h a l f b a k e r yA riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a rich, flaky crust
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don't need GPS installed in your car. Bluetooth & a laptop with mapping software should do the trick. Tall buildings, cloud cover etc, no problem. OK, You would need satellite in the countryside and abroad.
Galileo satellite navigation system
http://europa.eu.in..._transport/galileo/
When it comes online... a real alternative to GPS. [waugsqueke, Oct 17 2004]
[link]
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How? You seem to be missing that one teensy-weensy little ingredient: infrastructure. |
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Put em up on traffic lights. Lampposts ? Street signs ? There are wi-fi cafes around, so why not this? All these microscopic (or nanoscopic, for all I know) thingies would do is broadcast the latitude & longitude. If you want to make it more sophisticated, let it blat out the intersection & the city name.
Personally had the problem in SF where the tall buildings downtown (& the 30 or 20 feet GPS imprecision) prevented me from finding out where I was exactly for half an hour.
The mapping s/ware in your laptop could do the rest, once it found out the lat&long.. |
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I think we should learn to use the stars again. Maybe an electronic star-chart doohickie. |
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I never had a problem with good, old fasioned street signs or even asking for directions. |
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What is the difference between a base station, an indoor artificial satellite, and the lamppost mounted things that the authors proposes here? |
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Well, hmm, they're all spelled differently, for one. |
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Systems are being trialled by which cellphones can locate themselves by using time-delay and triangulation from their base stations. And the infrastructure's already in place - nothing much new needed. |
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I'll try to post some links. |
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Yes, because it is so much easier to put broadcasting boxes on every friggin' street sign on the planet than it is to toss up a couple of dozen satellites. |
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See link for the real alternative to GPS. |
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How is Galileo an alternative to GPS? Looks to be the same technology to me. |
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The infrastructure thing is discouraging, but in some ways perhaps dependence on something even as nondecentralizable as infrastructure can be a lesser evil than dependence on the military industrial complex, especially in these dark times. |
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(bumping the idea to the top and adding a croissant as I almost posted the exact same thing) |
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There is an easy way to get the infrastructure started. If the device could provide not only location informtion but also something like a website then shops could add in small maps of where they were and advertise special offers. |
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