Florida Provides GPS To Protect Those Fighting Wildfires

As reported by the Orlando Sentinel: The 19 firefighters who died in an Arizona wilderness blaze last summer and two rangers who perished in a North Florida forest fire in 2011 were victims of similar perils: an afternoon eruption of unexpectedly fierce fire and an ensuing communications breakdown.

To prevent a repeat of such tragedies, the Florida Forest Service is equipping its frontline firefighters with GPS units that provide location points on supervisors' laptops.

The agency thinks the system is the first of its type in the nation. It will give crews, especially those on bulldozers who plow fire lines, a virtual way to see through the "fog and friction" of wildfires.

"It's a tool in our toolbox to make sure we know where our firefighters are to the best of our ability," said Sean Gallagher, manager of the service's Orlando district.

The Yarnell Hill Fire north of Phoenix took the lives of 19 elite crew members called hotshots, resulting in the one of the nation's highest death tolls for wilderness firefighters.

The Blue Ribbon Fire north of Lake City at the Georgia state line in June 2011 claimed two veteran bulldozer operators, the highest single fire toll for the Florida Forest Service.

Reports from the primary investigations of both fires provide harrowing details of much that went wrong within time frames that spanned only minutes.

In short, the 19 hotshots were hiking across rough country as winds whipped up by a storm sent a wall of flames to meet them.

The two Florida rangers, both operating bulldozers, were killed after one of them reported on his radio that "I'm stumped," or stuck on a tree stump.

Flames overran both crews so quickly that only some of the Arizona firefighters had time to deploy their personal fire shelters, and neither of the Florida rangers used their foil-coated blankets.

In both incidents, supervisors had only a rough idea of the firefighters' locations during the final minutes of their lives. The heavy volume of radio calls made communication difficult, and an airborne spotter at the Florida fire had trouble finding crews because of smoke.

Jim Karels, Florida Forest Service director and lead investigator in the Arizona disaster, said the two fires were similar in a key respect.

"When you look at the Blue Ribbon and the Yarnell fires and just about as far back as you want to look in history, the vast majority of these fires are in the late afternoon when there's real potential for a blowup in the fires," Karels said.

"That's when we have to be at our peak, and a lot of times that's when we've been working hard all day and maybe we aren't watching as closely as we need to be," he said.

The Yarnell Hill Fire investigation report described events as shrouded in fog and friction, a military term for the chaos of battle.

To cut through the fog and friction, the Florida Forest Service has been rolling out its Asset Tracker System, equipping all of the nearly 400 bulldozers and fire engines statewide with GPS receivers and radio transmitters. System software will be installed in the laptops of nearly 60 supervisors.

Ralph Crawford, assistant chief of forest protection, said the largely home-built system will cost nearly $2 million but won't have major, ongoing costs because it doesn't rely on cellphone or Internet service.

Among the first crews equipped with tracking units were those responding to the Blue Ribbon Fire. But the system was still new, and only one of the ill-fated bulldozers had a location transmitter.

Since then, the system has been refined, and its capabilities are becoming more apparent, said John Kern, a deputy chief of field operations.

Every 30 seconds, the units blurt out an electronic warble, confirming that a packet of data containing unit identification, location, speed and direction had been transmitted by a 40-watt radio able to reach supervisor laptops within 2 miles.

The system doesn't provide a complete picture of a wildfire; the blaze, for example, isn't outlined on maps depicted on laptop screens.

But Kern said supervisors are learning to correlate the GPS tracking data with their knowledge of tactics used when fighting fires with bulldozers. Supervisors also will know where to direct a helicopter to drop water should trouble occur.

"If one of our guys calls in, 'I'm stuck and about to be burned over,' we'll know where to go," Kerns said.

How to Adjust GPS Personal Geofencing in Reminders for iPhone and iPad

As reported by The Mac Observer: Geofencing - what is that, anyway? Some high-tech national border security measure?

No… it’s technology that, among other things, allows for the creation of virtual boundaries via GPS-enabled, location-aware smart devices. Geofencing technology has been around for several years, but used only for the likes of Bond, James Bond, and others of that ilk. For mere mortals, this technology is now available on our iPhones as well as on our assisted-GPS, wireless/cellular equipped iPads.

