GPS for pedestrians

pugwash

pugwash

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The first transmissions from the EU's Galileo satellite positioning system are just starting up and the whole thing should be up and running by 2008. It will have a big impact on sailing and leisure, will give talking maps to the blind, will help us avoid traffic jams and warn of tailbacks, will bill us for every mile we drive, police speed limits, and so forth. The brochures talk of "applications we can't even imagine at this stage." OK, so let's imagine. If you have a mobile phone incorporated with a GPS accurate to less than a metre, what could you use it for? Flippant suggestions welcome but serious ones too, please!
 
Useful for Mountain Rescue situations although I know the MRT's are receiving a lot more calls from people with mobiles nowadays in situations which are possibly not emergencies.
Bit like sailing really!
 
Harbourmasters could track people who are known to own jetskis, and automatically be alerted if they get within a set distance of a slipway...
 
Oh goody

The police could track your every movement in the name of safety. They could have big maps on their puters showing everyone who is in a particular area and should a crime be committed you can be automatically implicated, in say a rape when you are trying to haggle for a pound of carrots on the barrow in the market. This should keep your neighbourhood relations up to par..

Then it could also be used to see if you are travelling outside your assigned living area without proper papers and permission from the new travel department. No papers no travel.

Then you could be checked for which shops you use and tie it up with what you buy, this should make the marketing bods target you correctly.

You could watch your children or spouse, a quick algorithm should send the correct images from the CCTV that is pointing to their telephone. That way they cannot ever do or go anywhere without your permission.

What a fabulous invention this will be and we can all become good little subjects (citizens to the yanks).

I can't wait to get mine.
 
with all the kids having one, you could link it with a mapping program and instantly have a location of your kid(s) ... until they turn it off....

It could enable the local councils to charge a pavement tax - £1 for every 10m of pavement you use (cos the petrol will be too expensive to allow you to drive - so no car & no road tax)
 
"It will have a big impact on sailing and leisure, will give talking maps to the blind, will help us avoid traffic jams and warn of tailbacks..."

Hmmm, presumably talking about the Solent again...
 
Lat & Long waypoints for all hostelries and a way point for home, so that I can see how far to right or left of track I am as I return after a good night out.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Lat & Long waypoints for all hostelries and a way point for home, so that I can see how far to right or left of track I am as I return after a good night out.

[/ QUOTE ]

But will your befuddled brain still be working well enough to follow the cross track error as you weave your way back home.

A much more likely application is to allow your wife to track you as you go about your business. "I can see that you're not working late at the office dear. Just why are you at 27 Acacia Avenue, and why is your elevation varying so rapidly?"
 
remind me never to telephone you in the evening, there are times not to answer the telephone!

/forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
As the thread title goes it will be a blessing around here, Dorchester/Weymouth, in the summer months; maybe, just maybe, the grockles will be able to walk in straight lines instead of wandering about all over the pavements.
 
The first people to trail this system, should be the politicians, no other breed of people seems more lost then them, and it works with them, other people can then use it. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
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