Category: GPS Tracking System News

569 posts
UPS Cuts Fuel Costs By Millions With Fleet Management Technology

Fleet Management Technology Helps UPS Cut Fuel Costs 3.3% a Year

UPS recently released the latest edition of its annual Sustainability Report, which said the company had reduced the amount of fuel consumed per package in the United States by 3.3% in 2010. Meanwhile the company’s U.S. package volume rose 1.8% in 2010 compared to 2009.

UPS managed to deliver more packages for less money, and attributed the savings to routing technology, telematics, and loading optimization.

UPS has more than 100,000 vehicles on the road worldwide, with drivers logging about two billion miles per year. Fleet management technology enabled the company to avoid driving more than 63.5 million miles in 2010 with an associated emissions avoidance of 68,000 metric tonnes.

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NASA Confirms Satellite Crashed into the Pacific Ocean

The 6 ton dead satellite that has been plunging towards earth for the past several days has finally landed. NASA scientists cannot yet determine exactly where the satellite crashed, but they did say it was somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Many are wondering where the huge pieces of supersonic debris will turn up?

Most of the satellite was expected to burn during its descent, but NASA predicted 26 large pieces of supersonic debris will survive all the way and hit the earth’s surface. NASA warned the debris could weigh up to 330 pounds a piece, and will stretch along a 500-mile path.

Scientists say the risk of damage is very small. A significant amount of debris does not survive the severe heating which occurs during re-entry. Components which do survive are most likely to fall into the oceans or other bodies of water or onto sparsely populated regions like the Canadian Tundra, the Australian Outback, or Siberia in the Russian Federation.

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NASA Says Bus-Sized Satellite May Strike Earth Tonight, Not Sure Where

As of Friday Sept. 23, 2011, at 10:30a.m. EST, NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere late Friday night or early Saturday morning, EST. Tonight the 6 1/2-ton satellite could make its uncontrolled “death plunge” through Earth’s atmosphere, after the end of a productive scientific life.

NASA scientists cannot yet determine exactly where the satellite will land but earlier said it will fall over a region somewhere between the latitudes of northern Canada and southern South America. Today NASA said there is a low probability any debris that survives re-entry will land in the United States, but the possibility cannot be discounted because of this changing rate of descent

It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 12 to 18 hours.

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Calypso’s GPS System for Tumor Tracking Bought For $10 Million

Calypso Medical Technologies, a medical device and software company which has developed a tracking system to pinpoint tumors in the body, has been acquired for $10 million by Varian Medical Systems of Palo Alto, California.

Timothy E. Guertin, president and CEO of Varian Medical Systems said, “With Calypso’s technology, Varian will be able to offer cancer treatment centers real-time, non-ionizing tumor tracking tools for enhancing the precision of their treatments.”

Calypso, based in Seattle, creates products and software used to do real-time tracking of tumors during cancer treatment. The company does much of its work in prostate cancer treatment and is developing a lung cancer treatment product.

The Calypso® System features GPS for the Body® technology and Beacon® electromagnetic transponders that together currently provide a solution to continuously and accurately track and target location to improve precision of prostate cancer treatments.

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Google Faces Senate – Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?

Google Says It Is Like GPS of the Web

A US Senate subcommittee tomorrow will hold a hearing, “The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?”

Dozens of businesses have come forward to complain on Capitol Hill that Google is giving preferential treatment to some of its products and services by leveraging its dominant position to an unfair advantage. Critics have complained that Google favors its own services and content in the company’s popular search engine.

In the lead-up to Schmidt’s testimony, Google has hired dozens of Washington, D.C., lobbying firms and has touted its pro-competitive behavior in advertisements. And in a recent online post, Google reminded readers that its users have a choice in search engines. Google isn’t a “gateway to the web”–a phrase it suggests critics might use in Wednesday’s Senate Antitrust Subcommittee hearing. Rather, the Mountain View, Calif., company’s service is more like a guide.

