A golf ball that knows how far it's been hit

Golfers may soon be able to find out exactly how far they've driven off thetee, or how high they've hit a nine-iron, thanks to a tracking technologythat stores information on a chip inside the ball.
The chip, which is less than half the size of a phone’s SIM card, works byusing satellite technology to measure the exact location of the ball acrossa given time - including where it has been hit, but also its altitude andspeed.
It uses the same GPS technology that is built into the most advanced phones,but because it doesn’t have to process the information immediately it can bemuch smaller, and cheaper.
Golf is just one of many applications under development. Cameras using thechip, which is made by a British company called Geotate, will for instancebe able to record exactly where a photo was taken when they upload it ontotheir computer, meaning that all the pictures from a given trip can beplotted on a map.

All manner of sporting equipment could also incorporate the chip, using it togather information about how far a person has run, how long a passage ofplay has taken, what altitude a cyclist has reached. That data could in turnbe cross-checked against heart rate information, or the pace of a sprinter’sacceleration.
"Eventually we're going to get to a point where every device islocation-aware," Chris Marshall, chief technology officer of Geotate,which is based in Reigate, Surrey, said. The first 'geo-accessories' - whichTimes Online understands will be made by Philips - will go on sale at theend of the year, and will take the form of thin discs measuring a couple ofcentimetres in diameter that a person can carry with them. They may even byembedded in clothing.
When a particular activity - a jog, say - is finished, the owner will thenupload the information that has been stored by the GPS receiver in the chiponto the computer and, using software that comes with the device, find outwhere he or she has been (and how quickly). The 'geo-information' isdisplayed either on a map or in graphical format.
Trials are already in place with several of the major electronicsmanufacturers to have the technology built into digital cameras, Mr Marshallsaid at the Where 2.0 conference in San Francisco.
GPS - or satellite-based - technology has been used in consumer devices forseveral years, but typically it has provided navigation services, whichrequire information gathered by the GPS receiver to be processed 'in realtime' - in order to tell the driver which way to turn as the car moves alonga road, for instance.
That type of service requires a significant amount of processing and thereforebattery power. What Geotate realised was that there were potentially dozensof GPS-based applications which did not require real-time informationprocessing - for instance a tourist being able to 'geo-tag' his or herphotos when they are loaded onto a computer.
As long as a radio receiver could record a GPS signal at given intervals, amemory component that could store the signal, and a small battery, the costand size of a GPS device could be reduced dramatically. Geotate's smallestchips, which cost about $4 and measure 1cm by 0.5cm, use about 10millijoules each time they take a 'geo-measurement' - about the same amountof energy used to power a 60W light bulb for one six thousandth of a second.
Geotate said that depending on the use the chips were put to, they could lastfor months before needing to be recharged.
The company, which has more than ten patents for its chip, has 30 employees,including 25 in the UK, and is backed by the Road Group, an investment firmfocused on location-based services.