I remember a scene from Golden Eye where the stealth copter was being tracked down by British secret agency and when it disappears they were able to watch the movements of a Russian girl. During those years, satellites had the capability of tracking vehicles that were as big as a truck but now things have changed. It has changed so much that a common man can pay $169 to track his own movements and record it.

Trackstick II being sold on Google Earth store is a device that can send its coordinates to a satellite and have it tracked through Google Earth for free. Trackstick II works anywhere on earth including the poles and is tracked by 24 satellites. The accuracy of tracking is +-15 meters.

The Trackstick records its own location, time, date, speed, heading and altitude at preset intervals. With over 1Mb of memory, it can store months of travel information. The Trackstick is the perfect tool for individuals looking for a way to track anything that moves. Use it for recording the exact routes you take when hiking, biking or vacationing. Record the location of everywhere you went, import pictures and other information into Google Earth™ to offer an entirely new perspective of your journey. Includes GPX photo stamping feature for adding your favorite photos to you own maps.

Some applications that I can think of as an engineer is to find the shortest distance between two places or anything on those lines. It may also be used during Marathon runs and rallys by judges to keep all participants at bay. Maybe in the future, the GPS system in cars and buses will be replaced by a Trackstick and Google Earth.

This is a great buy for travelers.

via Gadling