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White House Pressures General on Lightsquared Testimony

LightSquared is under attack from Republicans who have asked for an investigation into whether the White House pressured its Air Force Space Commander into changing his testimony on possible GPS interference caused by LightSquared’s activities.

The accusation is fiercely denied by LightSquared and the White House.

William Shelton told lawmakers during a classified briefing earlier this month that the White House tried to persuade him to change his testimony to make it more favorable to a company with ties to a key Democratic donor.

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LightSquared Vs. GPS Industry Goes Back To Congress

The dispute between LightSquared Inc. and the GPS industry recently shifted back to Congress. LightSquared is currently seeking approval from the FCC to move forward with its plans to build out a broadband wireless network. But the company has been facing fierce opposition from many claiming the proposed network will interfere with GPS system signals.

During a hearing before Congress, several lawmakers criticized the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for “advocating” for LightSquared at the expense of critical GPS operations.

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Fired NY State Employee Sues For GPS Tracking Without Consent

Monitoring Employees With GPS Tracking Without Their Knowledge or Consent – Is It Legal?

Managing employees in the field has always been a challenge. How do you know if employees are where they say they are? What if a customer calls to complain that a driver never showed up, but he swears he did. What is a manager to do? Ths is where GPS tracking can offer huge benefits.

But inevitably ethical and legal issues have been raised about gps tracking aka Big Brother in the workplace. Is it OK to monitor an employee with a GPS tracking device without their knowledge or consent?

How far can the state government go in monitoring a mobile employee?

This question will be addressed by a mid-level appeals court in New York very soon in about 6 weeks. The lawsuit was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) against the state Labor Department, on behalf of a fired state worker whose personal vehicle was being monitored with a GPS tracking device, without his knowledge or consent.

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Bus-Sized Satellite Falling To Earth Faster Than Expected

s of Friday Sept. 16, 2011, NASA’s Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere September 23, plus or minus a day. The re-entry of UARS is coming a day earlier than previously predicted because of a sharp increase in solar activity this week. Solar effects from the sun can create an extra drag on satellites in space because they can heat the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to expand, agency officials have said.

The exact date and geographic location of re-entry is hard to predict because it depends on solar activity and the satellite’s orientation as its orbit decays. As re-entry draws closer, predictions on the date will become more reliable. NASA is keeping a close watch on the falling satellite, but will only be able to pinpoint its actual crash zone to within about 6,000 miles (10,000 km) about two hours before re-entry.

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Middletown Employees No Longer Skip Jobs Thanks To FieldLogix

When the street sweepers of Middletown go on their assigned routes, they know their work habits had better be squeaky clean. The City of Middletown, Ohio has been using the FieldLogix fleet tracking system for their street sweepers, solid waste trucks, and snow plows since 2008.

According to fleet manager, Michelle Evans, one of their favorite features is the ability to verify the stops made by their vehicles. Mrs. Evans said, “Sometimes drivers skip assigned stops during their shift in order to avoid the extreme temperatures and FieldLogix fleet tracking keeps them accountable. On the other hand, in heavy snow storms you can plow a street and an hour later it doesn’t look like you’ve been there. When we get complaints all I do is access the History Report or the Asset Activity Report and then I have proof that our drivers are out there doing their jobs.”

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Sunshine Landscape Sees a ROI in 18 Days with FieldLogix

Using the fleet tracking system’s activity reports, he quickly realized that his employees were falsifying time sheets. Employees were taking long lunches, leaving early and were not where they were supposed to be during work hours.

But all this changed after installing a fleet tracking system. Once Mr. Contreras had a reliable way to measure his employee’s actual work hours, his overtime costs dropped immediately.

****In fact, his overtime costs dropped by more than 2 hours per man per day with no change in the workload. Based on these calculations, Mr. Contreras paid for the entire first year of the system within the first 18 days. ****

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Government Debates Future of GPS System and IIF Satellites

The US economy has been struggling since 2007. Many are hoping that the country does not enter a double-dip recession this year. Budget cuts are a harsh reality for cities and states across the US. Budget cuts affect us all, and now they are affecting the US global positioning system aka GPS.

