* Mologogo tracks the location of GPS equipped cell phones
You’ve heard of LoJack, the system used by the police to track and recover stolen vehicles? Well now you can “fauxjack.”
Fauxjacking is the hip, groovy, “in” term for adding geotracking to a car or a dog or whatever without using the LoJack system; which leads me to this issue’s topic: Mologogo.
Mologogo, created by two guys using the aliases GravityMonkey and LemonHead, is a free Web-based service along with a free application for tracking the location of GPS equipped cell phones capable of running the Mologogo software (fauxjacked phones – that has a nice ring to it – pun intended).
Mologogo only works on Nextel/Boost Mobile iDEN phones (apparently Nextel is the only U.S. carrier that lets developers access GPS information – see here for a list of Mologogo compatible phones), and uses Java (CLDC 1.1 and J2ME 2.0).
According to the Mologogo documentation (free registration required) the software “was built using the NetBeans IDE with the Motorola iDEN SDK for J2ME”.
Using this system the location of a Mologogo equipped phone can be tracked either through a regular Web browser or on a cell phone browser. The documentation explains: “Mologogo downloads maps of your location to your phone where you can zoom in or out and see your friends plotted on your map. And your location information is available for you on the Web, so you can see the same maps, locations and friends online, too.”
The Mologogo application determines your position from the cell phone’s GPS subsystem and then downloads a map and displays your location on it. Mologogo also downloads traffic alerts for the currently viewed map. You can also use the Mologogo application to search for and display street addresses.
If you enter a friend’s name on your cell phone the map will re-center on their last known position. Friends can also be found and added via the Web interface.
The Mologogo application adds each friend, traffic alert, and location viewed to a list that is retained for the duration of your current Mologogo session.
You can set the frequency that Mologogo uploads GPS data to as often as once per second. If GPS data is not available then Mologogo can optionally set your location to that of the nearest cell phone tower although that will usually result in significant positional error.
You can save bookmarks (saved locations) using either your cell phone or the Mologogo Web site. With flip-style phones the Mologogo application can also continue running when the phone is closed.
According to the Mologogo FAQ there are plans to release the J2ME app under an open source license sometime in the future.
The Mologogo guys will sell you a “full Mologogo Phone GPS System” for $99 which includes a new Boost Mobile i415 phone preloaded with theh Mologogo software, a SIM card and $10 starter credit, a USB data cable for the phone, a home wall charger, and a car charger (they can’t be making anything on this deal). Interestingly they claim that tracking using the Mologogo system costs around 20 cents a day.
The system works well but the biggest gotcha is that long term running of the Mologogo application can be problematic occasionally requiring a hard reset to fix. Other than that, according to the FAQ and the MologogoWiki, there are only a few bugs that need to be fixed.
This is a fantastic Web application with enormous potential not only for fauxjacking but also as a basis for novel social applications (see the home page of the MologogoWiki for links to hacks, new uses, and technical details).
I don’t know if GravityMonkey and LemonHead want investment but this looks like something well worth a VC investing in or even a generous guy like, say, Paul Allen donating some money towards. Mologogo is one of the most creative and intriguing Web applications I’ve seen for some time!
