Tile, manufacturers of the world’s leading Bluetooth trackers, debuts two new colours for its Pro and Slim trackers following the success of its limited edition range.
A perfect gift for the loved one who loses everything or even for your own peace of mind, the Azurite and Rose versions will be available to purchase exclusively from tile.com, priced from £29.99.
Pro is Tile’s high end tracker. It’s ideal for keys, backpacks, athletic gear or anything else you value. Pro has a 400 ft. Bluetooth range, Tile’s loudest ring and a user replaceable battery.
Slim is made to slide into narrow spaces and is perfect to tuck into your wallet or pocket. It can also be stuck onto flat surfaces such as your laptop.
Here’s how Tile works – if you’ve misplaced your item, simply ring your Tile from the app, which will locate it by sound if it’s nearby. If you fear your lost item is further away, there are two ways to locate it. Either see its Most Recent Location on a map or enlist the help of the Tile Network, which is comprised of other Tile app users, and will locate the lost item almost anywhere in the world. You can also use your Tile to locate your misplaced phone, even when it’s on silent. Just double press the logo on your Tile to make your phone ring.
If you’re like most employers, you probably got the employee tracking app last year when everyone started working from home. We get it, you were in a completely new place, your entire team was suddenly working remotely, and it wasn’t easy managing everyone’s time and making sure people are staying productive.
And employee tracking software is amazing! It helps quantify and improve productivity, keeps you in the loop on your team’s usual activities, etc.
However, there are some lines you shouldn’t cross when using an employee tracking app.
Let’s see what they are.
Tracking Employees Without Their Knowledge
Monitoring employees’ computers in secret is only okay if you’re suspecting malpractice and you need to catch the perpetrator in the act. In most countries, this is the only time you’re allowed by law to monitor your team’s activities without their knowledge or permission.
However, if you’re using the software so you could improve your business, you should give them a heads up. Depending on where you’re located, you might need to tell your employees a few weeks in advance, or even have them sign consent forms and create policies that exhaustively explain everything about your monitoring practices.
What can happen if you don’t do this? Well, your employees will find out at some point, leaving you open to lawsuits. Not only that, but you can expect that your workers will be outraged, potentially quitting your business and giving it a bad reputation.
Using the Tracking Software Outside of Working Hours
Depending on how you set up your employee tracking app, it might be monitoring your employees since they turn on their work computer until they turn it off. Or, they need to clock in and out. If you’re using the second option, you can move to our next tip. If you belong to the first group, keep reading.
There’s no scenario in which it is good to collect employees’ private data, even if they’re doing private things on their work computers. So, if you have an option to make the tracker active only during specific hours – use it. It will automatically start at 9 AM and turn off at 5 o’clock. This way, you’ll avoid potentially catching their Facebook newsfeed, private emails, or whatever else they decide to check after hours.
The same goes for tracking during breaks – your employees should have an option to pause the tracking when they go on a break.
Collecting Private Data
As we said, collecting private data isn’t okay in any case. But, how can you prevent this if your employee decides to scroll through social media or pay some bills during working hours? Well, it depends on the employee tracking app you’re using.
Ideally, you should have the option to either turn off tracking or turn off screenshots (if this feature is on in other cases) when your employees are browsing through the aforementioned websites. You’ll still probably want to know that they’ve spent some time on social media, but you don’t need to see what they were doing there.
Not Using the Data for Improvement
Collecting the data about employees’ everyday activities just for the sake of monitoring doesn’t make much sense. It’s a waste of time, money, and other resources. The reason why you implemented such software should be connected to your business goals, or to the improvement paths you’re creating for your teams or individuals.
Don’t go around “catching” employees who slack off for short time periods. Track their behavior on a weekly or monthly level, and see how that “slacking” affects their overall workload or deliverables. If they’re doing a good job – you don’t have to give them a lecture on how they use their time.
On the other hand, if you do see that such behaviour affects your worker’s performance – talk to them. Tell them that you’ve been reviewing their data, and how it doesn’t look so good. Work with them to find the cause of this issue, as well as the potential solutions.
