Wozniak Unveils Latest Startup

Wireless

from the little-tracking-gadgets dept

A year and a half ago, we wrote about how Steve Wozniak was starting a new wireless company using GPS to “help everyday people track everyday things”. Well, now, a little more has been revealed about the startup, and that initial description still applies. The company, called Wheels of Zeus (to play on the whole WOZ thing), has basically created a new network (running over the 900 MHz spectrum) that will let GPS-based tags communicate with a home-base, to tell you where the tags are located at any given time. The idea is that you put these tags on your kids or your pets, and can keep track of them. While the technology is slightly different, the end-result isn’t all that different than some other location-based products out there (unless I’m missing something). While this might be useful for pets, it seems like mobile phones will have this sort of capability built into them in the not-so-distant future, leaving Woz with a fairly limited market (unless, as is possible, I’m missing something). Of course, there’s also the question of privacy – but the folks at WoZ insist that there’s no issue, since it’s all a voluntary system, where the owner of the base station and the tags is tracking their own tags. Of course, that’s nice, but if I were a kid wearing such a tag, I might resent my parents spying on my every move. As a dog, I might not care as much.