PingAlert anti-bullying system

In conjunction with the national anti-bullying week, KidsOK has launched its latest mobile phone system to help protect your offspring from the seemingly ever-growing threat of bullying. It's a pretty simple concept which is an obvious benefit in this situation; first off, your child can set up a quick dial number that can be discreetly pressed (assuming the keypad isn't locked I guess), then the phone will link up to the KidsOK service which immediately sends an SMS to the parent's phone with a map showing their exact location. Either that or an anxious parent can send a simple text which will be answered with the same data, without any real intrusion to the child's phone itself.

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While it looks like a pretty useable system, there is a slight drawback in that the location has to be calculated from phone mast data and, as a result, the location pinpointing isn't enormously precise, but it does provide an outline covering not too huge an area - as demonstrated in the pic. Another potential problem is setting it up on a mobile phone; this probably won't be a vast obstacle to a technology savvy user but you should be aware of the types of  phone service providers that are compatible (notable exceptions are Virgin Mobile and 3) and that your handset must be able to accept GPRS and WAP messages. If you're after this kind of piece-of-mind applications you're looking at a standard retail pack including a year's subscription, PingAlert for three mobiles and 10 free pings for £39.95. Subsequent pings cost an extra 50 pence.

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