So I’ve been a little busy at work and the Q-man has been busy with work and school, so we’ve been ignoring the blog for a while. I’m hoping that this will change in March but won’t be able to tell for sure, since I start teaching a new class at my gym. Busy busy busy!
Before I got so busy I had a chance to chat with an awesome new company. tXtBlocker sent us a press release during the CES leadup, and I found them interesting enough to arrange a call with their media relations guy. I came away quite impressed with their potential.
tXtBlocker provides a service that prevents cell phones from being used under user-specified conditions. I say service because it’s not software that is installed on the cell phone itself; rather, compatible cell phones are registered on tXtBlocker’s servers and associated with an account. This allows the account holder to identify and set up rules around when that cell phone can be used for calls and texts.
As an example, consider the very simple rule “no texting while driving”. By using the tXtBlocker service, the phone is automatically prevented from being used for texting when the service registers that the phone is travelling faster than a pre-set speed. It is transparent to the user in the sense that the phone just doesn’t text when the condition is met. At CES, the company was selling this as a service to parents of teens, who are among the most prolific of violators of this particular rule. However, the flexibility of the service is useful to companies as well. We discussed many use cases, including:
- preventing calls/texts from a user-defined radius (ie, a school, a church, etc).
- preventing calls/texts before or after a certain time (ie, during school)
- tracking the location of a phone
- preventing texting while driving
- theft deterrence and tracking
Emergency calls to 911 are always available, regardless of whether or not a rule is in effect. And rules can be added/suspended via account access – they don’t need to have physical access to the phone for rules to be implemented. So if your phone is stolen, you can log in, prevent it from being used for calls or texts, and track where the phone is. How awesome is that? If need be, the phone owner can request that the block be removed temporarily.
In my opinion, the true utility is for corporations. How many companies give their employees cell phones or Blackberries and only have soft guidelines about using them in inappropriate situations? I’m honestly not sure why an enterprising lawyer hasn’t sued a major corporation because an employee was texting or replying to email while driving. Yes, there’s some employee responsibility here but in today’s job climate, it’s very believable that an employee feels the need to always be available and to take unreasonable risks if they think it will help them keep their job. By activating corporate phones on tXtBlocker, every employee’s phone can be set to prevent use when the phone is traveling over 15mph. Simple, transparent, and safe. The theft deterrence and tracking capabilities are a close second in terms of corporate benefits as well – a nice big sticker on the back saying that the phone can be tracked and retrieved will go a long way to removing it as a potential hijack.
Right now, the service is primarily compatible with Blackberries, plus a few other phone models. But tXtBlocker indicated that by the end of 2010, they expect that their service will be compatible with the vast majority of GPS-enabled phones. The big exception, of course, is the iPhone because of its walled architecture. And since Apple sells a competing service (at least in the retrieval area), I don’t know how willing Apple would be to let tXtBlocker gain sufficient access to the background OS processes to make their service work. I figure we just need a few high profile cases where people cause accidents while typing on an iPhone to raise the visibility of the issue enough that Apple starts looking for a way to do this (or at least allow tXtBlocker to do it for them).
The service has an annual fee with discounts for each phone registered to an account. I know the last thing people want is another fee in these economic times, but as a parent of a future teen driver, I know I will be seriously considering this service. The cost is not all that high when you consider what it might be preventing.
InnoPocket have launched HexaPose Stand for Apple iPad. The HexaPose Stand is made of solid aluminum and tough polycarbonate with a chic design tailor-made for the Apple iPad. It comes with a rotatable pivot which can allow you to freely rotate your iPad horizontally or vertically. The pivot can also be adjusted 3 ways for different viewing angles for surfing, reading, gaming or movie viewing. HexaPose Stand is the perfect gadget for your iPad if you use iPad at home just as your PC. It makes your iPad look like an iMac.
Recent Comments