I am always a little hesitant to write about anything that gets funded through Indiegogo, as the site is slightly less reputable than Kickstarter. And while all tech startups are a little risky, ones on Indiegogo seem to be even more so. However, all of that aside, today I discovered this cool little GPS tracker that does, well, everything. The flex funding campaign gives me a bit of pause, but with more than three weeks left in the campaign, it has already surpassed its goal and is barreling towards the stretch goals.

The Smart Tracker, honestly, almost sounds too good to be true. With an expected delivery date of August of this year, the device costs around $180 on Indiegogo (there are still some Early Birds left for $130), and I wouldn’t be surprised for it to cost quite a bit more once the campaign ends. However, in the world of GPS trackers, a sub-$200 device really is pretty cheap. read more

Imagine walking down a boulevard on your vacation or even in your home town. You see a building with a sign saying it was built in the 1800s, so you pull out your smartphone, launch an app and point the screen at the building. Instead of the building infront of you, you see a photograph of the street and the building facade, showing what it looked like 75 years ago along with historical information on the building. Well, with the app Pivot, that’s exactly what you’ll be able to do.

Using GPS and augmented reality, Pivot is designed to act almost like a time capsule, allowing users to peer into the past and learn significant and interesting facts about historical locations. Using geotagged images and GPS technology, the app will allow users to pull up images of sites and allow users to peek into the past. This isn’t the first app to do this, but it’s still a cool idea and a neat way to use GPS technology. read more

While not directly related to the kinds of GPS articles we normally write, location accuracy in emergencies is a pretty hot and important topic in the world of GPS and is definitely something worth talking about. This topic has actually been in the news several times in the last year, as it was discovered that 911 emergency calls made from cell phones don’t provide the same location information to dispatchers as landlines.

As it turns out, cell phones really only provide a three to four block radius for possible location to dispatchers, requiring them to either try and figure out where a caller is vocally or to simply search for the person. However, an app has been recently released that utilizes GPS to provide better location to dispatch during emergencies. read more