We already talked about GPS Tracking before. It is really nice to have it for your own safety and vehicle tracking. However, since I love this GPS gadget very much, I decide to come back with this hot topic.
Previously I have embedded a Youtube video that explained how GPS helped solving a murder case of a 12 year old girl. The story is about how the authorities discovered that the suspect had a GPS device in his car and the GPS devise saved a log file with information on both the time and location of the suspect’s car. Thanks to this log file the authorities could see with such accuracy when and where the suspects’ car had been that he could be charged with murder. The suspect himself must have been really surprised when he found out that he had the GPS device in his car, because it was placed there by his wife who suspected that he had an affair with another woman. Sounds funny..but it is a true story!
In this article, I would like to share another good use of GPS technology that is helping the blind. You can read this latest news in BBC;
“An Italian technology company is pioneering a GPS satellite system that will give blind people greater independence and mobility.
The Easy Walk service has been developed by Il Village, a firm in Turin in northern Italy. It is currently being tested by a group of 30 people from the Italian Blind Union who are providing feedback. The plan is for Easy Walk to be launched to blind and partially sighted people in Piedmont in the autumn.Easy Walk uses a mobile phone that runs the Symbian operating system, a small Bluetooth GPS receiver, text to speech software called Talks (though rival products are also compatible) and a call centre that will operate around the clock seven days a week. It requires just two dedicated keys on the mobile phone – one which, when pressed, tells the user their exact location including the house or building number and the other one alerts the call centre that the person needs assistance with navigation.
An operator will then call the blind person, find out where it is they need to go and stay on the line with them providing step by step instructions.”
Some manufacturers of GPS devices take the GPS technology to a new level since they’ve integrated their GPS Tracking Key with Google Earth. This way you can see exactly where the GPS device has been on a Google Earth satellite map. The data can then be downloaded and viewed in Google Earth in exact location within 2.5m simply by plugging the Tracking Key into the USB port of a computer.
