http://www.thetileapp.com/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=CPC

I like the look of that. Can I stick them to the kids?

Max range in ideal conditions – 150 feet, tiles only last a year.

I’m ooot

so £20 a year for a tracking service. It’s not that bad.
The community aspect is good as it removes the need for GSM & GPS functionality within the tile etc like most other tracking systems have.

But that’s only really going to work in densely populated areas like cities.

No good out in the sticks where daily proximity of mobile phones is far lower, let alone Tile subscribers.

SO really it wont be used to track stolen bikes much except in say San Francisco, or NY, or maybe London. But as a short range locator. Not sure that is worth £20 a year.

I wonder how long before some-one re-engineers one into a better shape (cylinder) with a replaceable battery.
Seems like a great idea to me.

Shirely Stoner, you average bike theif doesn’t have a country pad, and so when he returns to his estate hole, more ‘app users’ will be local

Piedi – you are missing the point. Any tile-app user’s phone that gets within 150 feet of your bike will tell the cloud where your bike is.

Particularly amusing if the thief is also a tile-app user 😆

zippy – re-engineering for lifespan wont help as it will simply be de-registered from the Tile service by the operators at the end of a year.

However, Tile themselves may develop one I guess that you pay an annual renewal fee for, for less than replacing with a new tile.

Shirely Stoner, you average bike theif doesn’t have a country pad, and so when he returns to his festering hole, more ‘app users’ will be local (as I edited it in to my earlier post)

and will the tile operators actually de-register devices, or just rely on them ‘dying’?

still looks an interesting way to stick it to criminals.

how many scallies down the estate do you reckon will be Tile subscribers then zippy? 🙂

And I assume you mean estate as in “council estate” not “Sefton Manor, Country House and Estate” estate 😉

considering the stupidity of ppl, no doubt lots. Though this relies on a council estate (for example) having a few bad apples amongst a mainly decent majority.

TBH I think the issue here will be how up to date major bike thieves are.. as in aware of this technology and so have devices that can detect the signal or even use the signal to locate expensive items, and how easy it is to block the signal (stuff placed inside ‘say’ a metal container)

iOs only. I’m oot.

How many people actually have the app? And how many actually keep BT running all the time?
Obviously iOS only halves the potential number of trackers out there, but BT4 LE stuff is out there for Android too, so maybe they’ll double the potential success by releasing an app.
Kind of a clever idea, but I’d suspect that there is not the critical mass of users out there to make it work.

…not to mention that BT is low powered and gets blocked by metal

I think it’s a fantastic idea – a simple, cheap bit of technology that uses something everyone has got (a smartphone) so solve a common problem. I think we will be seeing a lot more applications that utilise local smartphones as a free data network in the future. If any of the candidates on The Apprentice had a business plan half as innovative as that it might’ve been worth watching. Obviously as someone said it depends on reaching critical mass to be effective for finding things “out and about” and support for non-iPhones would be vital.

I would get one just to stick in my wallet though cos I’m always forgetting where I put the bloody thing when I’m at home!

Is this another one of these crowdfunded excuses for graduates not to get a real job schemes then?

iOS Compatible

Great! Android? Windows Mobile?

Nope, it’s targeted at yuppie **** living in trendy, upmarket renovated old factory buildings, rather than the great unwashed whose possesions are worthless anyway…

the 50~150ft locate your keys feature is handy, it would be great for my missus if she didn’t tend to loose both her keys and her sodding phone at the same time…

Surely the community based theft recovery thing would need pretty big uptake to work, it relies on iOS phones only (a limited subset), and of those only tile subscribers (so a subset within a subset)…

Of course if it did take off and they opened it up those of us using non-apple devices, I’m sure it’s primary use would be for covert tracking of adulterous spouses, none of this, where’s my keys/laptop/bicycle bollocks.

Great! Android? Windows Mobile?

Nope, it’s targeted at yuppie **** living in trendy, upmarket renovated old factory buildings, rather than the great unwashed whose possesions are worthless anyway…Not really. It makes perfect sense to develop for iPhones first because they know exactly what hardware their users will have. I’m sure they would love to have in on Android too but if you read their site:

The main prerequisite is solid Bluetooth 4.0 support on Android. Once that is available we can start making plans towards bringing Tile to Android.

From watching the vid, not only can it find your stolen bike- but it finds love too… augghhhhhh. Lovely.

This Tile has got great potential.
What about if the police used the app to locate stolen property (bikes), in the same way that those ANPR cameras ‘ping’ when they spot a stolen car.
My neighbour’s bikes have just been nicked and I’m sure if we cruised around a few streets in our town we’d soon find them with the help of this app and a Tile.

Ordered mine (4) a couple of weeks ago.

Ready around new year.

Rachel