When you trust too much on your GPS

The GPS is without a doubt one of the greatest technologies ever invented. Let's face it, if we were to rely on something like Google Maps we probably wouldn't even be able to find our way from here to there or from the north of Portugal to New York.

Of course, GPS also has its flaws and limitations. But even with those, the GPS' weakest link still lies on the people who use it.



One clear example of this is the New York guy who trusted his GPS so much that he apparently thought it was perfectly reasonable to follow the directions directly onto a set of train tracks. Even though the man was able to get out of his car in time, he wasn't able to prevent a commuter train from slamming into the car a few minutes later, causing an hour and a half delay on the transportation service.

Don't worry, nobody got hurt...well, except for the guy's pride :-)

Source: Engadget

The other side of the World

Have you ever wonder what's on the other side of the Planet? I mean, if you start digging from the point where you are through the center of the Earth and then to the other side, do you know where would you end up? This site will allow you to do just that. It doesn't allow you to digg to the other side of the World, but at least you will discover what's the antipode of your current location on the Planet.

This is how I discovered that New Zealand is exactly on the other side of the World from where I am, Portugal :-)

Stuff's predictions for 2008

Engadget posted on the new gadget from Sony Ericsson that is supposed to run PSP games. They did this based on a scan from the Portuguese version of the Stuff magazine. What they didn't know was that this was a part of a "predictions" article for the new year from Stuff (on the January 2008 issue). Which basically means that the gadgets presented on the article are not real. Instead these are merely wild guests from Stuff's editors based on the evolution of gadget's market. They even used the expression "probability of existence" to denote the probability of these gadgets ever seeing the light of day.

So, being a Stuff subscriber, I decided to read the article again and present here some of those interesting gadgets that Stuff thinks will come up on 2008 (the given percentage is the probability of existence):

• Asus EcoBook - a wood-based (bambu) laptop from Asus (95%)
• iPhone 3G - the 3G version of the Apple touch phone (60%)
• Sony Play TV - Tivo-like service for the PS3 (87%)
• Multi-mouse Apple - mighty mouse with multi-touch technology (62%)
• Casio Hi-Speed - a digital camera capable of capturing 60 (6 Megapixel) pictures per second (84%)
  
• GPS 3D - GPS devices with 3D satellite/airplane photo maps (100% - a Portuguese company already released a product with this technology)
• Your music follows you - a small robot that follows you around the house playing your music (which is accessed from your PC through WiFi) (89%)
• GPS cameras - digital cameras equipped with a GPS sensor to help geo-tag your photos (66%)
• Apple Macbook Nano - A (iPhone-like) multi-touch tablet MacBook with a Blu-Ray recorder (64%)

And for more, check out Stuff magazine :-)

Geo-tagging on Apple's Leopard

According to the list of features of the new Apple's OS X version, Leopard will have GPS Metadata support for photos. For example, if your image has embedded GPS metadata, Preview will show you exactly where that photo was taken.

By opening the Image inspector and selecting GPS, you'll be able to pinpoint the location where you took the photo on a world map. From there you can even open the GPS location in Google Maps.

Source: CNET

"Locate" your YouTube videos

Google allows you to watch YouTube videos directly through the well-known sattelite mapping software, Google Earth, as long as videos are geo-tagged.

To access this new layer, just click on the "YouTube" button on the "Featured Content" folder on the left side of Google Earth.

Soon enough, YouTube icons will start appearing all over the "planet". If not enough videos are available, try zooming in and more videos should appear.

Source: Google LatLong

GPS on the iPhone?

For those with an iPhone, there's a new 3rd-party application that you can use on your iPhone to "emulate" GPS positioning, based on your cell-phone tower connection.

From MacRumors:

"Navizon uses cell phone towers to pinpoint your location (within a few hundred yards) and is able to push those coordinates to the Google Maps application."

Source: MacRumors

The weakest link in technology

People still are the weakest link in the world of technology. No matter how much advance we see in technology, there's always a point where it depends on people to make decisions. And this is where the problems start...

A U.K. woman sent her 141000€ Mercedes SL500 flying into a river because she blindly trusted the car's optimistic GPS guidance system instead of the road signs. In her head, if the GPS was telling her to turn left, then she really needed to turn. Is it possible that she didn't stop to think that, if there was a river on the left, maybe she shouldn't have turned?

Source: Engadget
Image: This is London