Having a car global positioning system (GPS) should be a requirement for all married couples, according to a friend of mine.
This fellow figures the reduction in spousal squabbling, not to mention fuel spent driving in the wrong direction, is well worth the few hundred dollars for one of those in-dash or on-the-window units.
Now, a Canadian company hopes that advanced GPS functionality will become the norm for many businesses, too.
BlackLine GPS Inc. of Calgary is planning to capitalize on the growing imperative to know the exact location of your things and people.
BlackLine co-founder Brendon Cook says movies like The Da Vinci Code help to shape the public's expectations of what technology can do.
That film featured a tiny GPS "dot" that allowed French police to track the exact whereabouts of Harvard professor Robert Langdon, until cryptographer Sophie Neveu stuck it in a bar of soap and threw it out the window onto a conveniently passing truck.
But we're not quite there yet, says Cook, who with an engineer's quick mind works out that "the battery becomes the largest liability" for a real-world GPS dot.
"You could put a small lithium coin cell in there and get 'x' minutes of work, but it's completely non-viable from a realistic perspective," he says.
Ah, but his company has accomplished some amazing feats, with products like its GPS Snitch.
This $400 box lets you sit at a computer screen and track the location and motion of your vehicles, be they driven by your teenager, elderly parent or employee.
It can even be hidden away in the trunk, even where it can't "see" the GPS satellites.
"The state of GPS technology has progressed sufficiently far that it no longer requires a line of sight from the antenna to each satellite, which was the case three or four years ago," says Cook.
His company doesn't take credit for the progress in GPS, but notes that it puts "a lot of care" into its antenna design to maximize overall performance.
BlackLine earns ongoing revenue by selling "tracking credits," which can cost anywhere from five to 30 cents, depending on volume.
Safety and security is a key business driver for BlackLine. Their Loner GPS is a person-worn device that takes in GPS signals and makes outgoing calls using GSM cellphone technology, the most popular standard for global mobile communications.
Worn by workers in the field, it provides both a "panic button" for emergency notification and a continuous monitoring capability. Loafing employees beware: Loner GPS has a "man down" function that will rat you out if it "detects that there is no motion recently."
Calgary-based energy distribution company Enmax Corp. is testing six of the Loner GPS units for its meter readers.
"We hope to monitor the locations of our 64 meter readers that are out in the field every day, in every conceivable situation," says Dale Ramsbottom, Enmax team leader for meter reading.
Currently, the readers call in every two hours and give an audio report of their location. "With the Loner, if we can't contact them, we will be able to see exactly where they are," he adds.
Perhaps BlackLine's biggest coup is working with Waterloo-based Research in Motion, maker of the almost-indispensable, and often GPS-enabled BlackBerry.
An interview with BlackLine GPS co-founder Patrick Rousseau is currently featured on the BlackBerry Cool (www.blackberrycool.com) website. In it, he predicts that GPS will become as standard a feature as cameras on mobile devices.
BlackLine's contribution to the BlackBerry world is a new product called Blip, which facilitates what Cook calls GPS publishing. "There's a feature that allows you, from the address book on the BlackBerry, to send invitations for people to interact."
If they accept, you'll be able to see each other's location. "Then, right from within Blip, I can call or send you a message."
Who is interested? Companies such as Birks and Mayors Inc., the Atlanta-based international jewelry company that Cook says was interested in using the application to track executives travelling aboard. He adds the Western Canadian distributor of Red Bull energy drinks also plans to use Blip to track its GPS Snitch-equipped vehicles.
BlackLine currently doesn't make money from Blip, but it's looking at a deal with a wireless carrier or a direct subscription model.
The company certainly has competitors in this space. German mobile software developer Shape Services has a competing product called GPSed that works with the latest BlackBerry models, as well as other phones that can be connected to an external GPS via Bluetooth.
BlackLine GPS recently announced an undisclosed private equity investment that brought Clark Swanson and Cody Slater, founder of Calgary-based BW Technologies Inc., onto the BlackLine board. Investors also include Edmonton billionaire and Katz Group founder Daryl Katz, head of the Rexall pharmacy empire and the new owner of the National Hockey League's Edmonton Oilers.
How did two guys in Alberta get the nerve to launch a product in this competitive high-tech marketplace and make a success of it?
Cook says he and Rousseau first worked together at CSI Wireless in Calgary.
"When you're working for a company, you have a lot of opinions, and you develop a confidence that either you're accurate, or you're not," he says. "I think it gets to the point where if you've seen enough evidence of your own performance, and you can prove to yourself that you have that capability and interest, that's a very good first step to say you can do it ... and jump off the cliff into entrepreneurship."
It probably didn't hurt, says Cook, that Rousseau is an "adrenaline junkie" who races motorcycles in his spare time.
They pitched the idea of a motor-sport GPS system several times to their previous employer and it was turned down. Now, it's a BlackLine niche product called FUEL GPS.
Never say no to an adrenaline junkie.
Web Watch: www.blacklinegps.com
www.gpsed.com (Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)
