Gps

A Philadelphia man attracted lots of ambulance chasers yesterday - law enforcers, not lawyers - and they got an assist from technology. Police received a report about 8:30 a.m. that an ambulance had been stolen from a kidney dialysis center in the 5900 block of North Broad Street in North Philadelphia. Cory E. Chambers, 26, helped himself to a vehicle that was parked outside the facility with the engine running, police said. He then began a circuitous, rush-hour joyride around the city - but Philadelphia police were able to track his every move.

I'm a big fan of technology. Most guys are. This is why all important inventions were invented by guys. For example, millions of years ago, there was no such thing as the wheel. One day, some primitive guys were watching their wives drag a dead mastodon to the food-preparation area. It was exhausting work; the guys were getting tired just WATCHING. Then they noticed some large, smooth, rounded boulders, and they had an idea: They could sit on the boulders and watch! This was the first in a series of breakthroughs that ultimately led to television.

I KNOW WIVES think their husbands don't listen to them, and to an extent, wives are right. Sure, we smile and nod when they boss us around. But in reality, while our wives are going on about taking out the garbage, we're thinking about football season, the All-Star game or cheeseburgers. It's not like we do it purposely. Many of the things wives say to us are things we need to hear. It's just that when our wives speak to us in that high-pitched, do-it-now-or-else tone, they remind us of our mothers.

I would like to clarify exactly why Philadelphia taxi drivers are opposed to the installation of GPS systems. The adverse effects of this contract are far reaching, and not limited to drivers. Longstanding customers will not be able to be serviced with any certainty or regularity due to drivers being forced to accept unwanted calls while en route. Once a fare is picked up, the driver will have to follow a computer-generated route, regardless of traffic, construction, etc. As for driver safety, it is absurd to let a computer randomly dispatch calls to the city's 1,600 cabs.

Michael Lacy is no Geomuggle or novice, and he's determined to make sure a new generation of geocachers populates the Jersey Shore. Geocaching is something of a video-game update on the road-rally concept. In this case, people or groups hide things in "caches," often identifying the sites in coordinates that can be discovered by Global Positioning Systems (GPS). Inside each cache is usually some small prize, but the fun is primarily just finding the site of the cache and recording, on a scorecard within what is usually a small box, that you were there.

Suspicious spouses in New Jersey can use GPS tracking to determine if their loved ones have strayed. An appeals court ruled Thursday that placing the device in a family vehicle does not constitute invasion of privacy. Gloucester County Sheriff's Officer Kenneth Villanova sued private investigator Richard Leonard, who was hired by Villanova's now-ex-wife in 2007. The court said Leonard had recommended she buy the tracking device after her husband had thwarted efforts to tail him. - AP

When the Schuylkill Expressway slows to a crawl, difficult decisions arise: Sit there? Or is it early enough in the jam to take an alternative like Ridge Pike? Or is Ridge already clogged? Two men leaving Center City for a meeting 23 miles away in Wayne a week or so ago faced that decision. One stayed on the expressway and got lucky. The jam cleared sooner than expected, and he got there in an hour. The other took Ridge and arrived in 90 minutes. Alain L. Kornhauser, a longtime professor of operations research and financial engineering at Princeton University, says he can help.

Should a warrant be required to track your GPS or other device?

As the frost-coated underbrush crunched beneath his feet, Ted Stille 4th pushed through the woods at Ridley Creek State Park and stopped near a small stream. The 17-year-old slipped off his gloves on this chilly Sunday morning in January and began pushing buttons on a box the size of a cassette player. Within a minute, the antenna of the device found four satellites 11,000 miles above the Earth and a digital display told Stille the longitude and latitude of his location. Over three months, the Upper Darby High School senior will have recorded as many as 10 readings at each of 43 points throughout the Delaware County park to help map trails and streams.

THE PHILADELPHIA Parking Authority won the first round in its boxing match with the city's taxi drivers, when a Common Pleas judge ruled this week that the authority can have global positioning systems (GPS) installed in cabs. Round Two is about to begin, but since it involves a sit-down discussion between the two parties, to be held next Wednesday, we have hopes that this fight will be over soon. The authority wants the GPS so it can track cab locations, allow passengers to pay with credit or PPA Smart cards and let passengers see the most direct route to their destination.

