The merging of GPS and the Web
Kurt Cagle
Published: 14 Jul 2003 10:57 BST
My daughter engaged in a very 21st-century pursuit the other day, one that reminded me how different her world is from what mine was at the age of ten. Her teacher (a former geologist) had the kids break up into groups of four each, and then he sent them out with a global positioning system (GPS) tracker to attempt to locate a special treat on the school grounds. Not surprisingly, they picked up this new technology quickly, and if he hadn't cut them off at the end of class, they would probably have ended up mapping the entire schoolyard.
In primary school, my daughter has learned that every point on the planet has an absolute coordinate, a unique address that is completely accessible with the right tools. For those of us who struggled with paper maps and arbitrary relative coordinates, this idea of an absolute coordinate system hasn't really sunk in. Let's take a look at upcoming GPS technology that is sure to have strategic implications for CIOs.
GPS and URLs
The GPS coordinate system is analogous on a number of levels to the universal coordinate system embodied in the URL. With it, you can specify longitude, latitude, and height coordinates to within a metre (not counting any obfuscation performed by military satellites to fuzz things a bit) of any position on earth. With a properly synchronised timepiece, you also have a way of providing travel time and distance between coordinates, or of creating a historical trajectory.
Graphical reference map applications
In a perfect world, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. But in a shopping centre, for example, the shortest distance between two points is usually past the Starbucks, up the elevator, through the food court, and by the cinema. While the number of all possible routes is infinite, if you assume that a route's locus is defined as the centreline of the walkway, it's possible to create a handful of such routes (a three-dimensional network) that can be used to describe the shopping centre,.
A decent shopping centre, map application would likely include some association between the symbolic and the visual map. Using a language such as the XML-based scalable vector graphics (SVG), it may be possible to create a graphical reference map with the position of map elements (doors, walls, escalators, entrances) rendered to the GPS coordinate system. Such an application would also group related elements (such as the general outlines of a shop, perhaps to a level including permanent shelves and counters) so that each such group could be identified as a shop, the toilets, a security station, and so forth. Consequently, a shopping centre map application could create a live "You are here" display.
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