The U.S. Air Force has done an incredible job with the GPS system. But budget issues are forcing the US federal government to carefully scrutinize its plans for space. One issue that may end up on the table is whether to proceed with plans to develop a new generation of “GPS III” satellites, or try to save money by sticking with the existing GPS IIF design.

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New Sprint App Prevents Texting and Talking While Driving

Texting and talking on the phone while driving is very dangerous. We all know this, yet many people continue to do it. The Governors Highway Safety Association combed through a decade’s worth of statistics and research papers about the causes of car crashes, and found that cell phone-related distractions accounted for 15 to 25 percent of crashes, according to PC Mag. The figure is likely even higher since law enforcers might not catch every driver using his cell phone before an accident.

To combat distracted driving, Sprint (NYSE: S) has launched a new app called Sprint Drive First. The app locks your phone when you’re driving over 10 miles per hour, and alerts your parent or spouse when the phone has been locked.

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Federal Judge Delays Case About FBI’s GPS Tracking Without a Warrant

A 20-year-old Egyptian-American college student is suing Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller, after the FBI secretly placed a GPS tracking device on his car without a warrant. The student, Yasir Afifi of San Jose, says the FBI had no reason to consider him a suspect of any type of illegal behavior.

It was announced yesterday that a federal judge has agreed to delay Afifi’s lawsuit against the FBI for putting a GPS tracking device on his car without a warrant. Afifi asked for the delay until the Supreme Court decides a related case.

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Teacher Sues Computer Tracker For Sharing Nude Photos

A federal judge has decided to allow a lawsuit to proceed between a couple and a laptop tracking system called LoJack for Laptops for intercepting and sharing a couple’s private, sexually explicit communications with police, according to Wired Magazine.

Unbeknownst to Mrs. Clements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend, the laptop had a computer tracking system installed on it. The laptop tracking system was called “LoJack for Laptops” and was provided by Absolute Software.

Absolute captured screenshots of the couple while exchanging naked photos and other sexually explicit behavior. The tracking system company, Absolute Software, then sent all of the data to local police including the teacher’s sexually explicit images and location data.

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LightSquared’s Network May Be Detrimental To Hurricane Tracking System

Last week LightSquared received another blow in its efforts to get permission from the FCC to build out its wireless network. LightSquared’s network needs further testing because of its potential effects on a satellite system that increases the accuracy of hurricane tracking, said U.S. government agencies to Congress, according to Bloomberg News. A statement for […]

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Major Improvements in Smartphone GPS Signals Coming Soon

GLONASS is a network of 22 satellites orbiting the earth that are owned and controlled by the Russian government. Starting next year smartphones based on Qualcomm chipsets are going to get a huge improvement in their GPS reception because they will be able to utilize Russia’s GLONASS signals in addition to the Global Positioning System (GPS). According to Qualcomm and an article in PC Mag, adding GLONASS improves GPS accuracy in “deep urban environments” by 50 percent.

New smartphones will actually be able to leverage both satellite networks to get a much stronger, more reliable GPS signal, even in urban like New York City and in the mountainous terrain like in Colorado. Between GPS and GLONASS, Qualcomm smartphones will have 55 satellites to choose from, which makes it much easier for a smartphone or GPS receiver to get a GPS signal.

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Only 55% of US Smartphone Owners Have Used Their Phone’s GPS System

This week Pew Research released its Internet and American Life Project. Based on their research, virtually all smartphones now include a built-in GPS receiver to enable location tracking, but only 55% of U.S. smartphone owners have used their phone’s GPS system to help get local directions or recommendations.

Pew did not speculate about that other 45%, but I found this to be a very interesting statistic. One of the problems with a smartphone GPS system is that it can be unreliable when you are unable to get a cell phone signal, so those who can afford a smartphone may also be willing and able to spend the cash on a better and more reliable GPS navigation system. Perhaps, the remaining 45% of people who can afford a smartphone either have a handheld GPS device, such as a Garmin Nuvi, or their vehicle has a factory-installed GPS navigation system.

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