GPS

The book I read to research this post was GPS for Dummies by Joel McNamara which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is primarily for people like hikers & campers & is about personal GPS & also about the various software they can use for map making. At one time it was mostly people like sailors & aircraft pilots who used GPS. In fact the first personal GPS were about a $1,000 & about the size of a brick & very limited on features. Nowadays you can get a GPS for about $100 or £70 & there's even one that's built into a watch. In the book he recommends IrfanView which is free as a photo editor for your maps & it's compatible with google. An interesting development in GPS is geocaching where a parcel is hidden with a rubber stamp so people can prove they found & they hide a gift & when you find it you replace it with another gift preferably of similiar value. The details of where it's hidden are put on a site like www.geocaching.com GPS is important in helping you locate the parcel. In europe they have a GPS satellite system called Galileo which offers unprecedented resolutions although by now it has been surpassed. Even the chinese are on board with it although the americans were unhappy about the prospect of places like the white house being viewed in high resolution although they have negotiated a settlement. The landscape shown on a GPS is divided into degrees then these are divided into minutes which are 1.2 miles then these are divided into seconds which are 0.02 miles. All personal GPS's have a manual in pdf form on the internet. Many come with map making software which is often free versions of commercial ones.