Thank you Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton for Geocaching

Whatever you might think of Ronald Reagan fan, we owe him a big thank you for making GPS available for civilian use and thereby enabling Geocaching, one of my favorite GPS activities.

In 1983, Korean Airlines flight 007 (sad coincidence) was shot down by the Soviets when it inadvertently flew over Sakhalin Island airspace. As a result of that incident, President Reagan mandated that GPS be liberated from restrictions limiting it to military use and be made available for civilians. By 1994, this process was complete, although the accuracy for civilian use was limited to about 1000 feet. Bill Clinton fixed this during his last year in office and accuracy was improved to about 65 feet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Precise_monitoring

Within a few days, the geocache had been set up and found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching

So thank you Ron and Bill!

Geocaching is a contemporary, GPS-based remake of traditions like Letterboxing, which have a long history of adult hide and seek.

Very simply, the idea is to place an object someplace hidden and then post the GPS coordinates to a site such as geocaching.com. There are a variety of different types of caches as well as difficulty ratings.

The most simple caches will leave a small log and pen or pencil for visitors to note their visit. Sometimes, the idea is to take something from the cache and leave something in return. There are other variations such as finding one clue that leads to another location and so forth. Difficulty of finding the cache and difficulty terrain are also rated and there is usually some sort of encrypted clue.

For example, several years ago a couple here in Mountain View placed geocaches at each stop on the Light Rail line terminating in Mountain View. Each cache provided a certain clue and for the person who assembled all the clues, this would tell them where to find the last cache which held a free Light Rail ticket.

I have done geocaching here, England, and Paris and about 6 or 7 years ago bought a handheld Megellan GPS. No longer needed!

Strictly speaking, you don't really need a GPS. Since there is always a question of inaccuracy in either determining the coordinates to begin with or finding them later, often you can do just as well by getting close and then using your best observational skills (or the clue) to do the rest.

It can be very frustrating to have the GPS say you should be standing right on top of the cache and then moments later have it tell you that you are 20 feet away. And then sometimes caches get "muggled" - discovered by people who stumble on them completely by accident.

In addition to the GPS for navigation, there are a number of other GPS apps as well as some made specifically for geocaching and other letterboxing-type activities. The one I know the best is GeoBeagle.

And if you don't have a GPS, you can still look up the coordinates on basic mapping like Google Maps.

I have to admit that I have yet to put out a geocache of my own. I have an idea to create a sort of non-linear story, linking a collection of caches together but so far I am strictly a consumer.

Leaving Tracks

There are so many map and GPS-based apps that it would be impractical to catalog them all or even rank them, particularly with the list growing every day.

Following are some discussions of few that I like or appreciate. I find I particularly like the ones that are meant to be used on a device like the iPhone (not the iPod) or the DROID. Fortunately, many of these apps are available on both devices.

My Tracks has to be very high on my list. After determining your position, you can click to turn on position recording as you drive, walk, bike, or otherwise move around. I use it out both curiousity and practicality to figure out how far my morning walk truly is, or a round trip biking to the farmers' market. I then save the ones I like the best and upload them to my personal Google map.

I find that Google Earth isn't quite as compelling on the small form factor of the DROID but the Sky Map, broken out separately is fascinating and beautiful although I find it a bit disorienting to use, as I only recognize a few commonly known features learned way back in Girl Scouts.

There are many apps that are great in combining maps and positioning with finding out what services or restaurants are in the vicinity (I like Urbanspoon and Yelp but there are others). I'm also rather fond of Glympse (recommended by my friend Janis, who works with the developers), which has the ability to send your current position to another user. Very handy for letting people where my office is or meeting up.

Next Up: Geocaching

So: What is "GPS"?

My friend Peter reminds me that I haven't posted this week.

It was busy! Two big dances for the annual Playford English Country Dance Ball which included house guests, a seder, another normal English dance, a trip to SF to see the terrific art work of a fellow alum from Kirkland College, and Easter looming as well.

But part of the problem was: how to talk about this rather complicated and overloaded term "GPS".

Coincidentally, as I was riding in the elevator back to our car in the SF garage, I overheard a conversation that captures what I mean.

"So we're going to go to Helen's now, right? What is Helen's address? Do you have it?"

"Yes, I'll give it to you. Oh, but do you have GPS?"

"Yeah."

"OK, I'll put it into your GPS."

They meant a navigation system that uses GPS, of course, but it's worth spending a little time to tease apart some of the underpinnings.

GPS means Global Position System, which is a space-based navigation system offered by the US government. Using a set of satellites in space, control and monitoring sites on Earth, a GPS receiver is capable of determining your position on the planet, including elevation.

This information can then be used in a wide variety of ways, some of the most useful include combining data with maps for applications such as driving navigation, tracking, letter boxing, and more, more, more.

The iPhone and the DROID both have genuine GPS chips in them, similar to what are found in GPS navigation systems for cars. Different chips sets have varying quality and reliability characteristics.

The iPod Touch does not have true GPS. It is possible to perform a quick and less accurate substitute GPS using the wireless network address. This is sufficient to enable a number of interesting and useful apps, but you will find that there are a number that iTunes will not let you install.

Probably the most common GPS app for most people is car / travel navigation. This combines the now-familiar ability to calculate a travel route from point to point (e.g. using Google Maps on your computer) with turn-by-turn directions with voice prompting, tracking your progress along the route. These are now common integrated add-ons in car purchases and they can be also bought separately and perched on dashboards, powered by the standard old "cigarette lighter" port on the dash.

Both the iPhone and the Droid have the advantage of portability. Navigation no longer has to be restricted to the car.

A huge benefit for the Droid (and general Android platform, I believe), is that a full-featured GPS navigation system, complete with voice prompting, is included for free. I am told that on the day that the Droid was announced, the stock price of GPS navigators such as Tom Tom dropped by a significant percent.

GPS naviation apps for the iPhone are not free (as of this moment) and accessing the system and specific features (such as voice prompting) also require additional yearly fees.

For me this makes the Droid quite compelling, but from a feature comparison perspective, the two are very comparable.

Next Up: Other fun and useful location based services