The
ball sailed high and straight, the divot after it, and as I
finished my follow through it was tracking to the green like a
dart.
On
in two with about 13 feet left the camera drone was over my left
shoulder as the cheerleaders ended their chant and settled their
pom-poms.
The
ball had good speed and was breaking to the hole when the phone
rang waking me. I looked out the train window to see we were
approaching the Lake (Pancho) Villa station.
It
was the little Mrs. calling to say that since I was at Lake Villa
she would put a pizza in the oven. Like the story goes, "How
do it know?".
Friend
Finder, an iPhone application, told her very accurately where I
was. That's how.
Recently
a guy dropped his iPhone out of an airplane. No, not a commercial
jet, some little puddle jumper and he probably had it hanging out
the window taking selfies. Never the less he did find it using Find
My iPhone which is part of the iCloud suite on your PC.
But
what if you lose your keys, your wallet, purse, or cat? You're in
luck, there's an App for that. Several as a matter of fact,
Phone
Halo's TrackR, Protag's Duet and Tile's tracking devices are ranked
the top three. They're competitors, slightly different to set
themselves apart, but mostly doing the same thing. Let's take
a look at how it works.
For
about $25 you get a little gizmo about the size of a poker chip
that can be seen by your phone's Bluetooth radio, for 100 to 150
feet depending.
The
poker chip then tells you about how far away from your phone it is,
or tells you the signal strength it's receiving, you figure it out
from there.
They'll
tell you if you're taking your phone out of range by beep or even
playing a ring tone. Which, we've all found out by using ring
tones, can make a favorite song hated pretty quickly. I guess this
feature would help you know where your stuff is, since you'd have
to carry it around with you to avoid the beeping. Kind of like a
dog's shock collar.
I know what your thinking, "What if I leave my wallet in my
locker at the gym or somewhere and drive home?". No problem,
the chip will use other people's phones, without them knowing, to
send you the location. If, of course, someone with a phone within
150 feet of your wallet has the same App.
It
could happen.. All three of these products used crowdfunding, aka
KickStarter, etc, to get startup capital, so people must believe in
them.
Imagine
if instead of sending the location of people's stuff without
telling you, some ingenious hacker wrote an App so your phone did
tell you. Imagine if instead of sending the location of your stuff
to you it told other people where it was.
A
similar product, and cheaper, is Click 'n Dig. Click 'n Dig gives
you little color coded fobs and a remote with mathcing color
buttons. Push a button on the remote and the corresponding colored
fob screams at you at 90-100 decibels. It doesn't have an App, and
you'll be limited to about 60 feet but it is an option.
Tracker,
Duet, Tile, a string around your finger, paying attention, or not,
that's your call, and that's Cocktail Talk.
