PingAlert anti-bullying system
In conjunction with the national anti-bullying week, KidsOK
has launched its latest mobile phone system to help protect your offspring from
the seemingly ever-growing threat of bullying. It’s a pretty simple concept
which is an obvious benefit in this situation; first off, your child can set up
a quick dial number that can be discreetly pressed (assuming the keypad isn’t
locked I guess), then the phone will link up to the KidsOK service which immediately
sends an SMS to the parent’s phone with a map showing their exact location. Either
that or an anxious parent can send a simple text which will be answered with
the same data, without any real intrusion to the child’s phone itself.
More child tracking
GPS phone tracker for kids
Mother is watching you
While it looks like a pretty useable system, there is a
slight drawback in that the location has to be calculated from phone mast data
and, as a result, the location pinpointing isn’t enormously precise, but it
does provide an outline covering not too huge an area – as demonstrated in the
pic. Another potential problem is setting it up on a mobile phone; this
probably won’t be a vast obstacle to a technology savvy user but you should be
aware of the types of phone service
providers that are compatible (notable exceptions are Virgin Mobile and 3) and
that your handset must be able to accept GPRS and WAP messages. If you’re after
this kind of piece-of-mind applications you’re looking at a standard retail
pack including a year’s subscription, PingAlert for three mobiles and 10 free
pings for £39.95. Subsequent pings cost an extra 50 pence.
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