GPS smartphone

GPS

I have been fascinated by GPS devices for quite a while now. I’ve seen them progress from the dashboard and into your pocket. Today’s GPS units can not only take you across country or to grandma’s house… it can also show you all the cookie and fuel spots along the way. And if you get tangled up with the Big Bad Wolf on the journey, most will dynamically re-route you over the river and through the woods.

You can find a GPS in a stand-alone package, such as the Tom Tom or Garmin Nuvi units, and they offer door to door guidance. You can also find smartphones, such as the iPhone and the Android phones, which incorporate a GPS into their design. With the embedded GPS, the smartphones can offer varying GPS device capabilities. The iPhone, for example, will automatically geotag each picture it takes, which then can be viewed on a map when uploaded to iPhoto. The Google Nexus One offers strong default mapping that will show you locations of various traveling resources.

Augmented Reality applications are an extension of GPS technology which overlays a live picture with various location data, and it is quite slick to use. Currently Augmented Reality is stronger on the smartphone devices, but Tom Tom and others are rumored to have dedicated AR units in development.