Big Brother's on the phone

HOWARD WOLINSKY / Chicago Sun Times | March 31 2006

GPS chips in cell phones can do a heck of a lot more than help 911 workers locate you in an emergency, as Jim Fuentes' son Eric discovered while zooming down a highway at 85 mph.

The elder Fuentes received an SMS "speed alert" on his phone telling him his son was booking it. The same alert was available via an e-mail or on a Web site,

And there's more to this system, known as "Whereabouts, Family Tracking and Navigation" developed by Aurora-based Clarity Communication Systems Inc., a start-up founded by Fuentes and seven other former Lucent wireless software engineers in 1998.

Whereabouts, now being tested by a Midwestern wireless company, also enables parents to set up "geo-zones," which send out alerts when the phone enters or leaves a defined area. Fuentes said the system, for example, can be used to see if a child is home in time for curfew.

Subscribers can use Whereabouts to check on the location of others on a phone list, whether stationary or mobile. A button can be pushed to tell other subscribers when a user has arrived at a location. And the phone has an SOS button that can be used to call for help.

Lisa Carter, vice president of corporate development and marketing at Clarity, agreed the tracking system potentially could compromise some users' privacy. "We can't control how the phones are used," she said.

Within a family, she said minors provided with phones by their parents would have to comply with the tracking system. However, she said Clarity is developing a "privacy manager" that would require users to request or refuse tracking.

Carter said phone users would quickly realize they are being tracked because the phone interface has a map showing where users are located.

Carter said other products on the market would be more easily used for spying than cell phones that need to be regularly recharged.

Clarity is part of the emerging market of location-based services built on basic location information available on most cell phones to help 911 operators.

Robert Gourdine, director of marketing of the North American Internet & Wireless Business Unit of Chicago-based Navteq, the leading provider of digital map data, said there are "huge business opportunities" for companies such as Clarity that develop location-based services.

"The industry is moving beyond location and navigation. You can overlay any type of service on top of location information, and create something new," he said.

Clarity found its way into the location-based services business as a result of developing gear for Lucent aimed at helping wireless phone companies locate phones as required under the federal mandate for 911 services on cell phones.

Leo Modica, Clarity's principal engineer, said "We discovered to our surprise how accurate the GPS devices were on cell phones. They were accurate in the best case to within 5 to 10 feet."

Fuentes said cellular companies were open to new ideas since the new location systems required billions of dollars of investment and would only be used for 911 calls on average once every two years per customer.

Clarity got into the location business in early 2003 with Navigator, a GPS-based service on a cell phone, which provides directions, points of interests and turn-by-turn, voiced-guided navigation. The service is available for Nextel customers for a $9.99 activation fee plus $6.95 per month. For more information, go to www.way-to-go.net.

Navigator morphed into Whereabouts, which last year won an award for personal security in Navteq's Global LBS Challenge, a competition designed to encourage location technology innovation and reward it with cash prizes and Navteq software licenses. Clarity is a semi-finalist in the business applications category in this year's LBS Challenge with its Where2Talk product, which combines Clarity's push-to-talk technology with location services.

Subscribers who use Where2Talk can see current locations of other users on a contact list. The service has a PC-based Dispatch Console that maps a team, and enables a dispatcher to contact team members based on their location, pushing them directions or other information onto their handsets.

Bill Jenkins, vice president of business development at Clarity, said Where2Talk is aimed at builders, delivery services and other companies with "deployed work forces," but could be used by families and friends to keep track of each other.

Due to the overwhelming popularity of our $39.95 yearly special, we are bringing it back for Spring! This is your chance to receive over 5 months of access completely free compared to the standard price. Click here to subscribe!