Travels

I have been very fortunate to be able to travel
around the country and the world, especially during the last fifteen years while sharing and learning a lot about the future of the Internet. One of my
hobbies for many years has been experimenting with the href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System">Global Positioning
System. When traveling by car or motorcycle I always have a GPS receiver of some kind with
me. For quite a few years I would capture a latitude and longitude wherever I went and put them on a "GPS Log" page and then send emails to friends and family that said "click here to see where I am". I have not updated this for a number of years (I keep it for historical purposes). Perhaps I am a bit more security conscious than I used to be — I do share through the blog where I have been, but I do not share where I am.

Making maps is one of oldest skills on Earth. We can all identify with maps — they help us get to where we are going. Many of us use handheld or dashboard mounted GPS devices as a way to display maps, although paper and plastic coated maps are still nice to spread out on the kitchen table to plan a trip. The Census Bureau has been operating the Tiger Map Service for more than a decade which I used to link latitude and longitude to online maps but now there are various commercial services to choose from. I like the Google Map service (Google is doing a good job with maps — both for Earth and for Mars) because it is easy to integrate Google maps directly into web pages. For example, here is a map of where the March 2006 PC Forum was held. II will be sharing more maps over time.