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Strollerderby
New Kiddie Lo-Jack Is On the iPhone
As if all those “slip a GPS in your kid’s backpack” devices aren’t tempting enough, now you can do it all from your iPhone.
AT&T has made an app that enables with an iPhone and a group plan to track the whereabouts of the other phones in the plan right from said iPhone. No more rushing home to check your computer to see if Junior is really staying after school for “track practice.” You can stalk, er, track him from work.
Of course this app has its merits – if your kids lose their phone, you can figure out where it went. Not to mention all those phones stolen in high schools these days.Your kids don’t have to have an iPhone to make it work, and if your phone doesn’t have a built-in GPS chip, AT&T will estimate a phone’s location based on data from nearby cellphone towers.
But do we have to lay out the risks of those whirring arms while you’re helicopter parenting? It’s liable to give you a very sore rotater cuff Mom and Dad.
And need we mention that the estimated location isn’t exactly accurate? It can be anywhere from a few hundred feet to a mile away from the exact locale – so Junior could be at practice or huffing paint at his friend’s house a few blocks from the school. Of course, if you really think he’s up for the latter, tracking his cell phone probably isn’t going to help you.
Is the Family Map app - $9.99 a month for tracking up to two phones, $14.99 to locate up to five – worth it?
Image: Family map
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1 Comment
T commented on Feb 09 10 at 1:07 pmGeez, it’s cheaper to just buy a Mobile Me package. It does the same thing – and a ton more!
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