What is GPS, generally ?

The United States Department of Defense originally developed the GPS, which stands for Global Positioning System. Officially, GPS is named NAVSTAR GPS, which is what it was named by John Walsh, who controlled a lot of its program budget. He who holds the purse strings, follow the money, et cetera, etc. Anyway, it's name has now been shortened to just GPS.

The first experimental GPS satellite launched in early 1978. In 1983 President Ronald Reagan announced that GPS would be adapted for civilian use, after the shoot-down of a Korean Airplane, for the common good.
The oldest GPS operating satellite launched July 4, 1991, but officially started its work at the end of August of that year. The US military, actually the US Air Force, operates the only completely functional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) in the world: well, in the whole Universe really.

There are upcoming and planned versions like Russian's "GLONASS," which was still forming in 2008, the European "Galileo" system, the Chinese "COMPASS" system, and India's "IRNSS."
The US signed a co-operative, 2004 agreement with the E.U. (European Community) but generally doesn't share information, due to terrorism and possible enemy adaptation. The military controls the exportation of all GPS devices for those reasons.

How does GPS work, generally, you might ask? A typical GPS receiver uses signals from about four GPS satellites to calculate, although there are 24 - 31 satellites in orbit (I read conflicting information, so I'm not sure which number is correct today), making what they call a "satellite constellation." Location, speed, direction, and time are all transmitted by microwave radio signals and decoded precisely by your radio receiver-like, GPS device. Today, GPS units are available that can use more than 4 satellites to make calculations; some are even up to 20 "channels." Latitude and longitude are also matched to the stellar constellations making the units more user-friendly.

GPS time was originally set in the beginning of 1980, but fluctuated several seconds each year due to the rotation of the Earth and leap seconds, but became zero again at 23:59:47 UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) on August 21, 1999. Receivers correct the 19 second discrepancy from International Atomic Time (TAI) and adjust for specific timezones before reporting data. Each satellite has their own Atomic Clocks on board also. More on all that later.

GPS has many uses today, since its inception in the 70's. Now, GPS is used extensively worldwide. It helps with tracking of many things along with the scientific study of earthquakes and weather, is a useful tool in map-making and land surveying, has many scientific uses, provides a precise time reference for telecommunication networks, along with many other commercial and private uses.

...more on that too coming very soon.

GPS Features You Might Want or Need

What GPS features are most important to you and which units should you consider?
Here are a few suggestions...

• Is your GPS screen large enough for you to easily see? Does it have "Bluetooth" hands-free capabilities?
• Does it play music?
• Are you having trouble entering information into your GPS device? Does it automatically enter common phrases for you, when you start entering letters? Or do you have to navigate through every letter and number to enter your information?
• Should your GPS device to say, "turn right" or do you think you'd rather have it tell you the name of the street to turn right onto?
• Does it help you avoid traffic snarls?
• What about batteries? Do they recharge? How long do they last?

These are things to look for in a new GPS unit. Consumer Reports helps you make informed decisions on a variety of products so we looked into what they had to say. They reviewed models from:

• Garmin
• Hewlett-Packard
• LG, Magellan
• Mio
• Navigon
• Pioneer
• TomTom

And will be updating the following in their next update:

• Garmin
• Harman-Kardon
• Panasonic
• Sony
• Uniden

A couple of the higher ranking units, with the lowest prices are:

• Garmin Nuvi 200 (199.99 at Camping World)
  
• TomTom ONE 3RD EDITION (249.00 at Tech Depot)
  

And if you need to travel to another country, you may need one of these brands, since they can operate overseas, as well as in the United States:

• Garmin 770 (669.95 at Tech Depot)
  
• TomTom GO 920t (649.99 at Tech Depot)

But you may want to check another of our suppliers due to a discount through our GPS Related web site: Free Shipping on orders over $250 at TigerGPS.com


Helping you keep up to date is our job here at GPS Related and we hope you feel that we helped you stay informed.
If you have a subscription to Consumer Reports, click the link mentioned in this article to read further.
And feel free to search our sources for more research into products available today. Prices range from about 75.00 to over 700.00 US Dollars, so look around for the model that suits you best.

What is the " i " in iPhone?

Apple Computer's little " i " in front of their popular products, like the iMac, iTunes, iPod and iPhone, stands for "Internet," but what does that have to do with "idiot?" Article coming soon to your local article bank. Thanks and please visit this Hubpage for more GPS related info.

And on a health note, please be aware that it's now being reported, from a conclusive study, correlating cancer with cellphone headsets. So, watch out for that radiation!

GPS Gadget Things

Check out this fun GPS site for tips, tricks, videos and downloads. Enjoy.