Bringing It All Together

I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this blog as it has even taught me many things which I would never have even considered looking into. It was fun relating our class discussions and materials to one specific technology, GPS. It seems as tho we have been taking many modern day technologies for granted and don't really understand where they come from and how much work is put into their development. The development of the entire Global Positioning System has been a roller coaster ride from the start. The amount of collaboration on the effort to develop the satellite system as well as each individual hand-held device has been amazing, starting with the US military all the way down to small companies. This got me thinking about how this holds true for almost every technology in our society, such as computers, mp3 players, televisions, etc. Our world is rapidly accelerating into a new tech-age and it will be a wild ride.

Intellectual Property and GPS Systems

Intellectual Property rights have been an issue for decades now, but recently with the boom of the Internet, it has become a much bigger problem. The obvious issues are with downloading music, movies, TV shows, etc. However, this extends further. GPS systems are all based on using satellites to locate where the signal is coming from. The first few mainstream companies all rushed to get vague copyright laws established on their use of these satellites with the hope of creating a monopoly over the industry, however none of these were successful for obvious reasons.

Now, with the inventions of places such as google maps, which has an incredible amount of places on the earth detailed down to the street level, these copyrights become more interesting. Google obviously obtained their images using a satellite that other companies use as well (their Street View is a different story), so the use of these images can be, in theory, used by any other company in the business. However, there really is no way to tell where they got the images because they could have very well simply done the labor and busywork themselves to put together the satellite images, or they could have simply taken then right from google maps and/or other places of satellite imagery (such as DeLorme).

What companies are now doing to battle this is a long string of 'defenses' to copyright infringement. The most common/basic one, and also the easiest to get past, is putting a watermark image on top of the picture bearing the company logo or name, so they can identify where the image originated. Obviously, this compromises the quality of the image/service, so doing so has a detrimental effect to the company producing these images.

There doesn't seem to be an easy solution to this problem, and each day there seems to be a new idea to help protect a companies intellectual property.

Future/Limitations of GPS Systems

This week, we have read about how technology may have some limits, in not only physical capabilities but also from an ethical standpoint. GPS systems seem to pose a huge threat to ethics, so I will focus on this aspect of it.

We have all seen Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight", and one of the most pivotal moments of the film is near the end when a technology is developed that turns every ones cellular phone into a location device that can essentially see everything around the area of any individuals cell phone. Obviously this poses huge ethical threats, as each day we see cases and instances where our personal freedoms/privacy's are violated by the government. Even the individual words we speak (yelling 'fire' in a public place) are being controlled, imagine if someone had the knowledge of where everyone was, at all times? This clearly is an issue that needs to be addressed, and quickly. Now I realize that this is based purely off of a fictional movie and is a stretch at best that we will see such a technology in the near future, but it is not necessarily completely out of reach.

A similar issue like this came up in New York City, where the individual cab drivers were protesting (in 2007) the installment of GPS systems within their cabs. Their reasons included evasion of privacy, which is what my point is (source = http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2113899,00.asp). Obviously this is on a much smaller scale than what I previously discussed, but it seems as though each new step forward with gps technologies is seeing resistance from multiple areas. It will be interesting to see when the resistance levels are too much for the gps providers to ignore.

Throughout this course we have been touching on a lot of different angles and aspects of modern-day technology, from the origins of the computer to the limits/ethics of what these new 'toys' may bring us.

Building off of our class topics this week in regards to the development of the personal computer and other like technologies, I'd like to touch a bit on the early beginnings of the world's top-selling GPS company, Garmin. It basically boils down to two men, Gary Burrell and Min Kao. Kao had been on the team that developed the first GPS system for airplanes for the US military. The company name is simply a combination of their first names, 'Gar', and 'Min'. Kao was provided with about $4 million in capital from a friend, and then they never looked back. The company has soared lately, and the range of products they sell is amazing.

Garmin's first popular, main-stream device was the eTrex Yellow, as shown below. The device was introduced in 1998 and is what started the hand-held GPS craze. It was a 12-channel GPS device that was designed for hikers, skiiers, backpackers, and boaters. The biggest selling point of this device was that it was durable, waterproof, and reliable.

Now, their annual sales revenues exceed $3 billion. The industry itself is quite expansive, but Garmin can be accredited with starting the craze which has developed into new cell phones, car navigators, and staples such as google maps. This technology is here to stay, and it will be cool to see where it ends up.

New iPhone App Saves Golfers Hundreds

Over the past twenty years, the game of golf has been completely revolutionized by technology. For hundreds of years, wooden clubs were the standard and the only thing seen in the game. However, during the past two decades, clubs change and are improved daily based on new technology.

The one I am going to discuss, however, is a new kind of technology that has recently been introduced to the game. GPS systems have stormed the golf scene. Each golf store and golf shop sells GPS range finders that tell the player the precise distance from their current position to the flag, any water hazards, bunkers, trees, you name it. While this technology has been used in golf for a couple years now, it is still incredibly expensive. The range finders at golf shops usually range from $250-$500 USD. While their sales are still incredibly high, a recent, brand new technology is about to change this.

The ever-so-popular has now been turned into a range finder for golfers. There are now a few apps available, such as AirVue, seen here:


While they serve pretty much the exact same purpose as the handheld (they are actually run from very similar software and golf course databases), standalone devices one can purchase at a golf store, the unique advantage here is that these applications run from $15-$40. While the iPhone itself deserves millions of blogs just for all of its amazing capabilities, these series of apps are greatly changing the golf world, and for cheap. Another popular app is ViewTi, seen here:
Both of these apps have received great reviews from online users, and are obviously a great choice to use rather than purchasing a $400 stand-alone gps system from a golf shop. GPS systems are finding their nitch in many different ways of life, including the sports world. It will be exciting to see where all of this takes us. These devices have already been banned from competitive golf, however to the average player, technologies like this completely change their game.