Mologogo fauxjacking tracks and finds cell phone locations

Mologogo tracks the location of GPS equipped cell phones

Web Applications Newsletter By Mark Gibbs, Network World, 05/24/06

You've heard of LoJack, the system used by the police to track and recover stolen vehicles? Well now you can "fauxjack."

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Fauxjacking is the hip, groovy, "in" term for adding geotracking to a car or a dog or whatever without using the LoJack system; which leads me to this issue's topic: Mologogo.

Mologogo, created by two guys using the aliases GravityMonkey and LemonHead, is a free Web-based service along with a free application for tracking the location of GPS equipped cell phones capable of running the Mologogo software (fauxjacked phones - that has a nice ring to it - pun intended).

Mologogo only works on Nextel/Boost Mobile iDEN phones (apparently Nextel is the only U.S. carrier that lets developers access GPS information - see here for a list of Mologogo compatible phones), and uses Java (CLDC 1.1 and J2ME 2.0).

According to the Mologogo documentation (free registration required) the software "was built using the NetBeans IDE with the Motorola iDEN SDK for J2ME".

Using this system the location of a Mologogo equipped phone can be tracked either through a regular Web browser or on a cell phone browser. The documentation explains: "Mologogo downloads maps of your location to your phone where you can zoom in or out and see your friends plotted on your map. And your location information is available for you on the Web, so you can see the same maps, locations and friends online, too."

The Mologogo application determines your position from the cell phone's GPS subsystem and then downloads a map and displays your location on it. Mologogo also downloads traffic alerts for the currently viewed map. You can also use the Mologogo application to search for and display street addresses.

If you enter a friend's name on your cell phone the map will re-center on their last known position. Friends can also be found and added via the Web interface.

The Mologogo application adds each friend, traffic alert, and location viewed to a list that is retained for the duration of your current Mologogo session.

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RE: Mologogo fauxjacking tracks and finds cell phone locations By Leslie on May 6, 2008, 10:15 am Reply | Read entire comment MyTracking is a better choice for tracking. It has none of the stability issues and the web-based mapping application is one of the best I have seen for asset tracking. http://www.geocities.com/prestonsystems/mytracking

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