Crave

A growing number of devices aim to track Alzheimer's and other patients who have a tendency to wander. Of course, many of these devices must be remembered to be worn to be of any use.

GPS-fitted shoes, then, seem like one of the most obvious accessories given shoes are generally required for, well, wandering.

Shoemaker Aetrex, with the help of GPS device makers GTX, is now selling its GPS Shoe after it received FCC clearance in September 2011.

The shoes themselves, available for men and women with either straps or shoelaces, go for $299.99 a pair, while the monthly service plan runs $30 to $40.

LAS VEGAS--I had my first encounter with Escort here at CES this week, and I'm not talking about looking for a date or an inexpensive sedan from the 1990s.

Escort is an Ohio-based company that's been making radar and laser detectors for decades now. This week, its "ticket protection social network for drivers," Escort Live, won a 2012 Innovation Design and Engineering award at CES.

The system is made up of the same kind of radar detector with which you're probably familiar, along with a Bluetooth-embedded "SmartCord Live" cord that connects to your iOS or Android smartphone more

Magellan isn't afraid to get a little sweaty, as the GPS manufacturer is getting into the fitness tech game.

Known for its in-car navigation systems, today Magellan introduced its first pair of GPS fitness watches for runners, cyclers, swimmers, and triathletes. The Switch and Switch Up will be on display at CES 2012, with expected availability for spring 2012.

The Switch is designed primarily for runners, according to Magellan, and offers a 1.26-inch monochrome display, a high-sensitivity GPS receiver, and embedded ANT+ technology, so you can connect to third-party heart-rate monitors, foot pods, bike sensors, and so forth. more

When Asus unveiled its Honeycomb-powered Transformer Prime tablet last November, it stated that Ice Cream Sandwich would be on the tablet by year's end. As owners of the tablet can tell you, that didn't pan out. However, according to its Facebook page, the company will begin pushing the update to Prime owners worldwide, starting January 12.

That's the boring part though, since Asus made no secret of the fact that ICS was coming. More intriguing however, are the other parts of Asus's Facebook post.

Since the release of the Transformer Prime, two potential issues have come more

A scrappy rebel alliance launches jury-rigged space weapons in the hope of defeating a monolithic empire that's put the choke hold on freedom.

Sound like a space opera you might've seen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?

Actually, it's the latest imagined scenario to arise from one of Europe's major hacking conferences, which just wrapped up its 2011 edition in Berlin.

As the BBC's David Meyer reports, SOPA-hating hackers at the 28th Chaos Communication Congress (or 28C3) are hatching a plan to develop a DIY satellite-communications network that could keep the Internet alive and unfettered in the face of any government effort to pull the plug.

"The first goal is an uncensorable Internet in space," Meyer quotes hacktivist Nick Farr as saying. "Let's take the Internet out of the control of terrestrial entities."

Farr and others dream of a Hackerspace Global Grid made up of homemade satellites, along with ground stations for tracking and communicating with the self-made Sputniks.

Imagine popping in your earbuds, queuing up some tunes, going for a stroll, and then listening to the music morph in response to your surroundings.

Thanks to electronic-music duo Bluebrain--along with a clutch of willing musician friends, the expertise of a software developer, and the iPhone's built-in GPS system--that Brian Eno-esque fantasy is, in fact, a reality.

Washington D.C.-based brothers Ryan and Hays Holladay are continuing their push--perhaps the better word is "meander"--into a new musical realm with their recent album/iPhone app "Central Park (Listen to the Light)." The piece uses GPS to monitor a listener's movements through New York's famous green oasis and play different tracks keyed to specific locales--or "zones" and "pockets"--within the park.

Sometimes, you don't want a ton of bells and whistles on your GPS device. Sometimes, you just want to reliably and cheaply get from point Alpha to Bravo.

Enter Garmin's Essentials series of Nuvi GPS navigators. Specifically, we're taking a look at the largest model in the entry-level Essentials series: the 5-inch Garmin Nuvi 50.

There aren't many surprises here where design is concerned. If you've handled a Garmin Nuvi in the last half decade, you'll know exactly what to expect from the 50. The icons are all where you'd expect them to

If you're clinging to flotsam in the middle of the Pacific and need to send an emergency message, DeLorme has a rugged new satellite communicator that can do the job on the cheap.

Its InReach device is a two-way satellite hookup with GPS that lets you send messages from anywhere in the world for as little as $249.95 and a subscription with Iridium's global network from $9.95 monthly.

Used alone, the InReach can send an SOS or up to three preset messages, as well as remote-tracking data; it confirms delivery too. Users can designate recipients such as other InReach devices, e-mail addresses, or Facebook or Twitter accounts before they set out for northern Siberia.

Could a computer replace this era's crop of clownish sportscasters like Dick Vitale or Lee Corso? We can dream--while a Swiss company works on software that could create artificial intelligence systems to call sporting events.

Computer researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland are working on a system that can track multiple athletes on a football field, a basketball court, or a soccer pitch via multiple cameras and advanced scanning algorithms. These days, computers can track human athletes, racing cars, and other sporting elements via GPS. But that's illegal in many sports as the introduction of such technology threatens to overpower the human element of athletics. The EPFL technology uses visual cues instead.