Delaware County police have searched the two homes and work truck of the estranged husband of a Collingdale woman who has been missing for almost three weeks. Melissa Ortiz-Rodriguez, 30, had planned a weekend visit with friends in Newark, N.J., on April 19 but failed to show up. Her estranged husband, Jose Luis Rodriguez, reported her missing four days later after she did not show up for a new job and failed to pick up their two daughters, ages 7 and 11, from school. Rodriguez told investigators that she usually took public transportation when visiting friends.

A woman attacked a limousine driver at knifepoint and stole his vehicle Tuesday night in the city's Crescentville section, but was later tracked down by police using a GPS system located in the car. Around 7 p.m., the 2010 Chrysler 300 with limousine tags had arrived to pick up a taxi fare in the 700 block of Adams Avenue when a 30-year-old woman jumped into the backseat, Chief Inspector Scott Small said. The woman put a knife to the 40-year-old driver's throat and ordered him to get out of the car, Small said.

  THE IDEA of a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax is being discussed - and tested in states like Oregon and Iowa. It would be an alternative to the federal gas tax, which is under review by Congress and could lead to a new system for funding highway construction and repairs when the measure comes up for reauthorization in 2014. One feature of the VMT tax is that it would require some way to measure travel, creating the possibility that the government will use advanced technology to track movements of every car and truck.

This weekend is my mother's birthday. A big one: 80. We will do little to celebrate. She has been gone for an eternity, 16 years. My daughter was then in diapers, scampering over the hospital bed, giving my mother her last moments of unbridled bliss. My mother - Barbara to people who didn't know her, Bobbie to those who did - adored the new. Babies, trends, the latest anything. She was an enthusiastic, early adopter of gadgetry, some of it questionable, which she was often slow to master.

Louis Roselli was plugging in his GPS in the parking lot of the Absecon Home Depot when his wife started screaming. He turned to see a car veer off Route 30 and into a retention pond on the side of the road. The plume of water the car sent up when it hit the pond was "higher than a telephone pole," he said. Roselli, 58, started his car and raced toward the pond. Four wheels pointed toward the sky. A young man surfaced, gasping, and yelled that three others were trapped in the car. "My heart just sank, like, 'No, don't do this to me,' " Roselli said.

Louis Roselli was plugging in his GPS in the parking lot of the Absecon Home Depot when his wife started screaming. He turned to see a car veer off nearby Route 30 and into a retention pond on the side of the road. The splash as the car hit the water, he said, was "higher than a telephone pole. " Roselli, 58, started the car and raced toward the pond. Four wheels pointed toward the sky. A young man surfaced, gasping, and yelled that three more people were still trapped in the car. "My heart just sank -- like, 'No, don't do this to me," Roselli said.

Freeze appears to ease in West FRESNO, Calif. - The freeze gripping the West appeared on the verge of easing Tuesday, but farmers who spent millions to protect crops were still assessing damage, some produce prices climbed, and businesses and residents dealt with burst pipes. The National Weather Service predicted another frosty night but said temperatures would begin to warm as high pressure moved east. For a fifth night, temperatures in the San Joaquin Valley, California's agricultural heart, dipped below freezing, though they were a few degrees warmer than previous nights.

LUCK HAS RUN OUT for two men who may be responsible for a rash of drugstore heists in the Northeast and who unwittingly swiped a bottle of pills embedded with a GPS tracking device Monday night, police said. The pair allegedly robbed a Rite Aid on Roosevelt Boulevard near Solly Avenue in Rhawnhurst at gunpoint about 9:30 p.m. and took off with pain pills, as robbers have in several similar incidents over the last few months, police said. But Rite Aid and police outsmarted the pair: The pharmacy, investigators said, had placed a GPS tracking device in at least one of the pill bottles the gunmen allegedly stole, giving cops a way to track them down.

THESE ARE strange movie times, when a big goofball sci-fi epic like "John Carter" can exist side-by-side with earnest spiritual questing like "Tree of Life. " You can get one-stop shopping this week with "Cloud Atlas," a daring, daffy attempt by three directors (the Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer) to adapt David Mitchell's complex novel of souls searching through time and space for peace and fulfillment. A lot to chew on, obviously, probably too much even for three directors working in a three-hour time frame (you may need a few cans of Monster)