locator

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

Texas Instruments announces plans to acquire National Semiconductor for $6.5 billion

Google may have an antitrust investigation on its hands soon

AT&T will now charge an extra $50 if you want to upgrade your iPhone before your two-year contract is up

Sprint is looking into mobile phone payments using NFC

Google updates Maps for Android with enhanced check-in and location-based features

Sony is reportedly launching Honeycomb tablets later this year

The Commodore 64 is back

Two congressmen are trying to pry information out of wireless carriers about how closely they track their customers' whereabouts.

Letters sent to AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile this week ask what personally identifiable information is stored, how long it is kept, and for what other purposes it's used.

Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas) asked for responses no later than April 19. Their request came after Germany's Zeit Online published data showing that a cellular provider kept track of tens of thousands of locations that one person visited over six months.

Their letters could … Read more

AT&T announced a new equipment protection plan today that bundles insurance, support, and phone location services for $9.99 per month. Most of the carrier's current handsets (PDF) will be compatible with the AT&T Mobile Protection Pack, though iPhone and iPad users will have to resort to other solutions like Apple's MobileMe and Find My iPhone/iPad.

Customers who sign up for the service will get:

Mobile Insurance (formerly called Wireless Phone Insurance) will replace handsets that disappear through loss or theft, become inoperable through accidental or liquid damage, or suffer from mechanical and … Read more

Shop Savvy Premium Barcode Scanner is certainly not the only bar code reader in the iTunes App Store, but it offers some unique features to make it a handy shopping companion when checking prices. Like other apps in the category, ShopSavvy lets you use your iPhone camera to "scan" a bar code then view the item and prices from various locations. The interface is set up to be as simple as possible, but it offers nice touches such as the ability to initiate a scan by swiping upward on the product display screen.

After a bar code scan, … Read more

Sprint plans to make it a lot easier for its customers to keep their hands on the steering wheel and off their phones. The mobile operator announced that it will preinstall Drive First, an anti-distracted-driving app, on all Android phones it sells.

Drive First is an Android app that uses GPS technology to calculate the speed at which you are traveling, automatically locking down distracting features when it thinks you are driving. When activated, Drive First directs all calls to voicemail, auto responds to incoming text messages telling the sender that you're unavailable, and blocks all except three mobile applications of your choice, such as music and navigation apps.

An override button lets you turn off Drive First to return the phone's full functionality, useful if you are a passenger. However, override actions are logged so that the account administrator, such as a parent or employer, can see if and when you're talking while driving. When Drive First is activated, you can easily make a 911 emergency call.

Sprint will preload Android devices with Drive First, but subscribers will need to opt in to the service and pay $2 per month per device to use the app. Existing Android phones will be able to download the Drive First app, but details on how much the app will cost won't be available until closer to the product launch date in the third quarter of this year.

Drive First was developed by Location Labs, which also created the DriveSmart Plus app for T-Mobile. However, unlike T-Mobile's offering, Drive Smart gives users easy access to three apps of their choosing. While the developer and carrier are probably expecting users to select navigation and entertainment apps, there's nothing (except common sense) from stopping them from permitting Facebook and Tweet Deck when Drive First is in use. … Read more

Draft legislation would provide new privacy protections for Americans by requiring police to obtain search warrants to track the locations of cars and cell phones.

The forthcoming bill being prepared by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) and reviewed by CNET would provide legal protections for "geolocation information," meaning data that can locate a person through a wireless device or through a GPS tracker placed on a vehicle.

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones and implanting GPS bugs thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a … Read more

Before you tweet a photo of your delicious, homemade dish, check your settings--your phone might be embedding coordinates in your photos, leaving your location open to prying eyes.

Using the built-in GPS, phone camera applications can embed the latitude and longitude of a location in photos. Coordinates aren't shown in your photo library, but if you post a geotagged pic online, someone with an evil motive can easily extract the photo's EXIF data and find out where you live, eat, or hang out.

Creepy, right? This is a big security risk, especially for parents who post photos of … Read more

Of the several mobile friend-finder apps launching or updating at South by Southwest, Domo has perhaps the most engaging yet inexplicable demo. Two weeks ago at the Launch conference, founder Takahito Iguchi gave a Richard Simmons-like presentation that knocked the crowd flat (video is by VentureBeat). But afterward, few in the crowd could explain what the app actually does.

Here's what it does: It helps you find Facebook people who are near you and share your interests. The mobile app records your interests, musical tastes, work history, and so on, and then lets you find people nearby who match some or all of those categories. If you're at SXSW and want to find someone who shares your interest in a particular musical group, Domo will help you find that person; you can message them through the app as well.

I can see it being useful to connect with friends from work when I'm at big events (the Maker Faire comes to mind). FourSquare will also do this, but FourSquare users have to check in. Domo, I believe, will update your location as long as you have the app running in the background on your phone. (If the app isn't running, and for users who don't have it, it just gets location from Facebook profiles--much less useful.) Domo should also just let you see all users with a public Facebook profile who are nearby. From that list, then, you'll be able to filter to find the people that have compatible interests.

It's actually not a very complex idea, but it is socially powerful. Domo's implementation appears technically adept, even if its user interface is a bit overwrought. As I said, there are other apps launching soon that push social serendipity. It's going to be a big trend at SXSW and likely for the rest of this year.

See also: FourSquare (news); Hurricane Party, Who's Free, Meet Gatsby, MingleBird, Yobongo. I'm sure there are more.… Read more

AT&T has launched a new service that will send customers texts promoting special deals whenever they're near certain stores.

Teaming up with mobile marketer Placecast to deliver the new ShopAlerts service, AT&T says it's the first mobile provider to offer a location-based marketing program designed for mobile consumers.

AT&T subscribers in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco who sign up for ShopAlerts will get text messages describing special offers, rewards, coupons, and other promotions at nearby participating stores. AT&T said that so far it's signed up Hewlett … Read more