http://stravaiger.com/blog/tags/compass/ Recent content in Compass on eBothy Blog Hugo en-us Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://stravaiger.com/blog/2010/08/22/the-gps-conundrum-and-the-vi-effect/ Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000 http://stravaiger.com/blog/2010/08/22/the-gps-conundrum-and-the-vi-effect/ <p>The other day Dawn and I were trying to remember the name of a restaurant in Glasgow that we&rsquo;ve been to and neither of us had the foggiest what it was. So I fired up the phone and courtesy of a Vodafone Femto Cell which gives 3G coverage in the middle of nowhere, we used Google Maps to virtually walk down Bath Street and stand outside the restaurant, noting its name and phone number. Job done. <a title="Pea soup with a wild camp. Ben Avon and Beinn a’Bhuird" href="http://stravaiger.com/blog/2008/09/21/pea-soup-with-a-wild-camp-ben-avon-and-beinn-a039bhuird">Rewind</a> a couple of years to where I met a bloke near the summit of Beinn a&rsquo;Bhuird who had a phone he kept looking at and I&rsquo;m sure he had earphones dangling too. So I suspect he was using an early form of GPS, probably a Nokia as they were popular back then but strangely he had joined me on the edge of the cliffs. I was there to take a bearing where the cliff edge turned south, so I knew exactly where I was for an accurate bearing to the summit on the featureless plateau but he had a GPS and only now I&rsquo;m wondering why on earth he ended up at the same spot as me. Why didn&rsquo;t he navigate straight to the summit? Leaving aside such questions, I think I was witnessing the birth of smartphone based navigation. A topic much in the news these days and tipped to knock GPS units into the void. But just how accurate and reliable are GPS&rsquo;s?</p>