Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ's are also a great sales tool - hence there are answers to questions that a visitor at this point may not know the question let alone the answer

The simple answer is GPS-enabled smart-phones running Symbian S60v3.2. An up to date list is provided under ‘compatible phones’. We will be expanding the range over the coming months to cater for all smart phones.

As a safety product the device must have the capability to run applications in the background. This is known as ‘Enterprise’ or ‘Professional’ class. In this way Gaptrac keeps an up-to-date record of your travels both for your safety and entertainment usage. As standard your phone checks its location every minute and uploads that information every ten minutes.

Non smartphone products rely on you checking in manually or in the case of someone being deemed missing or in danger, an emergency controller using cell site triangulation to locate you. This is notoriously inaccurate especially outside of major conurbations with miscalculations of over 7 kilometres very common and it gives no other clues as to direction of travel etc.

The i-Phone is not suitable in its current format as it isn't an enterprise device i.e. it does not let multiple applications run concurrently as is needed by enterprise applications that need to be in constant contact, such as Gaptrac. Apple announced in April that they would be releasing what they refer to as a ‘multitasking’ version later this year. When the format is available we will of course be happy to develop a Gaptrac client for it.

A major factor of our service is safety and particularly covert access to our emergency response centre. This is achieved through holding down the ‘5’ button for three seconds. The five button always has a small nipple on it originally designed for the visually impaired to find their way around a phones keypad but is also ideal for our users to trigger a red alert without alerting a potential attacker.

We are working on ways to provide an alternative to the ‘5’ button and will launch these when we can offer a safe service.

When you sign up for Gaptrac you are provided with a unique URL which you can provide to friends and family either directly or perhaps posting it on Facebook for instance.

When someone registers, a request is sent to both your Gaptrac-enabled handset and your admin page online. You can accept or decline the request.

If you accept you can put your ‘follower’ into one of three categories

> Family

> Work Friend

> Candid

This will determine what media content they can see.

There is no restriction on the number of people who can track you and if you want to block them you simply delete them from your Gaptrac contacts on your phone or your online admin page.

You can send messages between your handset and your follower's personal mapping page free of charge. You can also send and receive messages with other Gaptrac users who you have authorised to follow you.

This service uses a very small amount of data which in the vast majority of instances will not register on the mobile networks.

When you take a photo on your camera phone you will see an option box appear on screen; this will ask you ‘who can see this photo?"

Your choices will be

> Family - for photos you may not want all of your followers to see i.e. family occasions.

> Work - For photos perhaps you wouldn't want your grandparents or family to see but OK for your boss at work for instance.

> Candid - For those more risque photos, for people who have already seen it!

> Everyone - Scenery and any photo you are happy for everyone to see.

> OMG - When you take one of those shots you want to share with everyone, click on the Oh My God button. All of your followers will receive an email letting them know that you've just uploaded something they ‘really just have to see’.

> Don't upload - Hey, we can't all be David Bailey!

You will also be asked if you want to add a text or audio caption. This allows you to attach a text caption or to record an audio commentary on the photo.

That's all there is to it - no set up, just point and click then follow very basic on screen instructions. The photo will normally appear on your snail trail within a minute. Some delays can occur if network coverage is poor but the photo will be saved until transmitted and then stored securely on our servers in London's leading data centres.

Audiotrac allows you to record messages that can be heard by your followers (you can also determine who hears these). With Audiotrac you can easily compile a blog of your trip for people to log into every day.

Your Audiotrac recordings are presented in a list basis starting with the most recent at the top. When you click on a recording the map will reload to the day and place the recording was made. Fantastic for reliving your trips in years to come and bringing back all of those memories.

Data usage is dependent upon upload frequency and media uploaded. The tracking element of Gaptrac will use around 10Mb of data per month whilst photo upload will depend upon the size of the photo. In the UK this isn't an issue as the mobile networks provide an ‘all you can eat’ data bundle also referred to as internet access either as part of your monthly package or for around £4 per month.

When abroad this can be significantly more expensive. For shorter trips we recommend adding a roaming data bundle from your network and for longer trips buying a local SIM card enabling you to take advantage of the local rates. All of the devices we supply are SIM free and allow this flexibility.

When you swap to a local SIM card our system will automatically pick up the change and continue your service seamlessly.

We also provide the ability to upload your photos over WiFi which is generally free of charge in many hotels, hostels, coffee shops and fast food outlets.

Yes, and we positively encourage it.

The number of networks without data coverage is minimal and reducing by the month as are the holes in coverage. Should you visit a country without data coverage, Gaptrac still communicates with the GPS satellites and stores your location updates and photographs. When you next get data coverage or WiFi coverage you can then upload all of the data in one go effectively backfilling your snail trail.

In these instances tracking for safety purposes is not available but invariably you will still be able to initiate a red alert and communicate with the emergency response centre via a voice call.

You can check data and mobile coverage by clicking on XXXX on this site.

Not at all; you are free to buy your phone from any shop and we will upload the ‘thin client’ handset software remotely, known as OTA (over the air) configuration.

