Always sucks to hear about losing another rider, especially if doing something slightly differently could've meant he'd still be here today.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NevadaWolf
I am actually looking forward to more devices like Globalstar's new Sat-Fi, coming out hopefully this year. Turns your wi-fi enabled mobile device into a satellite phone. |
My reading of their press release is less optimistic. It sounds like you have to use a special satellite "hotspot" to provide connection for other Wi-Fi devices, and their app to actually communicate over their network. It's not simply a 2.4GHz 802.11 satellite connection. It seems like it's a sat-phone, where you provide your own phone interface through your own smartphone running an app (a trend that's becoming more common - they don't give you a device that actually runs their service, you get the "convenience" of an app, which may or may not actually work better than the original device). I'm a total geek, so I'm all for any technology advancements, but I'm not expecting this to end up being all that great.
While it won't help if there's no service at all, even simple things like
Find My Friends and ride tracking apps could help narrow down your location in a situation like this. In this case, the only thing people had to go on was a gas station that he stopped at before heading out to ride, guessing where he might have gone based on what routes seemed like good rides. With any sort of GPS-tracking app, even if it had only occasionally recorded blips of where he was, you could at least see which way he was headed and where he had already been.