You can see geofencing in action on your iOS device by using the Reminders app. Recently, I discovered quite by accident - and was delighted to learn - that the geofencing perimeter can be adjusted. Here's how.

First and foremost, you need to have Location Services enabled for all this to work. To verify this, go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services.

Verify that Location Services is enabled globally and for Reminders

There you will find the master switch; make sure it’s on. Further down, you will see a list of all apps on your device that support Location Services. You can keep enabled just the ones you want. It’s probably a good idea to go through these and fine-tune your settings. In any event, scroll down until you locate Reminders, and make sure Location Services is enabled.

For everything to work as described in this article, you also need to make sure that notifications are enabled for the Reminders app. This is done via Settings > Notification Center.

Verify that Reminders is included in the set of apps that use Notification Services

Make sure that Reminders is listed in the Include section. From there, you can configure the Reminders notification just the way you want.

Back to the Reminders app…

In Reminders you have the ability to set what are known as Location Reminders. That is, you can be alerted about a reminder based on when you arrive or leave a location. This is what geofencing is all about!

Let’s use one of my own scenarios as an example. I tend to procrastinate when it comes to cleaning up my office. I want to be automatically reminded to work on this task each and every time I am about to pull into my garage. Thanks to the Location Services and Geofencing features supported by the Reminders app on my iPhone, I am alerted via a notification as I am entering into a pre-defined perimeter radius surrounding my business.

Here are the steps in Reminders for setting up a Location Reminder based on when you arrive or leave a location:

1. Add a new reminder by first tapping one of your lists where you want it to appear, then tap a blank line.

2. While editing your reminder, tap the Info button for a list of details regarding the reminder. Remember that to see the Info button you must tap on the reminder to enter the Edit Reminder mode.

The Info button is only visible when tapping a reminder

3. In the Details panel, enable the Remind me at a Location switch.

Tapping on the Info button takes you to the reminder’s Details panel

4. Tap Location, then choose a location from the list, or enter an address.

5. Select whether you want to be notified upon arrival or upon leaving the address.

 Choose or enter a location and drag the geofence perimeter to modify it

6. You can accept the predefined perimeter of the geofence or adjust it by dragging in or out the black dot defining the edge of the geofence. This sets the approximate distance at which you want to be reminded.

7. Tap on Details at the top-left to return to the Details panel, where you can set other options like priority, which list you want this reminder to appear in, and any notes regarding this reminder.

8. Tap on Done at the top-right. You’re all set!

When the reminder is configured, all details are visible in the main Reminders app

It may be useful to know that you can add common locations to your personal info card in the Contacts app. When you set a location reminder, locations in the list include addresses from your card. For instance, add your work, home, and other favorite addresses to your card for easy access in Reminders.

Finally, don’t forget that you are also able to silence all notifications temporarily by turning on Do Not Disturb. This is configured in Settings > Do Not Disturb.

Why not familiarize yourself with Geofence technology? Moving forward, it will become a key player in advancing the “personal assistant” attributes of our devices – those that we could merely dream about in the past.

Smartphones Become The New House Keys

As reported by the Star Tribune: For Raffi Kajberouni, the keys to his Santa Clarita, Calif., home have become relics.

If he locks himself out, no problem. If a friend arrives at his two-story house before him, there’s no waiting outside for Kajberouni to arrive. 

Kajberouni taps his smartphone and his front door unlocks.

He can also turn down the thermostat or view his home security cameras from ­anywhere in the world.

“A lot of my friends are jealous,” the 31-year-old said. “It’s like the home from ‘Back to the Future,’ but in real life.”  From complete home ­systems to such individual Internet-connected products as high-tech appliances and power strips, the smart home is no longer a futuristic gimmick.

The technology behind smart gadgets — items that can be controlled remotely or perform tasks on their own — has been around for decades, but until recently the devices were rudimentary and, above all, expensive.

“It had always been an upscale-type business: Unless you were in the top 5 percent of income levels, you didn’t have access to this type of connectivity,” said Randy Light, ­merchant of home automation for Home Depot.

Wireless Internet and the widespread proliferation of smartphones are making smart home technologies more sophisticated — and ­affordable.