We do provide phones either SIM free if you want to keep your existing number or with a contract. We use the commission we get from the mobile networks to subsidise the price of the phone so that generally you do not have to pay anything upfront.

Phones supplied by Gaptrac are delivered fully configured and ready to go.

All devices supplied by Gaptrac are SIM free i.e. not locked to a network. This allows you to use local SIM cards if you are in a particular country for any length of time giving you considerable savings. Unlocking a device provided by a network whilst not illegal can invalidate your phone's warranty. Charges for the mobile are paid directly to the network provider; Gaptrac acts as a broker and will also provide first line support for your phone.

If you are going away for a period of time we would recommend using a new number to avoid expensive incoming calls when you are roaming. You can let your friends know they can communicate free of charge via Gaptrac and just let your parents or next of kin have access to the number for emergencies.

All devices supplied by Gaptrac are SIM free i.e. not locked to a network - this allows you to use local SIM cards if you are in a particular country for any length of time giving you considerable savings. Unlocking a device provided by a network whilst not illegal can invalidate your phones warranty.

This is also a great opportunity to get the folks to upgrade your phone! They want peace of mind but they also fully appreciate the pleasure photos give for years to come.

£10.00 plus vat per month billed monthly in advance to a credit card.

One month.

Absolutely; we see this as our major market. Gaptrac still gives your parents peace of mind whether you are across the world or across town. If you raise a red alert in the UK our emergency response centre seamlessly switches the emphasis to working with the UK emergency services rather than embassies.

Gaptrac is widely tipped to become a significant social networking tool and it provides a great place to digitally store your photos, videos and blogs chronologically and geographically keeping them in order and easily accessible.

As a Gaptrac user you are invited to fill in an online in-depth profile. Click here to see the form. This information is encrypted and is not accessible to anyone but you. If you forget your password you request a new one from an automated system. This overcomes data protection requirements and ensures your personal details are kept personal.

The only time our ERC staff would see these details is if you raise a red alert when effectively you are forwarding these details from your secure area to one of our highly trained emergency staff to use in order to help you. This information may be shared with local emergency services. We encourage all Gaptrac users to complete the form in full and keep it up to date. It may sound dramatic but it could save your life.

Around 12,000, at present. We would then charge another £2 per month for an extra 5Gb. In practice memory and bandwidth is becoming less and less expensive and we hope that by the time you get to 12,000 photos we are able to provide an unlimited upload service within your basic monthly charge.

Totally unlimited - enjoy!

See if your phone is compatible. If it isn't visit our ‘buy a new phone’ section and order the phone you want. The user will need to be over 18.

Then click on ‘buy now’ fill in the user details including the credit card that the monthly charges will be billed to.

We will then generate your personal admin site which will contain your personal URL. You will need to distribute this to your friends and family as they will need to go to your unique URL to register.

If you have ordered a phone from Gaptrac we will configure it and send it out ready to go. If you have your own phone we will send the software direct to the device.

You are then ready to start your Gaptrac experience.

Simply put, there are around 32 navigation satellites in various orbits around the Earth. The current system everyone uses is owned by the US Department of Defence but will soon be joined by the Russian GLONASS system and the European Galileo project. In the future devices will speak to all of these systems for greater accuracy.

Gaptrac-compatible devices have a GPS chip in them along with a separate (internal) antennae. Your phone needs to be able to see four of these satellites to calculate its location.

Technically this means you will only get accurate coverage when you are out of doors and away from ‘urban canyons’ i.e. roads lined with high rise buildings. In reality you will still get fixes although some can be wayward in these environments.

Your device needs to be in a pocket or at the top of a bag or rucksack at least, not buried down at the bottom of it.

This is the same basic technology as the Sat Nav systems such as Tom-Tom that you see in many cars. In that instance the location information is laid straight onto the mapping held on the device in the car; as you move the data is discarded.

Gaptrac as well as its safety implications is designed to provide a record of your travels, so our software on your phone continuously transmits your location to our central servers where it is stored. When one of your followers logs on, these details are then overlaid onto the finest commercially available online digital mapping.

Changing the date ranges allows them to see historic travel as well as live travel.

The simple answer is no. We rely on the mobile phone networks around the world and as you know at times these do fall over and can have poor areas of coverage. Radio waves are subject to various atmospheric and topographical challenges and as such are fallible.

Mobile coverage continues to expand and improve and as it does so does Gaptrac.

That's the bad news. The good news is that outages are thankfully few and far between and generally are well notified in advance.

All applications use battery be it mobile email, web browsing, texting and, of course, voice calls. GPS does use more than these due to its constantly enquiring nature. Gaptrac's advanced technology preserves battery life to a degree but you must still be aware that on average a phone will last around 26 hours on one charge.

Think of the old Army maxim ‘sleep when you can, eat when you can’ -in this instance ‘charge when you can’.

As well as plugging the charger into the mains there are various other methods of charging such as in--car chargers, solar--powered chargers and really handy emergency chargers where a standard AA battery will provide around 10 hours' usage.

Gaptrac uploads any new information every 10 minutes if coverage is available. If it isn't, it will wait another ten minutes. This pattern saves battery and data charges and we have found is most effective method. We are adding a purge button so that if you know you have been out of data coverage you can upload instantly when you regain coverage.

