GPS

The U.S. Supreme Court's sweeping decision requiring police to obtain search warrants to plant GPS tracking devices on automobiles will broadly enhance Americans' electronic privacy rights, legal experts predicted today.

This morning's unanimous ruling (PDF) says the customary law enforcement practice of installing GPS trackers without judicial approval--which has become more common as prices have fallen--violates Americans' Fourth Amendment rights to be free from warrantless searches.

That reasoning suggests police also need to obtain warrants before tracking the locations of cell phones and mobile devices, another contentious topic currently before the courts, said Greg Nojeim, an … Read more

The Supreme Court struck down the U.S. government's argument that it can use GPS to track a suspect's vehicle without a warrant.

In a unanimous decision, the court said the Fourth Amendment protection of "persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" would be violated if law enforcement agencies were allowed to attach a GPS location to a suspect's vehicle without obtaining a warrant.

Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor, and Chief Justice John Roberts sided with that opinion. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Samuel … Read more

LightSquared, the company seeking final FCC approval to build a nationwide 4G wireless wholesale network, said that a test showing interference between its service and GPS systems was rigged by manufacturers of GPS receivers and government workers to produce bogus results.

On a conference call Wednesday with reporters, LightSquared executives Jeffrey Carlisle and Geoff Stearn, along with paid consultant Ed Thomas, a former chief engineer at the Federal Communications Commission, said that recent tests conducted by the Air Force Space Command on behalf of the Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee (PNT EXCOM) were set up to produce negative … Read more

Pedestrians have sometimes felt neglected when it comes to GPS directions.

Indeed, not so long ago, one lady sued Google because the directions its map offered led her (she believed) to be struck by a car.

Now Microsoft has been granted a patent that is designed to make its maps more pedestrian-friendly.

Somehow, this patent has immediately been dubbed the "avoid ghetto" feature.

The gist of it seems to be that Microsoft's GPS--which will reportedly be inserted into Windows Phones in the future--will use input from more varied and up-to-date sources in order to create suggested routes. … Read more

Magellan isn't afraid to get a little sweaty, as the GPS manufacturer is getting into the fitness tech game.

Known for its in-car navigation systems, today Magellan introduced its first pair of GPS fitness watches for runners, cyclers, swimmers, and triathletes. The Switch and Switch Up will be on display at CES 2012, with expected availability for spring 2012.

The Switch is designed primarily for runners, according to Magellan, and offers a 1.26-inch monochrome display, a high-sensitivity GPS receiver, and embedded ANT+ technology, so you can connect to third-party heart-rate monitors, foot pods, bike sensors, and so forth. … Read more

HoudahGeo is an all-in-one app for geocoding and geotagging your photos, so you can keep track of where they were taken and upload them to sites like Google Earth and Flickr.

HoudahGeo provides a variety of ways to link your photos to geographic locations (using exportable EXIF, XMP, or IPTC tags), whether you're using a GPS track-logging device or you're entering locations manually, with coordinates, a built-in map, or Google Earth. You can even just take occasional, lower-quality reference photos (for example, with your iPhone 3G), and HoudahGeo will automatically geocode photos taken with your higher-res camera later … Read more

When Asus unveiled its Honeycomb-powered Transformer Prime tablet last November, it stated that Ice Cream Sandwich would be on the tablet by year's end. As owners of the tablet can tell you, that didn't pan out. However, according to its Facebook page, the company will begin pushing the update to Prime owners worldwide, starting January 12.

That's the boring part though, since Asus made no secret of the fact that ICS was coming. More intriguing however, are the other parts of Asus's Facebook post.

Since the release of the Transformer Prime, two potential issues have come … Read more

Importing GPS waypoints, a good daily driver to lease, and Siri gets in the way.

LightSquared is done with the government's hemming and hawing, and is pressuring for approval to use its spectrum to build a next-generation wireless network.

In the company's most aggressively worded message to the Federal Communications Commission, LightSquared argues that the GPS industry has no right to seek protection from the potential interference that LightSquared's network could cause. It said today that it has filed a petition seeking a declaratory ruling confirming its rights as a spectrum licensee. The company has been battling the perception that its network could possibly cripple critical GPS devices--hurting planes, farming equipment, and … Read more