Little Bo Peep never loses her sheep anymore because they have global positioning system (GPS) chips embedded in their woolly bodies.
Hansel and Gretel are now using GPS rather than breadcrumbs to find their way through the forest.
If you hadn't heard these revisionist fairy tales until now, you're probably not among the thousands of tech aficionados in Ontario and elsewhere who are welcoming a mushrooming variety of GPS devices into their daily lives.
Certainly, there's nothing that new in the fact that GPS technology has become a standard accessory in luxury vehicles. Or that the devices are being used to keep track of rental cars and commercial fleets.
But what does surprise many people, says Steve Parsons, assistant store manager at Radioworld in Scarborough, is how many other kinds of GPS devices are flooding the market and just what they are being used for.
"We've been in the GPS business for quite a while now, but in the last couple of years it's just taken off like mad," he says. "We're now selling thousands (of devices) per year for all sorts of uses."
The most popular GPS models Parsons sells are smaller mobile navigational units that are used not only for driving - with easy transfer from one car to another in multi-vehicle households - but also while boating, fishing, motorcycling, bicycling, jogging and walking.
Manufactured primarily by U.S. companies Garmin Ltd., and Thales Navigation Inc. (under the Magellan brand), Parsons says the mobile GPS devices range in price from about $500 to $1,450.
All are capable of plotting the most efficient route to any requested destination in North America.
With a click or two, many units can also locate the nearest ATM, gas station, cinema, hospital, store, restaurant, landmark or other desired feature. A top-of-the-line Garmin model even comes with a heart monitor.
Speaking of monitoring, Pickering-based AirIQ Inc. recently launched a GPS-enabled product even James Bond could love. Called MobileIQ, it combines mobile computing intelligence, wireless communications, location-based technologies, the Internet and digitized mapping.
MobileIQ allows parents to monitor the whereabouts and driving behaviour of their offspring, and makes it possible for unattended vehicles to be tracked when they're being stolen. And it empowers vehicle owners to take action, no matter how far away they happen to be.
"Let's say your teenager is supposed to have driven to a friend's house in your neighbourhood," says Miguel Gonsalves, AirIQ's consumer division vice-president. "MobileIQ lets you check whether that's actually the case, or whether he might be on a country road somewhere doing 140 kilometres an hour.
"Or, maybe your car is being stolen, possibly by being towed away from a parking lot or by having its battery unhooked to disengage the burglar alarm," he says. "With our unauthorized movement feature, you can be notified immediately via PC, BlackBerry, cellphone or other wireless device and by voice or text message - whatever you choose."
In both scenarios, MobileIQ subscribers can do something more than prepare a stern lecture or call 911.
They can monitor where the vehicle in question is travelling and report its location to the police where appropriate. They can also disable the car's starter the moment its engine is turned off.
Additionally, says Gonsalves, car doors can be remotely unlocked if, for instance, keys have been accidentally left inside. The technology also can be used to aid people who are lost or confused.
Gonsalves says AirIQ has signed up more than 115,000 MobileIQ individual and commercial subscribers in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico since the product went on the market last July.
Sold through automobile dealerships, the suggested retail price is an initial $695 with annual charges of about $99.
In a less serious vein, GPS use is on the rise to attract, guide and entertain travellers, says Chris Hughes, Bruce County's tourism co-ordinator.
"Like many of our counterparts elsewhere, we have fully integrated GIS (geographic information system) mapping that we're incorporating into our tourism website more and more, all the time, for itinerary building," he says. "So, for instance, if someone is interested in lighthouses, they can click in and find locations and routes for all 15 of the lighthouses in this area. And they never have to pull out a (paper) map to get where they want to go."
Another GPS-enabled leisure activity that Hughes says is gaining popularity, with individuals and as a tourism gimmick, is a 21st century version of treasure-hunting called geocaching.
According to information posted on the international site www.geocaching.com earlier this month, there are geocaching enthusiasts in 214 countries around the world and 156,343 active caches.
For the most part, it's not the stashed treasures - which are usually inexpensive souvenirs or containers filled with assorted trinkets and treats - that excite geocachers.
It's the challenge and fun involved in getting the co-ordinates for caches and using GPS devices to locate them.
When a treasure is found, geocaching protocol requires that it be taken and replaced with something else that is then stashed elsewhere. The geocacher records his or her name, the date of the exchange and the co-ordinates for the new hiding place in a logbook at the physical site, and on a geocaching website. To simply find the caches nearest to their homes, people can log on to www.geocaching.com and key in their postal codes.
Geocaching was launched in Oregon about five years ago, says Bill Steer, education manager for the Mattawa-based Canadian Ecology Centre Foundation. Although consumer GPS units were on the scene well before that, he says enthusiasm for using them in treasure hunts heated up after May 2000.
That's when then-U.S. president Bill Clinton put an end to the practice of selective availability by which, for security reasons, the U.S. army had deliberately scrambled satellite signals. Thereafter, the pinpoint accuracy of GPS systems moved to about nine metres from about 90.
Since then, Steer says, tourism initiatives involving geocaching have been on the rise and the ante on caches has been upped. "Last year, up here in the north, we offered 450 prizes worth $34,000.”
Some of the prizes were sponsored by hotels and businesses as a way of attracting tourists.
There are also other GPS-enabled devices on the horizon for Ontarians. These include more widespread implanting of GPS chips in cellphones and other wireless units.
And it probably won't be long before a gadget now in use in Swedish hospitals makes its way here. Aimed at allowing a doctor to remotely monitor dangerous changes in a patient's condition, the BodyKom connects wirelessly to body sensors that also report the patient's exact location.
One technology that its Ontario developers hope won't be in great demand here any time soon is GPS technology designed to thwart carjackers and locate kidnapping victims.
Instead, says David Griffiths, CEO of the Toronto-based Gotcha Company, "our first target markets will be Mexico City and other parts of Latin America, which have significant vehicle and personal security problems."
GPS capability is actually a double-edged sword, he says, in that criminals can scan for a vehicle's location and then jam its signals. "So we've developed anti-jamming and anti-scamming technology ... as well as, in the event of kidnapping, a chip that can either be implanted or worn in such a way that it's not likely to be found by a body search. More than that," adds Griffiths, "I can't say at this point."
(Terry Poulton can be reached at poulton@businessedge.ca)