“This used to be something out of ‘The Jetsons’ or limited to the super-rich,” said Jonathan Dorsheimer, an analyst at Canaccord Genuity. But as smart home technology has improved and costs have come down, “it’s becoming more mainstream.”

Analysts estimate that only a small single-digit percentage of homeowners have smart homes. But the home automation systems and services market is expected to see enormous growth and is forecast to reach $14.7 billion in revenue globally by 2017, up from $3.6 billion last year, according to NextMarket Insights.

These days, a wide swath of companies are clamoring to sell smart systems, including home security firms, telecommunications giants such as AT&T and Verizon, cable ­providers and utilities.

That’s expected to help “propel the market from its fairly modest size today to one which serves more than 35 million households by 2017,” NextMarket said in its recent report.

Meanwhile, technology giants such as Samsung and LG are rolling out individual smart home products, part of the “Internet of things” trend that has seen Net ­connectivity make its way into everyday items.

The housing recovery also could fuel growth if owners choose to pull out their rising equity to give their homes high-tech upgrades.

And as Americans purchase more newly built homes, they may increasingly find those digs fully integrated with their phones. Some of the nation’s largest homebuilders now market tech-equipped houses’ advantages over older homes.

Although new homes are usually more expensive, builders have emphasized the long-term cost savings owners can reap through solar panels and the ability to monitor and change their energy usage with smart devices.

That’s because computerized controls in one’s home and on appliances can be set to respond to signals from energy providers to minimize ­electricity consumption at times when the power grid is under stress from high demand. Homeowners can even shift some of their power use to times when electricity is available at a lower cost. The so-called smart grid — a digital network enabling utilities, consumers and alternative sources of renewable energy to “talk” to one another instantaneously — steers electricity to where it is needed most.

Russell Chang and his wife recently purchased a four-bedroom house in Irvine, Calif., complete with solar panels and several home automation ­offerings from Miami-based Lennar Corp. Since they purchased the house in November for a little more than $1 million, he has enjoyed ensuring that the house is warm before he steps inside.

The high-tech options didn’t drive his decision to purchase, although he said the perks helped him decide that “this is the right home for us.”

“It really put the icing on the cake,” the 40-year-old said. “We know we are going to get cost savings.”

Not for everyone

Smart home technology isn’t for everyone. For many, it’s not too much trouble to set the washing machine or dishwasher manually or wait until getting home to turn up the heat. And smart home products are still more expensive than old-school items.

Analysts also point out that in many cases, it could take years for the savings from reduced energy use to offset the cost of installing a home system.

But the market is surging ahead. Los Angeles-based builder KB Home now offers a base home automation system in all of its new communities nationwide. The standard system enables owners to track their energy use through the Internet.

Home buyers can then add options, including appliances, a thermostat, lighting, security cameras and locks that they can control through smartphones and tablets. Solar power also comes standard in most of the firm’s Southern California communities.

A smart refrigerator, for instance, can be set to make ice only at night, when energy demand is lower. And parents can keep track of their children through security cameras they view using their Internet-connected devices.

“If you are a working family and your kid is supposed to be home at 3 p.m., they can actually go on their computer at work and see the kid is home at 3,” said Steve Ruffner, president of KB Home’s Southern California division.

If a child didn’t arrive home, an e-mail can alert parents that their alarm wasn’t disarmed by a scheduled time.

For about $1,600, a home buyer can turn a home into a smart one with smart lights, a high-tech front door lock, a Wi-Fi-controllable security system with a camera and a smart thermostat, said Kirk Page, president of KPS Alarms of Ontario, Calif.

GPS-Tagged Sharks Post Location to Twitter, Alerting Beachgoers

The Twitter feed of Surf Life Saving Western Australia - a non-
profit group dedicated to beach-goer safety is being accessed
regularly by GPS-tagged sharks that tweet their breed, size, and
location, alerting beach-goers to their presence.  The great white
shown above is called 'Genie'.  Genie measures nearly 15 ft, and
weighs in at 2,292 lbs.  The tracking device shown above is attached to
her dorsal fin.

As reported by Nature World News: The Twitter feed of Surf Life Saving Western Australia - a non-profit group dedicated to beach-goer safety - is being accessed regularly by GPS-tagged sharks that tweet their breed, size and location, alerting beach-goers to their presence.

