The Magic of Global Position Satellites and Receivers

Amazing. With a handheld (or bike-mounted, or permanently mounted in an automobile, or boat, or....) GPSr, I can collect location data anywhere in the world, to an accuracy of tens of feet or better. Or I can program in a point anywhere in the world, and get instant directions to that point. No more stopping to ask for directions (which of course I didn’t do anyway).

Or, I can participate in the world’s largest non-governmental hide-and-seek game, geocaching. My caches are listed here.

Or, I can use it to map out where plants and trees are going at the Hermitage, and where the driveway is, and where the buildings are.

I use a Garmin eTrex Vista Cx GPSr, with a Colorado topo maps microSD.

Because I’m a Mac user, I had some issues with finding software to work with my GPSr. Below is a list of programs (with links to their developers or sellers) that I’ve been impressed with thus far.

1. •www.macgpspro.com - very cool software developed specifically for the Mac to work with almost any GPSr that can connect to a computer. It gives you access to virtually any map, and allows you to plan out your route on your computer, and then transfer it to your GPS. It also allows you to download waypoints, routes, and tracks from your GPSr, so you can see where you’ve been.
   

2. •GPS Photolinker - compares the times of the trackpoints in your GPS track log to the time photos were taken, and inserts the latitude, longitude and altitude into the EXIF information of your pictures. What does all of that mean? It means that 20 years from now, when you’re looking at some great pictures, but your memory is fuzzy about the trip, you’ll know exactly where you were standing when you took the photo. Nice to know it was Colorado, and not Utah, for instance. And no, I’m not saying anything bad about Utah.
   

3. •iPhotoToGoogleEarth - lets you export geotagged photos from iPhoto to a format that Google Earth can use, and you can see where the photos were taken.