Police credit iPad for solving theft case

WEST UNIVERSITY, TX

You may have iPhone. You may have an iPad. If you have both, you understand that one is basically the extension of the other, and both can be tuned in to the other and locate the other. Apparently, that can really come in handy if you're robbed in your driveway.

It happened Monday morning on Nottingham Street. A woman placing her child in her car was robbed at gunpoint. Her jewelry, along with her iPhone, was taken.

But the tool she had was her iPad, which was synched with the phone. That gave a precise address in southeast Houston where 46-year-old Charles E. Hall and the iPhone were found. West University police arrested him less than two hours after the robbery.

It's the new world of smart phones and an app that track smart phones and iPads.

"It's GPS so it's tracking it. It will follow it," Best Buy employee Lancy Mercier said. "It'll have a line that shows exactly where your device is going very quickly and ... a precise address."

The technology that makes it possible is the GPS built into the products and a subscription to the MobileMe software which can activate GPS to locate one device from the other. MobileMe is available for purchase for about $99 per year.