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American Morning
New Gadget Helps You Figure Out Where Someone Else Is
Aired June 25, 2002 - 08:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Let's get into the woods right now. Summer camping season upon us. That used to mean heading out with a map and a compass. But in recent years, it's meant camping with gadgets, like walkie-talkies or GPS, global positioning satellite receivers, to figure out where you are and where you're going. Now there is a new gadget to help you figure out where someone else is, and it enables you to talk with them, too. M.K. Flynn is here to show us how it all works.
Good morning, Mary Kathleen, good to see you.
MARY KATHLEEN FLYNN, TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill. Nice to see you.
HEMMER: So brought a lot of stuff here. We don't have too much time, but go ahead and let her rip -- what do you have there?
FLYNN: Well, first of all, you may have used them or maybe you've even seen people using walkie-talkies, or they also are called two-way radios, and all kinds of people are using them now to keep in touch on ski slopes, on bike trips, hiking trips. Some people even take them to the mall. On the other hand...
HEMMER: Come on.
FLYNN: Seriously. Teenagers take them to the mall and keep in touch. It's an inexpensive way, cheaper than cell phones.
HEMMER: Cheaper than cell phones, that's right.
FLYNN: And then, on the other hand, you've got serious outdoor adventurists who take these global positioning satellite receivers with them when they go into the woods, and that helps them locate where they are and find where they're going so that they don't get lost. Well now, there are a couple of different companies who have blended these two different kinds of gadgets into another one. So they're both in here. This is both a walkie-talkie or two-way radio, and also a GPS receiver. It basically has three...
HEMMER: Who makes it?
FLYNN: There are two companies making them right now, Audiovox and the other one is Garman. HEMMER: You have mentioned walkie-talkies on ski slopes. I have used them, and so, too, have some of my friends. I don't find them very effective.
FLYNN: Because you're too busy trying to ski down the slopes?
HEMMER: No I think it's actually interference. I think there are too many walkie-talkies on the mountain, which prevents any sense of communication. Anyway, get back to your point here, GPS...
FLYNN: I find them helpful. We use them -- my husband and I use them at our country home in Vermont, but this, I think, is even better because it combines the GPS function. So let's say that you're going hiking with a bunch of different people, and you all want to go on different trails. Well, now you can keep track of each other while you do it.
It basically has three benefits. It can show you where you are and shows you where others are, and then it also lets you talk to each other.
Now, you know, it's not just a geeky gadget either. This can be pretty serious. In fact, these could even save people's lives. The National Park Service says that more than 3,000 people get lost in national parks every year, and they spend 1/10 of their budget on search-and-rescue missions.
HEMMER: If that's the case, then that's very worthwhile. You did a bit of a demonstration. You went into the deep wild of Manhattan, otherwise known as Central Park.
FLYNN: About the closest thing we could find to a forest in New York.
HEMMER: Very true.
What did you find out?
FLYNN: Well, we took two of the units from Garman, and on the screen we were able to see where I was. We took one of our hard- working interns, Aurora, and we sent her out there, and we asked her -- there's Aurora right there, and we asked her to kind of get lost and see if I could find her. So I went looking for her using this, and as you can see, it would show me things like where she was, where I was, where we were in relationship to each other. It even sort of gave you a little bit of direction like, you know, go a certain number of feet northeast, and it has got mapping capabilities as well.
HEMMER: How did you grade the performance of this?
FLYNN: The GPS part of the Garman systems worked very well. No problems there. Well, we had some problems with the sound quality.
HEMMER: See, back to my point, MK.
FLYNN: See, just was just more than interference. This was a little problem I think that Garman was having with preproduction units. But they do tell me that they will straightened out and fixed by the time they're in stores.
HEMMER: Overall, user friendly, and were you confident with it?
FLYNN: They were a little tricky to use, a little bit complicated. It's not something that you could just take out of the box and know how to use. You have got to spend a few minutes, playing with them, getting used to it. You have got to push a lot of different buttons. We figured it out after a while, and now I'm comfortable with them. But it definitely took us a couple of days.
HEMMER: So there is a comfort zone one has to achieve. Quickly here, were they available, how much did it cost? Where can I get them?
FLYNN: You can find them in sporting goods stores, and later on, they will be in consumer electronics stores. They cost $170 to $250, depending on the mapping capabilities. The more mapping sophistication you have, the more expensive they are. And they're from Audiovox and Garman.
HEMMER: Sounds like a cheap price to pay if indeed 3,000 people are lost every year.
I have 30 seconds. I don't want to shortchange you, so go ahead and get this off.
FLYNN: The PC Expo in town, also called Tech X. This is the big trade show, the biggest one that comes to New York. And one of the products being shown there is this HP Photosmart 100 photo printer. And basically, you plug it into the wall. You take your media outside of the digital camera, which is what this is right here, Compaq Flash, in this case but it supports others ones, too. You put it in here, and you press the button, and out comes the photograph. It's going to take 90 seconds, so we won't we won't be able to see it all here.
HEMMER: That's OK. We'll go to Andy Serwer. When we come back, we'll check it out. This is the product here. Wow. So you could literally put that in a suitcase and carry it with you. Wow.
FLYNN: Or take it to a party with you. It's $179. It's available now, and it's from Hewlett-Packard.
HEMMER: That's excellent.
FLYNN: It is fun.
HEMMER: Thank you very much.
FLYNN: Thank you, Bill.
HEMMER: I like technology sometimes.
FLYNN: Oh, good.
HEMMER: MK Flynn, many thanks.
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