Steve Wozniak's Wheels Of Zeus Introduces WozNet: For Pets, Kids, Property

A pple co-founder Steve Wozniakis new company, Wheels of Zeus, is developing technology that will let you wirelessly track anything from your dog to your car, according to an article at the New York Times. The technology, called WozNet, is a system of small, wireless devices used to keep track of almost anything. The devices use GPS data and the 900MHz radio spectrum to communicate with a home base station. From the New York Times:

In an interview last week in Wheels of Zeusis offices in Los Gatos, Calif., which are nondescript except for his Hummer parked out front, Mr. Wozniak described WozNet as a simple and inexpensive wireless network that uses radio signals and global positioning satellite data to keep track of a cluster of inexpensive tags within a one- or two-mile radius of each base station. WozNet, he said, will include a home-base station that has the ability to track the location of dozens or even hundreds of small wireless devices that can be attached to people, pets or property. The tags -- expected to cost less than $25 each to produce -- will be able to generate alerts, notifying the owner by phone or e-mail message when a child arrives at school, a dog leaves the yard or a car leaves the parking lot.

"We started out with the idea of a product to keep track of stuff," said Mr. Wozniak, the 52-year-old engineer who was the technical brains behind the first Apple computer in 1976. "We ended up inventing a new class of wireless network."

There may be other potential applications for the low-speed data system, like text messaging, Mr. Wozniak said, as well as other uses that he declined to describe.

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