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Issue 1 -
October 2008
Welcome to the debut edition of the Seeker Wireless Newsletter. |
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CONTENTS
Vodafone Award
GPS – Why Bother?
SeekerLocate
Mobile Asia Congress
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Seeker Wireless: Vodafone Innovation Partner of the Year 2008
Seeker Wireless has been named Innovation Partner of the Year 2008 by
Vodafone New Zealand and Vodafone Australia.
The announcement was made at the joint Australia and New Zealand
Vodafone Partner Awards - created to recognize excellence in provision
of services to Vodafone by its suppliers. Vodafone New Zealand launched
their Local Zone product in
July, for which Seeker Wireless created
the world’s most technically advanced and financially efficient zone
detection solution.
Local Zone allows subscribers to use their mobile
phone as a fixed line phone when they are in a nominated location, such
as their home. Seeker’s innovation was to provide a system (SeekerZone™)
that locates the mobile phones accurately and reliably so that calls are
rated correctly when they are in their nominated location.
The award was presented by Ken Tunnicliffe, Vodafone New Zealand’s
Director of Technology, whose product, marketing and technical teams
worked closely with Seeker to ensure that numerous exciting innovations
were delivered in a reliable, low-risk framework. Such tight partner
collaboration is the key feature of successful innovations.
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GPS - why bother? - by Chris Drane, CEO
I have to make a secret confession. I am a long-time GPS junkie. I first
started studying the research papers on it in 1980, about 13 years
before it became operational. The mathematics and science behind the
system is beautiful; quantum mechanics, algebraic code theory,
differential geometry, special and general relativity and Newtonian
mechanics.
The Global Positioning System is extraordinary: one of America’s
greatest engineering achievements. However, as with any system, it is
not perfect. I have spent much of my career developing inventions to
supplement GPS in areas where it did not work - indoors, in urban
canyons, and on non-GPS enabled handsets.
Malcolm Macnaughtan and I founded Seeker in 2003 because we believed we
could fill the market gap left by GPS’s deficiencies. Since then I never
doubted that the end game would be the fusion of GPS and cellular
systems, but like everyone else, I have accepted the industry hype that
one day (always in the future), every new mobile phone will have GPS on
board.
This way of thinking changed last Monday, when Malcolm sent me the
results of our latest trials in Singapore and London. The results are
stunning - they are showing an accuracy of 50 metres, often much better
- without GPS!
How have we achieved such a superb result? We have fused WiFi and
cellular positioning. In the past, as on the Apple iPhone, people have
simultaneously run separate WiFi location and cellular location, but
Seeker is the first in the world to combine the two organically – to
utilise all available radio networks as a heterogeneous cloud of
positioning opportunities.
Why am I so excited? Even based on our first results, Seeker’s radical
new technology is suitable for just about every location application,
with the exception of navigation. It would not even surprise me if, in
time,
SeekerLocate™ evolved to the point that it would support
navigation-grade positioning accuracy.
Now, for the first time, I envisage a world where the ultimate location
solution no longer involves GPS. Handset manufacturers who are planning
to put GPS chips on their mobiles may well be out-played by those who
realize that the end-game is really cellular/WiFi location. Seeker
Wireless is in the driving seat to provide your Location:Now.
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SeekerLocate™: Next-gen Location Engine
SeekerLocate™ is a software solution that provides comprehensive,
accurate mobile phone location coverage outdoors, indoors and
underground - anywhere that GPS, cellular or WiFi coverage is available.
SeekerLocate enables accurate location-based services for all handsets,
with or without GPS.
If you are in the shopping mall, an underground car park, or on the
subway you can make mobile calls - so why doesn’t your GPS work?
Firstly, it might be turned off because it uses so much battery.
Secondly, even if it’s on - GPS won’t work unless it can 'see' at least
4 satellites by direct line-of-sight in good weather conditions. Even
with these limitations, when people think about mobile location
solutions, GPS is usually the first thing that comes to mind.
SeekerLocate provides the first realistic alternative to GPS.
Many industry analysts predict that by 2012, up to 20% of the world’s
handsets will have a GPS chip inside. SeekerLocate provides the Location
solution for the 80% (4 billion+) handsets that won’t have a GPS chip in
2012. It’s also the solution for those that do have GPS but choose not
to turn it on, or are out of GPS range in the home, school, office,
subway, shopping mall or car park.
More information on SeekerLocate
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See us at Mobile Asia Congress, Macau
If you'd like to come and see us at the
Mobile Asia Congress in Macau
(November 18th - 20th), we'll be at
Booth G11 in Hall E. |
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