If you are connecting via 3G or EDGE the answer is yes as both can handle voice and data simultaneously - if not, i.e. you are on 2G coverage the phone will not update until the next upload cycle after the called finishes. This data accumulates until it can be uploaded.

You can change this from your admin pages - as standard it is set to check your location every minute.

Gaptrac technology allows us to make certain keys active in various ways. The number five key has a small raised nipple on it intended for the visually impaired to enable them to navigate around the keypad.

Our software means that if you hold this ‘5’ key down for three seconds it opens a channel through to our dedicated Emergency Response Centre.

As soon as your call is connected we start digitally recording it. Your location map and your personal profile are presented to the controller across two screens and if you are abroad our databases present the information for the relevant British Embassy and emergency services.

Whilst our controllers ascertain the nature of the emergency and develop a plan of action they are able to patch in any number of outside agencies and expertise in order to help resolve your situation.

After 5 minutes a text message will go out to your nominated next of kin alerting them to the situation and inviting them to dial in and enter the pin number. This gives our controller the opportunity to professionally stabilise the situation before the obvious emotions of a friend or parent are added to the process.

As with the 999 services, all calls are considered as emergency calls until proven to be otherwise. When the call comes through, our controllers are able to listen into the audio to determine the situation. If for any reason we cannot determine whether it is an emergency or not we will call the device and mention a prearranged phrase - if it is an emergency situation the Gaptrac user will answer with a key word indicating that they need help.

If a user makes more than three accidental emergency calls we reserve the right to charge for any further calls or to suspend the service upon their return. We will not suspend service whilst the user is abroad.

Phototrac is your personal gallery where all of your photos are stored after being uploaded. They are shown chronologically as ‘thumb nails’. When you click on a photo it will load the map with the data from the day the photo was taken and place the photo at the point it was taken. This can be over any period of time and really lets you revisit your past holidays and experiences.

You can also group photos as albums; again this will take you back to a particular day or period in your life.

When you click on the photo in the map it will take you back into Phototrac at the exact place you left it, enabling you to continue browsing.

When one of your followers logs on, Phototrac will only show the photos that you have allowed them to see.

The simplest way is to go to ‘Date Range’ this lets you select a single day or a period in time. Selecting a two-week period when you were in the same place can make the map cluttered. Selecting a longer period when you were travelling on the other hand provides an incredible record of your trip of a lifetime and you can then zoom in to locations along the way, view photos and listen to audio tracks.

You can also recall historic data by selecting a photo in the relevant time frame from within Phototrac.

This is a list of the people that you have authorised to follow you. Followers can message each other from your site bringing together friends and family with a common thread i.e. you!

Yes, very simple just delete them from the followers list on your admin page or from Gaptrac contacts on your mobile.

We have quickly realised that followers may be following more than one Gaptrac user. Multitrac means that a follower only has to log in once; our databases then search to see if you are authorised to follow other users and these are shown in Multitrac. This is much easier than saving multiple user names and passwords and having to keep logging in and out.

Status allows Gaptrac users to let people know what they are up to at that time. This can be left from the admin pages or the handset as a text message or a voice message.

The status button also shows how much battery life the user has left.

Apart from your friends' undying gratitude for introducing them to such a cool product?

Quite a bit. Every unique referral equates to one entry in our competitions.

Each month we hold a draw and the winner receives a top of the range mobile phone and free Gaptrac for a year. If the winner is a follower, then the Gaptrac user they are following also gets Gaptrac free for the next year, so there is a big incentive for Gaptrac users to get their friends recommending through their page.

Oh yes, forgot to mention - all entries are also put into an annual draw with a main prize of a brand new Mini!

Gaptrac is just one of a range of tracking products from Ubitrac. We also provide several cutting--edge products developed especially for business with productivity and upcoming lone worker legislation in mind. For more details go to www.ubitrac.co.uk.

When you log on we show the location on the hybrid map. This is the satellite view overlain with traditional mapping. This helps you to identify where the Gaptrac user is.

If you click on the arrow you will see other options that you can switch to:

Map - Pure traditional mapping

Satellite - Pure imagery, allowing you to share in the trip and explore

Terrain - Shows the topography of the area shown

These will soon be joined by Street View which shows local locations in far greater details from street level.

Red dot means that you were travelling at under 10k per hour - this could indicate walking or sitting down.

Red arrow means you were travelling at over 10k per hour.

The same in yellow means that a photo is associated with that point - clicking on the icon will open the photo.

The same for blue icons; these indicate an audio message.

A yellow icon with a number on indicates a number of photos taken in close proximity. As you zoom in you will see the number dividing down into smaller groups. You can click to see the group of photos as an album in Phototrac or you can keep zooming in to open them on the map.

When you click on the icons it indicates the time, date, speed and location (where available).

GPS is Global Positioning System. This is the technology that lets compatible devices talk to a number of satellites to accurately determine where it is.

GPRS is General Packet Radio Service, a generic term for the ‘packets’ of data transmitted by your mobile phone for internet connectivity, email etc. Your phone transmits your location data to our servers over GPRS.