Bryan Adams High School in east Dallas (Dallas traditionally having one of the worst graduation rates among large school districts) is trying a pilot program using GPS/cellular ankle bracelets to fight truancy among high-schoolers.

This of course is raising questions about the balance between privacy and the public good — which even the system manufacturer acknowledges: “You can paint this thing as either Big Brother, or this is a device that connects you to a buddy who wants to keep you safe and help you graduate.”

ComputerWorld has an excellent article on the rapidly increasing use of M2M and sensor technology in vehicles, especially in tractor-trailers and commercial shipping. It’s impressive to see how sensors are making their way into almost every aspect of tractor-trails, from load detection to location tracking to collision and rollover avoidance.

The biggest challenge of all? How to coordinate the data and alarms from the various independent systems.

Cnet reports that Keyhole Markup Language (KML) has been accepted as an open standard by the Open Geospatial Consortium. This is the language that Google Earth and Google Maps data is stored in, and can be used to describe anything from a point in 3D space, to polygons, to the shape, style, and color of the lines used to draw them. Although KML has already been used by a number of companies other than Google, this should help it gain even wider acceptance.

If you’re interested in what KML looks like and how to write or consume it, Google Code has some great KML documentation. The spec itself (at least, in the form that will go through the working committee for final approval) is here.

Heard a lot about the FCC’s 700MHz auction but want more details about what exactly is being auctioned? Phonescoop has a great article on the 700MHz band, and how Verizon, AT&T, and others benefited from it.

I get asked this somewhat often (usually by friends who know I work at Ublip and are getting a new car) but I didn’t really know enough about LoJack to answer, so I decided to look into it.

LoJack is not a vehicle tracking system, in the sense that you couldn’t use it to find your vehicle yourself, or figure out where it’s been. It is instead a vehicle recovery system. In the LoJack system, a car has a LoJack transmitter inside it. In normal use, that transmitter will transmit a signal on frequency 173.075 MHz every 10 seconds. When the car has been stolen, the owner calls LoJack, who then sends out an activation signal from one of their base stations. After the car receives that activation signal, the transmitter will now transmit a signal every second instead of every 10 seconds. This will alert any police car or helicopter with the LoJack system installed whenever they are within the 2-3 mile range of the transmitter’s signal, and tell the police which way to go to get to the stolen car, allowing them to track it down and recover it.

This system has been around since the late 80s, and can be very successful in recovering your vehicle if you’re in an area where LoJack is effective. Unfortunately, since the system depends on equipment installed in police vehicles, their coverage area is dependent on which state or local agencies decided to sign up with LoJack. LoJack has full coverage in only three states (Mass., NJ, and RI) and in other states it’s dependent on which county you’re in. If the thief takes the car to a county that doesn’t have LoJack in their police cars, then LoJack will be unable to recover it.

Also, as it does depend on a police vehicle passing nearby, it’s possible that the car thieves (some of who can completely strip a car in under an hour) will have already taken everything of value by the time the car (or what’s left of it) is recovered.

So how does it differ from GPS tracking systems?

Functionality:  LoJack is only useful when your car has been stolen. Most GPS systems allow you to at the very minimum actively locate your car (log into a webpage and query for the current location) and others allow tracking (keeping a historical record of where your car has been as well as where it is right now).

Coverage:  LoJack has a limited coverage area, based on whether the local police force has the equipment in their vehicles. GPS tracking systems generally use either cellular or satellite networks to communicate their position, and have coverage depending on their chosen network.

Signal Reception: The LoJack signal can be used by police to report a vehicle’s position from 2-3 miles away, even if the vehicle is inside or parked in a parking garage. GPS-based tracking systems generally require the vehicle to have a clear view to a decent portion of the sky (although some are able to use locations of cell towers they communicate with).

Cost: LoJack is (depending on where you buy it) anywhere from $600 to $1000 (one-time cost). A GPS tracking solution will generally have a lower initial cost, but will likely include a monthly fee due to the airtime charges from the cellular or satellite carrier. As they send more data, tracking services (seeing where a car is and where it’s been) will usually cost more than locating services (only finding where it is now).

So… is LoJack better than GPS solutions? If the only thing you’re interested in is recovering your car after it’s been stolen, then probably yes. However, by trading off a little bit of that theft-recovery capability, you can get a GPS-based tracking solution which offers you the ability to know where your car is, where it’s been, whether the car was speeding, etc… and also be notified in multiple ways when a car enters or leaves certain areas (like your house, or your teenager’s school).

If I’m only going to get one of the two, I find the GPS system much more compelling — it can potentially help recover your car if it’s stolen and provides you a useful service all the time until that happens.