Archives for 2015

2014 saw several tragedies including the downing of several planes, one of which still has not been found. With the recent discovery of the wreckage of AirAsia Flight 8501 in the Java Sea, many people are wondering how, in the age where you can locate your phone anywhere in the world with the click of a button, can an entire flight disappear?

Well, I did a little bit of research on the topic and as it turns out, the answer is a little more complicated than people realize. Times reports that airplanes do have a GPS system, known as ADS-B, which broadcasts the plane’s location on regular flights. But, in the event of an emergency where a plane is going down, the conditions are too extreme for the GPS to function.

“People have been comparing this situation to Apple’s Find My Phone app,” John Walton, a British aviation journalist, told TIME in an article. “But the app can’t tell you very much on the way down if your phone is thrown off a 10-story building.” read more

“Until there’s a reason not to trust the G.P.S., I’m trusting the G.P.S.”
From New Yorker issue Jan 5, 2015

Well, the new year is officially here, and 2014 seems like it passed by in a blink. There were a lot of things that happened in the world of GPS this year other than the obvious introduction of several new sport tracking units and automotive units, which I am not going to list out.

In fact, I think this year was a pretty exciting one, filled with lots of debates involving GPS and privacy, drone use and its legality (with an undercurrent of the FAA panicking), self-driving cars and indoor location technologies—all things that really helped push GPS and its many uses to the front of public awareness, especially where privacy is concerned. read more