What is GPS? GPS stands for Global Positioning System or Global Positioning Satellite. It is a navigation tool to determine the precise location of a person, place or thing. The US Defense Department developed GPS in 1973 to " assist soldiers and military vehicles, planes, and ships in accurately determining their locations world-wide" (Source: NASA)
Why was GPS added to cell phones in the first place? Well, long before Mr. GPS ever got interested in marrying Miss Cellular, the technology was originally developed for the military. Later, GPS was "used widely by drivers, hikers and boaters to figure out where they are", according to a January 9, 2005 article by Los Angeles Times writer David Colker, posted on Info Wars. "
GPS was added to
cell phones so that 911 emergency calls could be tracked".
How did GPS get into the cell phone business? In 2005, the U S Congress passed the Enhanced 911 (E911) law to make it easier for police to locate anyone who calls 911 from a cell phone. The mobile carriers used GPS software to comply with the new law, instead of reinventing their entire networks. So if you have a cell phone that was manufactured in 2005 or later, odds are, it has GPS built in.
Here are some obvious and not-so-obvious ways you can use and get the most from your GPS-enabled cell phone.
1. Get driving directions while traveling in your car. You will need to subscribe to a GPS navigation service, which averages 33 cents daily, $10 per month, or $120 every year, not including taxes and fees, of courses. For GPS service, you may subscribe to Nextel's TeleNav or Motorola's Viamoto, or ask your carrier for their GPS navigation service. If you're going to use your cell phone's GPS, better get a phone that has a large screen nearly the size of a portable GPS unit. If you hate paying an eternal subscription, you may opt for a Garmin Nuvi 200 GPS, which costs about $150 ONE TIME, plus tax.
2. Map traffic. The University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and Nokia have teamed up in a pilot project called Mobile Millennium. Basically, here is how it works: you, the T-Mobile or AT & T cellular user register on the Mobile Millennium website, then download the software that matches your mobile phone. Of course, your GPS phone must meet the minimum requirements for the software. Also, your location may not yet be covered. But if everything goes through just fine, Mobile Millennium will send up-to-date traffic info straight to your cellular phone. (Source: CNET News)
3. Locate your lost cell phone. When a GPS-enabled cell phone is missing, just contact your service provider, and they should be able to track down the phone, using GPS technology. By the way, you can trace any cell phone, whether it has GPS or not, by using the service Free Cell Phone Tracer dot com. The results will give you the following info: Line Type; Carrier (Service Provider); City, State, and County of the user; Latitude and Longitude of the phone's location. Here's a "fund" way to use Free Cell Phone Tracer's info: you have AT & T cell phone service, which means calls to other AT & T cell phone customers are free. You want to call your cousin over in New Mexico, but you want to find out if s/he has AT & T mobile service. Surf over to Free Cell Phone Tracer and input your cousin's number to find out. One more thing: Free Cell Phone Tracer also traces land-line phones too.
4. Track the behavior of at-risk teens. If your teen is not at home, do you want to know if s/he is is smoking, doing drug, drinking or having sex right this moment? Could that expensive cell phone you bought for your teenager become your private detective? According to
Science Daily, you can use GPS-enabled cell phones to monitor the movement of that teenager you are reluctant to trust. The April 2008 issue of the
Journal of Adolescent Health, "researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine report on a pilot study which evaluated the feasibility of using global position system-enabled cell phones to track where 14- to 16-year-old girls spent their time." One of the researchers was Sarah Wiehe, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine and a Regenstrief Institute affiliated scientist. She said, "When tracked with GPS we know where the teens are and when they are there but we don't know what they are doing" (Source: Science Daily dot com). Sorry, Mom or Dad, Grandma or Grandpa. Until the next techno innovation that will beam an image of your teen's location and activity to your cell phone's screen, you'll still need to ask your teenager, after you've got the location info from the GPS mobile phone, "What were you doing at Johnny's house?"
5. Track family, friend, neighbor, enemy, employee, pastor, or priest! Not so fast. Despite the fact that cell phones manufactured in 2005 and later are GPS equipped, "the GPS in most cell phones are not like those in your handy GPS receiver that you take hiking. Most cell phones do not allow the user direct access to the GPS data, accurate location determination requires the assistance of the wireless network, and the GPS data is transmitted only if a 911 emergency call is made." Bottom line? "...you can not track someone using their cell phone, unless the person you want to track has the right kind of cell phone, connected to the right network, with the right service." So before you get overly excited about creeping up on your neighbor or cheater-spouse, realize that current cell phone technology available to the public does not make it easy for the typical mobile customer to spy on another user without the target's permission. If the one you want to keep a tab on is your under-age child, then you should get a pass to be a mobile spy. Call your cell phone service provider to be sure. Also check out
Using the GPS for People Tracking at Travel By GPS.
Hopefully, this layman article prompts some ordinary cell phone users to find out more about what they can do with the GPS feature on their mobile phones. Start by calling your cell phone company. Ask, "I have this Model Cell Phone. Does it have GPS? If so, how can I make use of it without spending a lot of money? And can I use it to track my __________?"
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