Subject: [NEXTEL-1] A 'Web Service' You Can Use

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 00:13:09 -0400

A 'Web Service' You Can Use
By Dave Kearns
August 13, 2003

If you misplace your cell phone, it's fairly easy to use a different phone
to call it and then follow the ring to retrieve it. Even if you've left it
beyond the range at which you could hear it, someone might answer it and
tell you where it is. Suppose you could do something similar with your car
keys, your dog or even your kids? Former Apple wiz Steve Wozniak thinks
people would pay to be able to quickly locate those things they frequently
misplace or otherwise lose track of. His Wheels of Zeus (http://www.woz.com)
start-up hopes to combine the global positioning system (GPS) with a
low-power, long-range wireless protocol that operates at about 1,200 baud.
The company expects the combination GPS monitor and wireless radio to sell
for less than $100. It is estimated that this can cover a range of 1 or 2
miles, but Wozniak believes it can be extended by using the Internet -- by
connecting one radio to another in a global peer-to-peer network, you'd be
able to search within a couple of miles of every attached wireless device.

You'd need to tag everything you wanted to be able to trace (probably you'd
need to imbed one in a teenager, or make it look like a safety pin!) but the
tags should be small enough to be unobtrusive.

You could put one on employees' ID cards, and then easily track down the
person who was late for (thus holding up) the meeting. (That's a joke; I
don't think the system would work well except in the smallest companies.)

Now, I'm sure the privacy purists will be up in arms once again, just as
they were with Wal-Mart's plan to use radio frequency identification (RFID)
tags in its inventory, but there's little danger that this system could be
used on any city-, state- or country-wide government tracking system. The
beauty is that, given the low-power, low-bandwidth system, scaling beyond a
few dozen devices would be impractical. The limited range, while perfect for
the individual user, would be wildly ineffective when attempted on a large
scale.

Personal networking, wireless, peer-to-peer, RFID, identity management -- if
Wozniak could only wrap it up in a "Web services" envelope, he would have
all of today's hottest buzz words in one small, relatively inexpensive
product which, of course, is a pretty good description of Apple Computers
twenty-some years ago. It worked then; it could work again.

http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/22086.html

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