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." |
