and also honour the rights and integrity of individuals.
- by lparker3470 August 24, 2009 12:05 AM PDT
- may be of interest... http://www.itag.com especially with some of the discussion about sharing your location with friends like mologogo
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