GPS tracking apps make Halloween safer by keeping tabs on kids

Parents spend their whole lives teaching their children not to accept candy from strangers. So what do we do? We celebrate a night each year where we allow our children to accept candy from strangers ­— and in the dark no less.

Such is the ghastly tradition of Halloween. But with today’s technology, namely a smartphone, parents can help temper their worries. There are apps for smartphones that can track your children so they can journey from door to door in search of the elusive full-sized candy bar in complete safety.

So as your children are on their trick-or-treating route, you can use an iPad or a desktop computer to see exactly where they are going in real time. If your kids don’t have their own iPhone, perhaps you can lend them yours and then turn on another app, Find My iPhone, which tracks your own phone in case you lose it.


Find My Friends (iPhone, free) » If you’re an Apple user with kids who also have iPhones, this free Apple-produced app should be on your phone anyway. It is capable of tracking your kids, or friends, on a map at any time as long as you get their permission. And unlike other apps, it doesn’t put an extra drain on your battery.

Trick or Treating (iPhone, 99 cents) » With this app, children can input the contact information of all of their loved ones as well as police should they get lost and need direction to get home. All of the addresses are then displayed on a map.

SecuraFone (iPhone, Android, free, monthly service fee) » This full-featured app allows you to track the user in real time. But it also can send the parent alerts and notifications whenever the child with the phone is changing directions or speed. It also includes emergency contacts that can be accessed immediately.

GPS Phone Tracker (iPhone, Android, free) » Another tracker that parents can use to keep real-time tabs on their children. It also can log where they’ve been every couple of minutes so you can see the trail they’re leaving behind.

Life360 (iPhone, Android, free) » Here is a robust GPS tracker with a lot of features including the ability to organize groups of friends you’re following, a "panic" button your child can use if he or she is in trouble, and more. The free version has basic features, but there also is a premium service that provides a lot more.

Gone Out — Later Folks (iPhone, $1.99) » This app allows kids to keep their parents up to date on where they are and where they are going. The child can take a picture and record the location of where he or she is at and send that information to parents.

Apple's FIngerprint Scanner Doesn't Work All The Time

AuthenTec cofounder F. Scott Moody put the most groundbreaking work his company has done on display this October at North Carolina State University, where he showed off Apple's Touch ID to engineering students.

Purchased last year by Apple for $356 million, AuthenTec is behind the iPhone 5S fingerprint sensor, a tiny device located underneath the phone's home button. The sensor uses a finger's grooves and pores to identify its owner, and it gets to know you better every time you use it.

Fingerprinting wasn't always so easy, though, according to Apple Insider. Touch ID was initially called FingerLoc, and the technology sometimes worked in fits and starts. Moody once got IBM's chief technology officer to test out the sensor, only to have it misidentify him.

But AuthenTec eventually revamped its sensor into a tiny device that only costs $0.80, and Motorola, Fujitsu and Apple in particular expressed interest in the company. Now, after the sale and the introduction of the sensor into the iPhone 5S, the work Moody helped spearhead is a part of millions of lives.

Apple to Offer 12-Inch Retina MacBook in 2014

In a research note shared by 9to5Mac, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicts that Apple will release a 12-inch Retina MacBook sometime in either the second or third quarter of 2014.

The report claims that the laptop will sport an entirely new design. However, the device isn’t termed as being a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, so it’s unclear if this might represent a new laptop category for the computer maker, or simply an upgrade to an existing model.

Aside from the MacBook rumor, Ming-Chi Kuo’s report also claims that Apple may release a lower-cost iMac around the same time as the new MacBook, as well as a sixth-generation, 9.7-inch iPad with 30-40% higher PPI (pixels-per-inch) than the current Retina iPad.

Of course, only Apple knows what it really has planned for 2014. But Ming-Chi Kuo has a decent track record for making such long-range predictions.

So while it wouldn’t be advisable to bet on these latest product forecasts as being 100 percent accurate, you can probably expect at least some of these rumors to come true this time next year.

Microsoft Recycles Inactive Outlook, Hotmail Email Accounts

Microsoft is recycling inactive email accounts for its Outlook, Hotmail and Live services, potentially exposing users to previous owners' private information, according to a new report posted by Dutch website Webwereld.

The software giant's services agreement informs users that they must periodically log in to their Outlook, Hotmail or Windows Live ID accounts to keep them active. It reads:

"The Microsoft branded services require that you sign in to your Microsoft account periodically, at a minimum of every 270 days, to keep the Microsoft branded services portion of the services active, unless provided otherwise in an offer for a paid portion of the services. If you fail to sign in during this period, we may cancel your access to the Microsoft branded services. If the Microsoft branded services are cancelled due to your failure to sign in, your data may be permanently deleted from our servers."

The agreement doesn't specify whether accounts would then be recycled, but Microsoft confirmed this to Webwereld and PCWorld, saying "The email account is automatically queued for deletion from our servers. Then, after a total of 360 days, the email account name is made available again."

Yahoo has also come under fire for recycling email addresses, but the company warns users about this policy in its terms of service.

For its part, Google says it will not recycle usernames, according to its terms of service. Users can never sign up for a Gmail account previously held by another person, even if that account has been deleted for years.