To catch a bike thief – use GPS and Google Maps

Image via Wikipedia

According to Immobilise, the police-backed property register, a bicycle is stolen every minute in the UK and less than 5% are ever recovered. The sad truth is that you can use a couple of chunky locks and leave your bike in busy, well-lit places, but nothing stops a really determined thief. The SpyLamp is pragmatic; it accepts that bikes get stolen from time to time, and focuses on getting them back and catching the thief. A mobile phone, vibration sensor and GPS chip are all crammed inside what looks like – and even works as – a rear bike light. You mount it on your bike and it beams its location back to you if it senses movement – such as a bike thief carting it off, but – hopefully – not someone bumping into it as they lock theirs next to it. It keeps doing that until it’s disarmed or runs out of power. Before that happens you can hand that information over to the police, who swoop in and save the day in theory.

via To catch a bike thief – use GPS and Google Maps | Matthew Sparkes | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

Strange Random Bike Quote:

Why should anyone steal a watch when he could steal a bicycle? – Flann O’Brien

Related articles

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• Police jarking bicycles in Austin (wired.com)
• How not to lock your bike (croydoncyclist.wordpress.com)
• Winthrop University police use bait to nab bike thieves (charlotte.news14.com)
• The How-Tos of Locking Up Your Bike (fitsugar.com)
• iPhone Thief Tracks Himself For Police With GPS (cultofmac.com)

Plnnr.com – plan your perfect stay!

Most of us use the Internet nowadays for holidays, whether it’s for booking flights, hotels or just finding information about the place we’d like to visit.

So it’s no surprise to find new online services such as Plnnr, which can take your idea and turn it into a full city tour, complete with hotel booking and the flexibility to move at your own pace.

Step one is choosing your destination. At the moment, there are 10, including London; Dublin, Paris, Toronto, New York and ahem, Barcelona. Then choose your dates, the type of trip you’d like (with kids, cultural, best of), the intensity (from chilled to manic) and the luxury level (does anyone travel less than 5-star nowadays??) and press the button. Et voilà!

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This is what your plan looks like for a Best Of, Relaxed, 3-Star getaway in January in Barcelona. Each day’s itinerary is marked in a different colour, with the numbers of each sight explained in the left column. By clicking on the different options there, you can tell Plnnr that you’d like to spend more (or less) time visiting a specific area, that it’s a “must-see” or even that you’d like to miss it out altogether. Plnnr automatically updates your itinerary, moving visits to another slot on the same day or a different one where appropriate. If this still isn’t what you want, you can refine your requirements until you get the perfect plan. Definitely worth a try for your next break!

Here’s the video from the site explaining what Plnnr does:

Strange Random Holiday Quote:

A vacation is what you take when you can no longer take what you’ve been taking – Earl Wilson

Related articles

• Plnnr: An Automatic Trip Planning (go2web20.net)
• Travel Itinerary Generator – Plnnr (lockergnome.com)
• Sitges: Catalonia’s Tourism Dynamo (hotelclub.com)
• whats better, a Honeymoon or a MefiMoon? (ask.metafilter.com)
• A Museum Style Hotel in The Heart of Barcelona, Spain (trifter.com)