The tweets are sent when one of more than 320 tagged sharks is identified by a monitoring system that sends an alert to Surf Life Saving Western Australia computers when the shark swims within about a kilometer of a beach, according to Australia's Sky News.

The tweet gives the size and type of shark, as well as its approximate location. One tweet posted Thursday alerted swimmers of a great white shark:

"Fisheries advise: White Shark 2.5 - 3m, had been sighted at Rottnest 500m offshore from Pt Clune. Sighting @ 1535 Reported @ 1610."

Location information for a great white shark
off of the South African coast named Madiba.

The speed at which the shark location data can reach people may ultimately save lives. Western Australia is the world's deadliest place for shark attacks - six people have died there from shark attacks in the past two years, Sky News reported.

There are about 160 species of sharks known to inhabit Australian waters, according to Surf Life Saving Western Australia, and three of them are considered to be a risk to human safety: the great white, the tiger shark and the bull shark.

The majority of shark fatalities in Western Australia are attributed to white sharks, the group states on its website.

The official Department of Fisheries Western Australia web page acknowledges the partnership between the government and Surf Life Saving Western Australia, linking to the Twitter account and stating that the partnership is aimed to "develop new strategies for beach goers and users of the aquatic environment on the risks associated with sharks​."

The track of Mary Lee, a great white shark
off the East coast of the USA.

"These detections and WA's extensive receiver network are contributing to important research to help the government to better understand the movements of white sharks through WA waters, as well as playing a major public safety role," Rory McAuley, Department of Fisheries principal research scientist, told Sky News.

"The battery life of internal acoustic tags is up to 10 years so the scientific data that may be collected from this shark is unprecedented."

You can view some near real-time shark locations at: http://www.ocearch.org/tracker/  or you can follow the Surf Life Saving WA twitter feed at: https://twitter.com/SLSWA

Bomb-Hoaxing Harvard Student Used Anonymous Web Browser and Email, Yet Was Still Caught. How?

As reported by Electronic Products: This story is actually a pretty good lesson on the limits of online privacy.

In case you missed this story from earlier in the month, Harvard Student Eldo Kim sent in an anonymous email to school officials claiming two bombs had been placed in two buildings on campus.

The point behind his doing this? To get Kim out of his finals.

The result? The school shut down and a media frenzy ensued.

But no sooner did the story get picked up by the various news outlets was Kim caught and the threat proved a hoax.

Truth be told, catching Kim shouldn't have been that easy. According to an FBI affidavit, the student sent the threat using a Tor browser, which 'anonymizes' a user’s web browsing, paired with Guerilla Mail, an anonymous email program.

Typically, this would be enough to shield Kim’s identity.

So what was his mistake?

He sent the threat while connected to Harvard’s wireless Internet system.

According to the FBI’s report, Tor half-worked for Kim; that is, the police couldn't see what he was doing on the browser, but because his computer was connected to the University’s wireless network, coupled with the fact that he was using a cloaking service not only very early in the morning but also at the same time the threatening emails were sent in, his location became pretty easy to identify.

The lesson here, beyond the fact that one should not email fake bomb threats just to get out of a test, is that if you’re using free Wi-Fi, you need to lower your expectations in terms of privacy. A lot of people nowadays assume that if they take the proper precautions when it comes to protecting their online identity and activities, they’re always protected, and that’s not the case. If you use a public service like free Wi-Fi, you should expect to give up a little bit of your information in exchange.

NASA LADEE Lunar Mission Confirms Potential of Laser Communications In Space

As reported by NDTV: NASA has completed its 30-day lunar laser mission which confirmed that the possibility of expanding broadband capabilities in space using laser communications is as bright as expected.  

Hosted aboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), for its ride to lunar orbit, the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) mission was designed to confirm laser communication capabilities from a distance of almost a quarter-of-a-million miles, NASA said.

In addition to demonstrating record-breaking data download and upload speeds to the Moon at 622 megabits per second (Mbps) and 20 Mbps, respectively, LLCD also showed that it could operate as well as any NASA radio system.

"Throughout our testing we did not see anything that would prevent the operational use of this technology in the immediate future," said Don Cornwell, LLCD mission manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt.

For example, LLCD demonstrated error-free communications during broad daylight, including operating when the moon was to within three degrees of the Sun as seen from Earth.

