Call them GPS shoes, kicks, sneakers or whatever you want. The reality is that they’re coming to a store near you. I spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the privacy issues with knowing the exact location of a human being (mainly a child). Most articles seem to have a concern around the “big brother” effect of tracking teens in a car or tracking kids with high-tech shoes. I can’t help but think about all the lives that could have been saved using a similar technology. I realize that if this information got into the wrong hands then that’s a definite no-no. But I think there’s an opportunity to develop a secure system that makes parents feel confident about signing up for the service.

At Ublip we’re spending a lot of time building out our technology to enable things to be tracked on-line, easily. There are all sorts of considerations since tracking “things” comes down to much more than machines….we’re talking about loved ones here. There’s no way I would help design a system that I wouldn’t feel comfortable having my daughter use. Whether or not she would want to use it is another story, but I believe I have a few years before this is a concern. Yet if these GPS shoes become mainstream then there’s not doubt that a size 3 shoe will be able to house the technology. I think a very successful model will be to do what Nike/Apple have done with their sensor kit. This would allow a consumer to purchase the techology independent of the shoe. Well right now this is limited Nike shoes unless you take a less elegant approach. But I digress.

The other area of concern is all the mountain climbers/hikers that ended up missing this past winter. These are truly sad stories and all I can think about is that if GPS technology were used it could have possibly saved lives. I realize that some of these cases were in very remote areas, but in the case of James Kim the technology would have proven invaluable and life-saving. My heart goes out to the Kim family and this is the type of story that makes me feel good about what we’re trying to do.

At Ublip, we’re working hard to build a simplified location platform that any GPS device can talk to. We really don’t care if the device sits in your car, shoes, skateboard, dog collar or anywhere else. Our goal is to unify this data with a Web platform that lets consumers get the data however, whenever, and wherever they want.