Posted on: Tuesday, August 12, 2003

New system helps find lost items

By Jon Fortt
Knight Ridder News Service

Steve Wozniak, the guy who brought us the personal computer, has another idea.

His new company has created a wireless network that he says can help you find almost anything — lost keys, lost dog, lost child. His Los Gatos, Calif., company — Wheels of Zeus — has designed tags that you can attach to a child, a dog or just about anything. A hand-held monitor uses global-positioning-system satellites to show where the tagged items are.

The genius behind the idea, called wOzNet, is in the use of a low-power, long-range wireless protocol that operates at about 1,200 baud. That's roughly 1/50th the speed of a dial-up modem, but fast enough to send a quick burst of information about an object's location.

Wozniak co-founded Apple Computer nearly 30 years ago. He said this idea came to life in a coffeehouse about a year and a half ago as he was sharing ideas with friend Greg Galanos of Mobius Venture Capital.

The company is still very small. Wozniak said he has 17 people, but Gina Clark, vice president of business development and marketing, jokes that he's counting some people three times.

Wozniak, who is known in Silicon Valley simply as "Woz," did not give many details; the first products based on the technology probably will not arrive for another year. But he did say the hand-held monitor has a radio that can detect tagged items within a one- or two-mile radius. The range can be extended through the Internet, with other people's hand-held monitors creating an extended blanket network.

He said the company has figured out a way to get a radio and GPS together for $25 — that's before the cost of a battery and the other parts it takes to make a mobile device.

Wozniak said security is built into wOzNet, so that other people can't track your things.