The iPhone Goes to War

The iPhone is getting outfitted for battle. Raytheon, that clever military contractor, has developed an iPhone application called the One Force Tracker that helps soldiers track each other and their enemies, orient themselves and communicate using an interface similar to Facebook.  —KA

The New York Times:

For instance, crowdsourcing, which has volunteers use cellphones to report real-time traffic flow, could be adapted to turn each soldier into a reporting unit, delivering real-time data about position and status.

Communications resemble social sites like Facebook, in which your friends would be represented by a military unit, and could be used to track position of, and communicate with, other units.

Maps with an overlay of points of interest are familiar to every GPS user. The Raytheon app would use the same concept, but points of interest might be known sniper sites or safe fallback positions.

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apple.com/iphone