Sunday, March 18, 2012

Archives for October 2014

Unusual Gift Giving with GPS Adventure Box

IMG_1971

They say that the real joy of gifts is giving them, not receiving them. But what if you could make opening a gift just as much fun as the actual gift itself? Now, with the successfully funded Kickstarter project, GPS Adventure Box, you can! Despite the slightly lame name, this clever little box would be a fun gift for just about anyone—not just GPS lovers.

This neat little box has a GPS chip and can be programmed with a series of coordinates and then locked with a gift inside. Before the locked box will open, recipients must take the box to the correct locations and press the button on top of the box to get the next clue. Once all of the coordinates have been visited, the box will unlock and the recipient can have their gift. read more

This Week in GPS — October 10, 2014

Galileo_orbits_viewed_from_above

This week in GPS is a weekly link roundup of (mostly) GPS related odds and ends, from GPS Tracklog and other places around the Web. This week’s featured image shows the erroneous orbits of the two wayward Galileo satellites. This week, the board finally announced the cause behind the malfunction. Read on for this and more GPS news! read more

Galileo Anomaly Revealed by Board

This illustration, released by the ESA, shows the erroneous satellite orbit in red, and the intended orbit in dashed green. The other two lines represent current Galileo satellite orbits

This illustration, released by the ESA, shows the erroneous satellite orbit in red, and the intended orbit in dashed green. The other two lines represent current Galileo satellite orbits

Nearly two months after the two Galileo satellites were deployed into an erroneous orbit nearly 2,000 miles off course, an independent inquiry board investigating the cause has finally determined the reasons for the mistake and outlined solutions to prevent further mishaps.

Last week, it was reported that a frozen pipe was to blame for the mishap, but official comments from the inquiry board had not been released. GPS World reported yesterday that the board had determined that the anomaly was not caused by an operator error or by satellite behavior, but by a design flaw in the rocket. read more

App Gives GPS Guides to Alabama State Parks

pocket ranger app logo

In honor of the Alabama Park System’s 75th Anniversary, a new app has been released that will give users comprehensive guides to all state parks in Alabama in one app. The Alabama State Parks Pocket Ranger app joins a suite of apps mapping out state parks, fishing guides, hunting guides and more for nearly 30 states. These apps provide not only a wonderful tool for exploring your state parks, but they are all free on iTunes and Google Play. Just search “Pocket Ranger” with your state name. read more

Enhancing Geocaching.com with Greasemonkey & Tampermonkey Scripts

Back at the start of the year we saw some historic rainfall here in the United Kingdom.  Rivers burst their banks and huge swathes of the countryside were under several feet of water.  It made planning the weekly geocaching trip even more difficult – I didn’t want to do a twenty mile circular walk only to find the final mile back to the car blocked by floodwater.

It was in my frustration of consulting governmental flood maps and correlating them with geocaching maps that I discovered the wonderful world of the Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey script.

Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey are plugins (for Firefox and Google Chrome respectively) that allow you to install scripts to modify your favorite web pages.  It all sounds a bit complicated but in essence they allow you to do things such as get Google Search results to appear in two columns rather than just one, or show the buffer speed of the YouTube video you are watching. read more

Waze Updates Allows Geotagging, Parking Reminders

Google acquires Waze

Waze, the popular social mapping program, got an update last week that introduced a set of features called “Places.” This feature allows users to add POIs to their Waze app to mark fun and interesting places that they find while traveling. In addition to information about POIs, users can add photos to help others know they are in the right place. Sounds an awful lot like the popular waymarking pastime, except instead of a scavenger hunt to try and find places, you can actually get directions there. read more

Frozen Pipe Glitched Galileo Launch

This illustration, released by the ESA shows the erroneous satellite orbit, and the intended orbit.

This illustration, released by the ESA, shows the erroneous satellite orbit in red, and the intended orbit in dashed green. The other two lines represent current Galileo satellite orbits

Preliminary reports from the Galileo inquiry seem to be trickling through, and a possible cause for the mislaunch of the two Galileo satellites has been determined. According to Phys.org and the French daily Le Monde, investigators suspect that the source of the glitch is a frozen pipe which contained hydrazine fuel.

According to the phys.org article, the hydrazine pipes are located near another pipe that circulates ultra-cold liquid helium which may have led to their freeze. The hydrazine fuel is used by the Fregat upper stage to drive the satellites into their correct orbital slots. Experts have already confirmed that the upper stage was not completed properly during the launch, stranding the satellites in an unusable elliptical orbit. read more

Discover Wyoming’s Stories with New GPS App

travelstorys

Down every road and through every terrain there are stories waiting to be told of the people who once lived there. It isn’t hard to imagine as you are walking through the countryside of Wyoming that the 17th century landscape wasn’t all that different. But who has time to go through all of the research about a stretch of road?

Introducing the Travel Storys GPS app, a multi-platform app that is designed to do just that. read more

This Week in GPS — October 3

garmin forerunner 920XT

This week in GPS is a weekly link roundup of (mostly) GPS related odds and ends, from GPS Tracklog and other places around the Web. This week’s featured image is the newly released Garmin Forerunner 920XT released this week. Read on for more details and other news around the net this week! read more

Garmin Releases Forerunner 920XT Multisport Watch

garmin forerunner 920XTGarmin has formally announced and released the most recent watch in the popular Forerunner line. The Forerunner 920XT comes with all of the activity tracking and fitness monitoring capabilities you could possibly want for running, cycling and swimming workouts along with waypoint check-in and optional heart rate monitoring.

This latest Garmin device is packed full of features. Here are some of the highlights: read more