Wrapping Up
It’s not that hard to use employee tracking software “the right way”. Essentially, all you have to do is avoid being a snooping micromanager and you should be good to go.
Vicon, a world leader in motion capture, today publishes a new vision paper identifying the key trends and developments that will determine the future of motion capture technology in sports over the next five years — discussing how the technology is now quickly becoming part of the fabric of sport.
Drawing on Vicon’s own experts and industry voices from across academia and professional practice, the report provides a range of perspectives on and predictions for the future of motion capture technology in sporting contexts, touching upon just some of the ways the technology will bring new value to the industry — helping athletes, coaches and sport scientists enhance performance, accelerate development and prevent injury from the elite to the grassroots.
Some of the key trends for the next 12 months and into 2025 include:
The rise of inertial and wearable sensors
Advances in technology over the last few years means that wearables and inertial sensors — used to measure and analyse athlete movement in minute detail without the need for cameras —have become more accessible than ever.
Not only are they now more affordable and light-weight for portability, in combination with intuitive apps, they make it easier for anyone to be able to analyse and understand the data being captured — from elite performance analysts right down to grass roots coaches and consumers.
With this in mind, we’re likely to see the use of wearables and inertial sensors move from the fringes of sports to the mainstream.
Tracking athletes in-competition
Wearable sensors will give physios and sports scientists access to athlete data away from training — which is especially important when it comes to monitoring for injuries and minimising the risk factors. Simply put, athletes can fully expect 24/7 tracking to become the norm.
But an even greater prize for researchers and athletes is the possibility of extending data collection to in-competition tracking — a level of detail that we have limited access to today.
By 2025 however, it’s likely we’ll see real-time video tracking become available for in-competition monitoring to extend data collection from beyond athlete training scenarios to full competitive environments.
The new vision paper also looks in detail at the use of motion capture within app-based tracking solutions, the use of virtual reality (VR) for next-gen training and the synchronisation of optical and inertial tracking to enable more powerful insights than ever before.
Imogen Moorhouse, CEO at Vicon, commented: “Technology has a huge role to play in enabling a greater understanding of athlete performance. But despite the growth in the use of motion capture, we are still a long way from extracting maximum value from motion tracking technology.
“As a company that is focused on innovation – working closely with researchers and teams to push the boundaries of what is possible with motion capture – we want to ensure we continue to lead the way in the future of sports science and biomechanics. As such, we have published this new vision paper to not only identify the key trends impacting sports, but also to suggest pathways that will set new standards and goals within the industry.”
The tile Sticker is the size of a 2 euro coin but around 3 times thicker. The build of the tile is waterproof with an internal battery lasting up to 3 years, On the back of the tile there is an adhesive to stick to any product as required. The tile Sticker is placed on an object and if lost can be found via a ring tone or location map on the app.
Setup and use:
The free tile app is required to be downloaded and set up on the standard smartphone. The tile sticker has a 46m range or if lost this can be referred to last known location on the app. If lost or missing, via the Notify When Found.” crowd community that is within the range automatically located the map location as required. The core features of the App as used to find the item via the ring my tile or find my phone, or see the location on the map, or share with friends and community find.
This information is automatically updated whenever anyone in the Tile community comes within Bluetooth range of your Tile. The Tile app on the play store has Installs 1,000,000+ Installs ( rating of 4 out of 5 ) which would mean for android only, one of these would be required to pass the path of the tile sticker. This constant searching via Bluetooth has a noticeable drain on the phone battery power.
Advance features required a payment service which gives advance features of alerts, 30 Day Location History, Unlimited Sharing and Free Battery Replacements.
Tile comparison range:
Overall:
This is a product that under an ideal world where nothing gets lost or misplaced would not be required, but in the real world, everyday things get misplaced. This product allows you the option to find the product that may be invaluable to ensure the small outlay of cost may be saviours in finding the product. The downside of the system is the drain on the battery on the phone. If the unit is lost far away from a know location this relies on crowd surfing to find the product, The risk for many is worth taking giving a higher probability of finding a lost product. The tile sticker is solid, not intrusive in size with an excellent battery life ensure its core function works, with a bonus of compatible with Alexa.
