Around the world with data part 3.

The amazing world of GPS(Global positioning system):

Obviously i knew what GPS was but in terms of anything related to what we were doing i wasn't sure. I started thinking about how you could use GPS for all sorts of interesting projects and data visualisations, but first i had a deeper look at GPS itself.

How does GPS work?

Where is it used?

well from the map you could gather that its just used as a part of in flight technology. At one point in time i gather that to be true, however in modern society it is used to navigate roads, or even walk from one point to another using smart phones. 

GPS itself seems to be involving itself in our lives bit by bit, its even possible to know the location of anyone in the world using phone to phone communication, but its something that isn't widely used due to a voyeuristic nature.

However when GPS is used to explore space in can tell an interesting tale. Referring to my previous post, it was easy to see the small routes humans had taken in their own living room, but a viewer could look at it and say " ahh it this point mum went out the room and maybe made a cup of tea for her child". Its like the infamous saying, a picture says a thousand words.

Google maps is by now infamous as well as earth and streetview. It is google streetview that captivates me the most. Obviously it is not live GPS tracking but at some point it would have been, and now that route is available for everyone in the world to see. So if we take union street specifically our groups project area Dance Academy, imagine if we could use streetview to involved some sort of Augmented Reality to send a message to the public about its history. Its an idea which we got excited about but knew pretty much from the offset it was not going to happen. Due to software restrictions, time and overall publicity of the project.

It is clear thoguh that GPS is the most technologically advanced way of exploring space and i became very interested in how GPS is used as space exploration technique and found a very interesting example. I was amazed at the scale of flights that take place daily, and without this visualisation it would be hard to grasp that many planes in the air at once just by numeric data.

However some people take a very different approach to now a day to day technology. Take the example below. A person has noted positions with GPS and created a sort of art on a space that you would not expect. Such a simple yet interesting concept, i think this art can be taken alot further!