Nokia talks up Securitas GPS app
Personal protection for paranoid persons
Nokia has beefed up phone security by partnering with Securitas to design an application that’ll act like a personal bodyguard for mobile owners.
Called Safe-2-Go, the app’s designed to provide support to anyone in an “exposed situation”, and to offer increased security through information about the location of loved ones.
The app has four parts to its security arsenal: Assist, Find, Zone and Friends. Details about the first sector, Assist, are still a little sketchy, but Nokia claimed it’ll connect the user through to Securitas’ Alarm Central at the touch of a button.
Once in Alarm Central, you’ll have access to details about who’s connecting to you and where they’re located. Presumably this is about people connecting to you over Bluetooth or someone trying to track your location using GPS.
Find locates the current positions of a nominated chum, while Zone sends you a text if, say, your offspring leave or enter a predefined perimeter, such as the pub schoolground. Friends sounds much the same as Find, but Nokia claimed it differs by giving the locations of several people simultaneously.
The app will work on any GPS-enabled handset based on the S60 platform.
Safe-2-Go will be available in Europe during the second half of 2009. But the price is still a closely guarded secret. ®
COMMENTS
Great but...
the GPS on the Nokia N95 8GB (may have improved in more recent handsets?) is shockingly poor at locking on to a GPS signal, and hammers the battery, so the "Find" feature won't locate little Timmy until it's too late, and the "Zone" feature will text you after 30 seconds because it has lost the signal from Timmy's mobile, either because the battery has died or he's gone into a building (like the school) or maybe just because a wisp of cloud has passed overhead.
Securitas' Alarm Central
Gives you details of who's connecting to you via Bluetooth? "Yes, Sir, we have a lock. He's DEFINATELY in the same building as you. No, we can't tell you which floor. He probably has a mobile phone in his hand, though... Might look scruffy... You know, like a crook."
I can see the other feature being VERY useful; The 21st century Googling of your own name... "Yes Sir, there is one person attempting to locate you via GPS. You."
