Vyrotek|Bridging the gap between code and wealth

Lately I’ve been getting excited about a new startup that is based here in Salt Lake City and about to go live. They are called S5 Wireless and they track stuff without GPS! They have essentially created a small microchip that can be attached to almost anything which enables you to track its location with GPS accuracy. Another amazing thing is that it works great indoors. They sell their service OEM to anyone who wants to track something. They expose a simple webservice that when queried with the identifier of the chip they will respond with its current location. They aren’t quite live yet but I did speak to them on the phone for a few minutes to try and learn what I could. They informed me that they plan to have their webservice API and marketing details polished and ready for use around 3rd Quarter.

So, how does it work? How much does it cost? Check out their site for a bit more information.
http://www.s5w.com/Products/FAQ.html

Also check out some other articles people have written about them.
Gizmondo - Poor Man’s LoJack
ABC News - Utah company takes crack at problem of tracking

UPDATE:

I found a article that covers a Q&A session with the CEO of S5 Wireless and its very interesting. There is a bit more information in this one. Check it out here - S5 Wireless Interview with David Carter, CEO

Here are some parts I found the most interesting:

“If you just imagine all of the things that are of value to you, would you pay $10 or less for a tag and a couple of dollars a month to keep up with them, to know where your children are when they’re out with the family car or on a camping trip in the mountains with the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts?”

“The location and telemetry information is then sent to the customer in near real-time. The tracking accuracy is comparable to GPS, and we can deliver about 60 bits of telemetry with every transmission, enabling monitoring of fuel levels, temperatures, heart rate, etc.”

My favorite blog put up a great article on Mobile web trends today. They have some great resources available and it gives a good perspective on where things are moving with the mobile web. The startups to watch was the most interesting to me, I’m definitely going to check out those sites…

The What’s Next section was also very interesting. But there’s one issue that I keep thinking about that will probably slow down development on applications that actually use some of those fancy technologies. I’m talking about hardware that the phone has but that the browser cant use! GPS, sensoring, biometics, image recognition, etc… most of these things will require the user to download and install an application to use the actual hardware on the device. I’m really curious to see how things develop. I own a phone with GPS built in and I wish there was a way to build a webapp that could access the user’s location (with permission of course).

Maybe its just me, but I sort of avoid downloading and installing things on my phone. And as a developer I would rather spend my time developing web applications that can be used by many different types of phones without having to make special releases for every make and model that exists.

ReadWriteWeb Mobile Web Trends