{"id":13795,"date":"2020-06-23T09:44:53","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T13:44:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=13795"},"modified":"2020-06-23T09:44:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-23T13:44:53","slug":"high-tech-lost-and-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2020\/06\/high-tech-lost-and-found\/","title":{"rendered":"High-Tech Lost and Found"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tile\"
PHOTO COURTESY OF TILE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sometimes people stop Steve Klinkner \u201986 on the street or in the store and thank him for helping them find their keys or phone that morning.<\/p>\n

As the vice president of engineering for Tile, Klinkner gets a sense of just how widespread the company\u2019s Bluetooth tracking devices have become when he wears one of the company\u2019s branded T-shirts. Tile is the most popular personal item tracker on the market, with more than 30 million devices sold worldwide. The discreet plastic tags hook onto keychains, slide into wallets, and attach to remotes, cameras, or any other device that has a tendency to wander.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a feel-good product,\u201d Klinkner says, noting that relieved customers will often email the company to share their tales. There was the professional musician whose violins were stolen out of the back of his car with a Tile in the case, allowing him to track them to a stranger\u2019s address and notify police to retrieve his instruments. There was the motorcyclist who rediscovered a Tile-tagged bag lost on a 10-mile stretch of road into the woods. \u201cThose kinds of things happen all the time,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

After graduating from the Whiting School with a BS in computer science<\/a> and electrical engineering<\/a>, Klinkner went on to earn master\u2019s degrees in computer science and electrical engineering from Purdue University. Tile isn\u2019t the only word-of-mouth famous company he\u2019s worked for: He previously spent time as senior director of engineering at social gaming company Zynga, home of apps like Farmville and Words With Friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat got me intrigued about Tile is that the software can run on any Bluetooth device, so computers, phones, and laptops can all be part of a broader lost-and-found system,\u201d he says. \u201cSo the path we\u2019ve been pursuing is enabling tracking on as many things that people want to find as possible.\u201d For example, he says, Bluetooth headsets are small and easy to lose but can easily be made findable with Tile technology. In January, Tile began working with Hewlett-Packard to put Tile technology into laptops.<\/p>\n

Klinkner envisions a secure worldwide finding network that anyone can participate in through Tile, yet in a way that preserves users\u2019 privacy. Missing electronic devices would be able to report back to their owners privately, and people who found objects would be able to alert owners through anonymous, encrypted messages. In the future, as electronics get smaller and easier to lose, strangers might end up thanking Klinkner for saving a lot more than the time lost hunting for misplaced keys.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes people stop Steve Klinkner \u201986 on the street or in the store and thank him for helping them find their keys or phone that morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":13851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[5054,5058],"class_list":["post-13795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-tile","tag-bluetooth-tracking-devices","issue-summer-2020"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHigh-Tech Lost and Found - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2020\/06\/high-tech-lost-and-found\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"High-Tech Lost and Found - 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