PhoneBeagle mobile monitoring, or 'The Who, What When and Where of my Teenager's Cellphone Experiences'

I've got a teenage son, and three more boys that will soon cross the threshold from 'kid' to 'Dad, you don't have any more excuses NOT to give me a cellphone'. Currently, my 15 yr old is without a phone. He has a number, a simcard and even a voicemail box, but alas, the phone demons have struck again and we are left to make the decision once again on how much is too much to spend, what's tough enough for a teen, etc... One thing, though, that weighs heavily into my decision making process is how to make this new phone work for us, the parents. I know there's a few marketing hooks out there that convince you that you need to buy a phone for every child, no matter whether they're in kindergarten or college, so you can always know where they are, what they're doing and so on, but some of these specialty phones have really high service plans and at the end of the day, you could do just as well with an 'off the shelf' phone, provided you know about PhoneBeagle. I've been doing my research, and I've gotta say that these guys have their act together. For a very reasonable monthly fee, you have direct access to a wealth of information that is generated by your kid's Blackberry or Android-enabled smart phone, online, all the time. You should check them out, but as a quick snapshot, here are a few of the featues they offer:

• GPS data log - see where they've been
• Call log access - for incoming and outgoing calls
• History of websites visited
• Text message log
• MMS messaging archive - photos, music, video files

You can see why this can be a great resource for parenting at a distance. Some may bring up the privacy issue, but I am of the belief that my children are my responsibility as long as they live under my roof, and I should not be deprived of any knowledge of what they do, in order to parent them to the best of my ability. I encourage you to check them out at PhoneBeagle.com.