New Jersey to offer online gaming - but only while you're in NJ

One of the most interesting nuances of the new online casino gambling law in New Jersey is the fact that players - online poker will be the most popular version - can only participate while within state lines.

But wait - how the heck can the state know exactly where you are when you log on to your laptop?

New Jersey is expected to sign on with Illinois-based Locaid to perform this task.

The company, which started in 2005, partners with the big wireless carriers to figure out where you are - and since you would have to be signed up with an Atlantic City casino to get an account, you will have agreed to all this.

CEO Rip Gerber said that online gaming is a "large growth area" for the company, because the highly-regulated industry will need "a lot of authentification ."

"We can effectively draw a fence around a state border," Gerber says, even detecting if someone is as little as 100 yards beyond a state line.

Gerber said that many people don't realize that there are 280,000 wireless cell towers in the U.S., allowing his company to "triangulate" to ascertain locations. Wi-fi helps to pinpoint even further, he adds - an overall process that he calls "geo-fencing."

The closer one is to a border, the more verification is used to make sure of the exact location. Gerber said his company has spoken with Governor Christie administration members on a preliminary basis about how this all works.

If this sounds all 22nd-century to you, let me tell you a tale from the 20th century.

In the late 1990s, my newspaper gave me a pager - something people under 25 might have to look up on google. It worked pretty well all over the country.

While on a Nets West Coast road trip, at one point I drove from Seattle to Vancouver for the next of back-to-back games (this was pre-9/11 and driving, so customs was as easy as handing over your ID at a checkpoint and immediately going on your way).

Both my newlywed wife and I assumed that the pager would work in Canada because I drove, not flew, to get there.

But guess what - even in the 1990s, that darn pager knew just when I drove over the border, and I couldn't get any pages until I drove back to the U.S.

For those of us who aren't technologically inclined, it can seem like magic. But it works.

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