Cell Phone, Gps | featured news

On April 10, 2011, tornadoes ripped across Wisconsin, tearing roofs off houses, toppling trees and snapping power lines. In many places, the high winds were greeted with silence as some Cold War-era warning sirens failed because of lost power and other issues — just when they were needed the most.

An interstate drug trafficker hauling a motorhome filled with marijuana isn’t the most sympathetic defendant. But a federal court’s declaration that Melvin Skinner pretty much should’ve known his pre-paid cellphone could be tracked via GPS — and therefore cops didn’t require a warrant to track him — has repercussions that privacy advocates say deserve your attention.

Catherine Crump: Increasingly police are tracking our movements via our cell phones, an invasion that undermines our essential liberties

How do you like those Apples? An unnamed New Yorker claims Apple's new "Find My Friends" app -- which uses GPS to locate any of your friends that have allowed you access to their location -- led to a stunning revelation: His wife has been cheating on him.

A next-generation wireless smartphone network can stream video, blaze through the Net ... and steer your car into a ditch? Super-fast “fourth generation” networks carry data at speeds of up to 1 Gigabit per second. But the new network from LightSquared may take the high-flying GPS network to zero Gbps -- potentially preventing air-traffic control towers from keeping track of aircraft, the military from accurately relaying locations or ambulances from showing up at the right house after a 911 call.

Marisa Taylor takes the Magellan RoadMate iPhone app. and Premium Car Kit for a spin to see how it compares with an in-car navigation device.

The growth of cell phones with global-positioning technology is making life uncertain for the makers of personal navigational devices that help drivers figure out where they are and where to go....

The GPS service to be offered on Android smartphones is likely to be seen as a challenge to yet another industry.