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The best feature of a BlackBerry, obviously, is its portability. You can take it anywhere you get cell reception and perform nearly any task imaginable. Problem is, sometimes because you’re out and about so much, you forget where you did something. Not that it’s always important. But sometimes it is, and as your mother told you, better safe than sorry. A new application from Flowfinity Wireless will take care of that issue for you. It uses your BlackBerry’s GPS to tag every action you perform on your phone with the location you were in when it took place.

Flowfinity Actions running on BlackBerrys makes it possible to generate reports on “who, what, when and where” things occurred. This is useful for businesses that want to record trends visually onto maps and carry out location-specific analysis of business performance, contract compliance, and regulatory compliance, said Flowfinity’s spokeswoman. The tool also can be used to track down the location of equipment and inventory.

Yes, this sounds enticing. However, I can definitely see plenty of people being upset with this development. Now their boss can find out not only who they’re calling, but where they’re calling from. This can be detrimental to those of us who like to play hooky and get away with it because of our BlackBerry. But, as the linked article notes, companies are cracking down on that in other ways, too.

The best way to gauge the usefulness of an application like this is to ask the users. Do you think the benefits of geo-stamping your transactions outweigh the extra tracking ability of your superiors? Or if you’re a supervisor, do you see geo-stamping as a large need, or just another way to keep mobile employees at bay?

[InformationWeek]

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