The Mobile Phone-Enabled Car Alarm
Do people still pay attention to car alarms? In New York City, you can hear a car alarm all the time, and no one ever actually does anything. In the past few years, however, people have become a lot more creative with anti-car theft systems from Lojack to OnStar. Now, there’s a car alarm system that is designed to send an SMS to a car owner if the car is broken into. It then lets the owner remotely do a few things, from listening in on what’s happening in the car to blasting a message (e.g., “THIS CAR IS STOLEN!!!!”) out of a hidden loudspeaker all while remotely honking the horn. While a simple GPS tracker might really be a bit more efficient in terms of recovering the car, this system certainly sounds like it would be a lot more fun.