Geography and James Kim’s Demise

The story of James Kim’s death rattles everyone, it seems. A young man with a young family should have had many years ahead of them. Instead, they got lost and then stranded. He then tried to find help, walking miles, apparently with a map, but only a state map. We’ll never know if he knew […]

Ancient Mechanism Found - Possibly Used for Navigation, Mapmaking

More than 100 years after its finding, scientists identified some metal fragments from a ship wreck off the coast of Greece as the earliest known mechanical computing device; it is 2,100 years old. Called the Antikythera Mechanism, the device looks like a clock mechanism. However, it wasn’t until 1,000 years later that such technology was […]

Interview: GPS Review

The Geo Factor recently interviewed Tim Flight, who created and maintains the blog GPS Review. GPS Review has an impressive amount of information about GPS devices or all types. The site is fairly popular; ranking 41,762 on Technorati (anything in the top 100,000 is significant) and 117,124 on Alexa’s traffic ranking of all Web sites. […]

Report: Auto Electronics Market Growing

According to a recent report by Reed Electronics Research, “The market for navigation will continue to converge with audio andentertainment and combined will be one of the fastest growing segmentsof the automotive electronics market.”
Those creating and maintaining street, point-of-interest, and other location-based information of potential use in vehicles, as well as service providers, see […]

Location Information on the Small Screen

At the CTIA conference last week, there were some announcements about location-based services (LBS) on mobile devices including BlackBerrys and other smartphones. Garmin made a few announcements starting with a navigation system for drivers. The Garmin Mobile 20 system uses voice-prompt directions for drivers, and provides a 3D map display on a BlackBerry or smartphone. […]