GPS puts you on the right track
Nothing in the mailbag this week readers, so today I’m taking a stab at an older digital technology that has suddenly leapt headlong into my everyday life. This isn’t a piece of software as much as it is a reason to throw away all your old AAA maps.
Two weeks ago, in what I’m willing to admit was an impulse buy, I decided to snap up a new TomTom One portable GPS device.
In case you’ve been living under a rock (in which case you would be getting very poor GPS reception and would therefore be excused from ignorance), GPS stands for Global Positioning System — a network of U.S. satellites allowing a receiver on earth (like my new toy) to calculate its exact position anywhere in the world using satellite signals.
At this point my understanding of the process breaks down because math is not my strong suit, but the GPS system, built by the Department of Defense, is incredibly accurate.
The TomTom One is a small model with a 3.5-inch color touch screen and an optional traffic and weather dongle you can buy later. It has some nice standard features, like a list of points of interest and a “help me” section in case you need a hospital, auto service center or police station. It comes preloaded with U.S. and Canadian maps; the rest of the world is available for a fee.
Nevertheless, the real star of the show here is the core software that calculates the route.
Part of the excuse, er, impetus for the purchase was a recent road trip to Seattle. It was during the weekend away that I really put the device through its paces. It handled the complex street systems in Seattle with aplomb. When a friend offered to give us old-fashioned directions because her GPS receiver often calculated only the most obvious route, the One proposed the same route she did.
On a more humorous note, I particularly like the feature on this model that lets you download different voices to give directions. While you can lay out a few bucks to have a professionally recorded John Cleese tell you to take the exit on the left, you can also tap into a phenomenal international community creating content for their receivers. I have found the user-created NASA mission control voice to be an all-time winner, but the London cabbie is also pretty decent.
Now that I’m thoroughly in love it’s hard to imagine life without this chatty car companion, but what I’m most excited about is the potential for using GPS outside the car.
As the weather is warming, I’m eagerly eyeing geocaching.com, a site promoting the activity of using GPS devices to lead participants on miniature treasure hunts. It’s not that the rewards are so grand – usually just a trinket stashed in a Tupperware – and etiquette requires you leave something yourself, but you are part of a community.
Have any ideas for good geocaching activities in the area? Send me suggestions (or exact geographic locations) and we’ll publish them with the next column.
This column is interactive, so feel free to send ideas and stories of technology in everyday life. Heard a great podcast, found a great tool or read a smart blog? Got a tip for the next column? E-mail me at stevenrneuman@gmail.com.