LLCD also demonstrated error-free communications when the Moon was low on the horizon, less than 4 degrees, as seen from the ground station, which also demonstrated that wind and atmospheric turbulence did not significantly impact the system. LLCD was even able to communicate through thin clouds, an unexpected bonus.

Operationally, LLCD demonstrated the ability to download data from the LADEE spacecraft itself.

"We were able to download LADEE's entire stored science and spacecraft data (one gigabyte) in less than five minutes, which was only limited to our 40 Mbps connection to that data within LADEE," said Cornwell.

Using LADEE's onboard radio system would take several days to complete a download of the same stored data.

Additionally, LLCD was to prove the integrity of laser technology to send not only error-free data but also uncorrupted commands and telemetry or monitoring messages to and from the spacecraft over the laser link.

LLCD also demonstrated the ability to "hand-off" the laser connection from one ground station to another, just as a cellphone does a hand-off from one cell tower to another.

An additional achievement was the ability to operate LLCD without using LADEE's radio at all.

"We were able to program LADEE to awaken the LLCD space terminal and have it automatically point and communicate to the ground station at a specific time without radio commands.

This demonstrates that this technology could serve as the primary communications system for future NASA missions," said Cornwell.

The ability of LLCD to send and receive high definition video was proven with a message from NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, completing the trip to the Moon and back with only a few seconds of delay.

Companies Looking to Profit with Niche Fleet Markets - Like Towing

As reported by GPS World: Niche markets for location companies are sometimes hit-and-miss. One real opportunity that is gaining more traction among location companies is towing.

There are legions of Duck Dynasty-type of towing trade show attendees, but you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. There is tons of money in the towing industry as banks, insurance companies, motor clubs and other technology entities are flocking to these shows. Many times that scruffy-looking guy in a Duck Dynasty T-shirt is a multi-million-dollar owner of a big towing company. 

Although it is a strong niche market, the towing industry is gaining traction among the dozen or so location companies that were exhibing at the recent American Towman Exposition there.  

Location companies exhibiting asked towing operators to look at the usual benefits of their products: fuel savings, dispatching tow trucks to the nearest incident, reducing idle time, reduced overtime hours, monitoring of speeds and other features. 

Several financial institutions were on site who acknowledged the importance of tracking and monitoring technology in towing company fleets and headquarters. One banker said that he will not give a loan to a towing company unless it has, across a fleet, a real-time tracking system. The same goes for many insurance companies.

One challenge that location companies may have in smaller niche markets is volume. One company says it cannot sell to fleets with five or fewer trucks.

In related GPS/location news:

• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently said that more than two-thirds of the calls to 911 emergency centers in Texas from wireless phones do not include the accurate location information necessary to find a caller in crisis. The data, provided to the FCC by state and local 911 agencies, show a dramatic drop in more accurate “Phase II” data in Texas from 67 percent of all wireless calls in January 2011 to just 33 percent in June 2013, despite a dramatic increase in cell phone calls over the same period.

• C.J. Driscoll & Associates released a new multi-client marketing research study covering U.S. fleet operators with Mobile Resource Management systems and services. The 2013-14 Survey of Fleet Operator Interest in MRM Systems and Services assesses fleet operator interest in GPS fleet management, driver behavior management, and GPS-equipped handset/portable solutions for managing mobile workers. The study was partially funded by 14 companies, including major cellular carriers, GPS fleet management solution providers, suppliers of driver behavior management systems, and other leading telematics suppliers to the fleet market. The following are among the key findings of the study: More than three-fourths of the fleets that are using a GPS fleet management system reported a high level of satisfaction with their system and two-thirds reported that they have recouped their investment in the system. Another study finding indicates participating fleets that have never used a GPS fleet management system expect to deploy a system in the next 12-18 months.

• MapQuest, which hasn’t gotten the publicity of Google Maps or Apple, recently rolled out a new mapping application, which was a nine-month project. The new mapping app features layers of information “around” a user such as coffee, bars, gas, banks and parking. The new app gets traffic updates on the fly and works more like a standard GPS system, according to published reports. MapQuest is still the number 3 mobile map provider, which is a quiet stat given how long the company has been around in the location industry.