Hello there,
Some of you will probably have noticed that posting on panbo.com is not up to speed, and it's not because there is nothing to post...;-). It will stay this way for another couple of weeks due to an extremely busy business agenda, since we are launching a new, very innovative, service at the beginning of next month that requires all of my attention.
Sorry,
Yme
Engadget reports on Orca, a solution you might consider if safety onboard is important to you.... Although there already are similar systems available, it never hurts to have some competition in that area, especially when that helps stimulate innovation.
"No, not the vicious killer whale from that 70s movie. Going overboard? No problem. See, you�re sporting the Orca (Overboard Recovery Communications Apparatus), a new device worn by deck personnel in the military that alerts the ship if, and when, you take a little involuntary swim. The ORCA provides a unique ID for each individual, and it triggers pre-set messages to the bridge at the time of the big dive. It is also capable of triggering several beacons at once (in case a few deck hands go down for whatever reason) and pinpoints each one using GPS."
Truly ruggedized PDA with lots of features you would like to see in such a device when using it aboard a ship.
"A company in UK called Node has developed the world's first consumer PDA designed for use specifically in outdoor environments. The device is fully waterproof to 3 meters, has a 8 hour battery life, built in DGPS receiver and 1 Gig of storage. Bluetooth and WiFi come as standard as does a touch screen and either a PocketPC or Linux operating system. I bumped into them at a tourism conference in Edinburgh where they were demo'ing the unit and I was impressed. It's smaller than a standard postcard."
