A new personal locator beacon called Spot relies on a private network of satellites and will be coming out November 1^st. The unit only costs $150, but you also need to pay a yearly subscription fee of $100. What’s so unique about the Spot compared to PLBs like those available from ACR Electronics and McMurdo is that instead of using government satellites to contact the Coast Guard, it uses privately owned satellites that register your location and a phone bank that calls local 911 for you.

The Spot’s other great feature is that you can use it to alert your friends to some minor emergency. If you break a binding in the backcountry and don’t want to deal with cops getting mad when you call 911 for a ride, you can press the “help” button. The people at Spot will call your friends and give them your location so they can drop whatever they’re doing to run out and pick you up. Another interesting feature is the Big Brother tracking button. You press it once and the Spot will plot your location on a Goggle Maps page that your friends back home can check. It’ll also be handy to stick under a floor mat of your wife’s SUV when she says she’s going to her “sister’s house” again. Yeah right.