CloudSync Press Release: GPS software locates $3,500 device in New Bedford bushes.

New Bedford, CT
August 21, 2009

Terry O’Sullivan, field salesman for Polar Beverage panicked when he returned to his car and found that his company’s mobile device had been stolen. O’Sullivan’s car had been parked outside of a customer’s store on a routine visit. When Terry returned, his car had been forcibly opened and its contents ransacked.
Polar Beverage spends approximately $3,000 and considerable labor equipping their Symbol MC75 devices to mobilize each field salesperson. Polar holds each salesperson responsible for these company assets, so Terry was doubly concerned.

Terry called the New Bedford police, but there was nothing that they could do without more definitive information.

Terry turned to Paul Paciello, Director of Information Technology (IT) at Polar and Paul told him that the device had a GPS radio and could be tracked. The device’s location would be sufficient to get the police on the case.
Paul called his mobile solution vendor, Chris Arnold at Bar Code Direct, Inc. in North Grafton. Paul and Chris could immobilize the device, but turned to their mobile management software vendor, CloudSync, Inc. to see if the device could be located, using the GPS radio on the device.
The call came to Matt Bernier of CloudSync headquarters in Denver at 8:24am Mountain Time. Matt was able to remotely control the stolen MC70, although he couldn’t determine where the device without CloudSync’s GPS tracking software, “CloudLocate GPS.”
Matt quickly downloaded the tracking software to the stolen device, seen on the map as “1023”, and was soon looking at its location on his screen.

Initial View from high above... The location of the device is shown by the green bubble labeled 1023 on the map.

Zoomed in view, showing device’s location behind a doughnut shop, far from the scene of the crime.

Chris Arnold on the phone directed the New Bedford police to the address and location behind a doughnut shop. The police left their cars searched the area by looking behind trashcans and in the bushes. When the search party came up empty, Chris thought to place a phone call to the MC75–it began ringing about 15 feet away from the police officer and he quickly plucked it from the bushes. The $3500 device was recovered.
As a result, Terry O’Sullivan did not lose his device or his day’s work (sales orders stored on the device). Furthermore, Polar’s security was not compromised and they did not lose an expensive mobile sales device, thanks to GPS location technology by CloudSync, Inc.
The New Bedford police are following up on the case, but no suspect has yet been identified as of this writing.

Tom Kimball
CloudSync
720-221-4444, x102

CloudLocate GPS reduces location tracking costs by 50%

“CloudLocate GPS”, from CloudSync, Inc. is a Google-mapping console that anyone can access using a browser. At $6/month (undiscounted) it costs about half the expense of other GPS mapping solutions.

CloudLocate GPS routing in traffic

After CloudLocate GPS software is downloaded to a fleet of Windows Mobile devices, CloudLocate GPS tracks them all on the same map from an eye-in-the-sky point of view.

The good news is that CloudLocate’s  GPS tracking is very inexpensive, provides basic tracking, history, and dispatch services.  Enterprises wishing to cut costs or those who want to begin using GPS at a low cost may want to consider it.

Enterprises may also enjoy the ability to consolidate cell phone, GPS receiver, and rugged scanner with application into a single device (the rugged device).

The bad news for those wishing to track stolen vehicles location with GPS is that CloudLocate tracks only the Windows Mobile device, so can’t reliably be used for that purpose.

Note: The estimate of 50% may be too low in many cases, based on $6/month for CloudLocate. Competitive solutions range from $12 – $20/month for the software components. Also, Enterprises use CloudLocate to determine devices are using their cell plans (voice and data) or not.  Significant savings are realized when unused cell plans are dropped.

What Google Android Dev Phone could learn from Windows Mobile

Fed-Ex delivered the unlocked Google Dev phone 4 hours before my flight to New Zealand was about to leave. Perfect timing, I pulled it out of the generic white box, plugged it into the charger, fired it up, glanced at the not-helpful included instruction sheet, and waited.

The cool looking Android logo came up on the bright display, and then some instructions about needing a data card and signing into a Google account.

No worries, we had some data (SIM) cards in our lab, I toss in an AT&T 3G card, fired the device up again, it showed good signal strength, I typed in my google info, and waited… After a minute or so I get a generic message that it couldn’t connect with the Google servers and maybe the SIM card didn’t support data, and that I should contact some non-specified customer support (I’m para-phrasing the message from memory).

I try other SIM cards which were working perfectly on Windows Mobile devices, still no luck.

To cut a long story short I take the Google phone to NZ, confident that I can get it to work on a non-T-Mobile network (Vodaphone), alas I was wrong. It wasn’t until I got back from my trip that I found that simply hitting the menu button during start up provided a list of editable APN’s, of which AT&T was not listed. I add the appropriate data (Google Groups has information on setting this APN), and magically everything works.

So Google, a few suggestions that Microsoft gets right with Windows Mobile.

1. Don’t treat the Android Dev device like a phone with iPhone-like activation and control. Treat it as a mobile computer. Let the user have the flexibility to configure and deploy as desired.
2. Don’t tie a device to a Google/user account. Many of the enterprise mobility deployments we see, the device is not used for email/calendar, but rather some type of field service application, whereas the device is not necessarily tied to any specific user.
3. Let me choose what data/network connection I want to use on my unlocked mobile computer, many enterprises will run their device populations on multiple networks based on regional availability, some may be WiFi only.
4. Lastly, include a “How to set up an APN” with the dev phone in the shipping package, with settings to common APN’s, or at least a link where you have that info. This will greatly improve the initial experience.

With all that said, I think the Android user interface is pretty impressive given the youth of this product. We look forward to seeing more of these devices out in the field and definitely plan on adding support to this product within our CloudSync management platform.