$8billion to upgrade the widely used geo-navigation system source
before The system had a margin of error of about 20 feet – OK for driving, bad for walking a city street.
after After the upgrade, the system will be able to get within an arm’s length of the location. Whoa, cool!
» Not just for nav: It’s used for all sorts of purposes, including tracking financial transactions from ATMs and stock trades. In 2007, when the system was knocked offline in San Diego, cell phones and hospital paging systems stopped working. In other words, the technology, which currently uses 24 satellites to do its dirty work, is pretty useful.
There’s no doubt that those guys are going to be disrupted.
Opus Research analyst Greg Sterling • On Google’s decision to offer free navigation software for mobile phones, essentially taking the GPS navigation abilities of TomTom and Garmin and making them look expensive and useless. Google does this a lot, and it has the effect of creating animosity in certain industries. For his part, Google CEO Eric Schmidt says he doesn’t see it as disruption, just helping consumers: “Obviously we like the price of free because consumers like that as well.” • source
The Royal Mail was about to go on strike in the U.K., so The Guardian dropped a satellite device in the mail to see what happened. This is innovative journalism.
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At the beginning it was a tough chicken and egg situation. Where I was calling and saying ‘Hi it’s Greg Grunberg, star of NBC’s Heroes, can I talk to the head of marketing please,’ and I would get them on the phone.
Greg Grunberg • On his pretty solid side career producing the Yowza iPhone app, a GPS-aware coupon-referring program that has become a hit. He claims that he’s always been a bit of an entrepreneur and that it’s a solid backup plan just in case he gets killed off on “Heroes” someday. (Not that he should have a problem with that, because his character can read people’s thoughts.) • source
Your GPS will catch you if you’re skipping class. It’s borderline brilliant and borderline evil, but Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo will give students of its School of Social Informatics for both classes and truancy reasons. As the university is one of the most prestigious in the country, attendance is very important, and now they have a better way to check it on those 550 students than notes from doctors or forged notes from classmates. There’s one loophole – a student could have their buddy bring their iPhone to class – but it’s unlikely because iPhones aren’t cheap. source
