James Bond always had those cool tracking devices in the movies. He'd slip some kind of modified cigarette lighter into the bad guy's pocket and walk through a compound trying to track down some super secret nuclear cupcakes or something. Finally that level of technology is available for my household spy missions.

The Loc8tor is a handheld radio frequency locator for tracking small asset tags. Stick a tag on your car keys, and the receiver will point in the proper direction. At two ounces the tracking tags are light enough to stick to lunch boxes, dogs, wallets, or small children. It uses radio frequency broadcasts to work through walls in four dimensions so the handheld can give directions to go up and down stairs. Tags are married to an individual receiver so there's no danger of other users casually picking up signals from someone else’s tags.

Beyond the location features the handheld also has a proximity mode for notification when an asset tag moves outside a predefined area. The package is currently able to track up to 24 different asset tags at once, but the system will be upgraded mid 2007ish to fulfill corporate asset tracking needs and will support up to 6,000 simultaneous tags. $180 for a starter pack isn’t cheap, but it definitely is cool. The guys at Gizmag have some more photos, and a full copy of the latest press release.