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World Map
Street Maps And The Louisville Images Lack A Few Recent Additions, Such As 4 Th Street Live And The
And the Louisville images lack a few recent additions, such as 4 th Street Live and The Courier-Journal's new press building.Views of urban areas have more detail than images of towns, farmland or forests.Microsoft gets points for getting you closest to your destination. Their images of Louisville show the same leafless winter forests and brown lawns and the same barge passing under the Kennedy Bridge.The age and detail of the images can vary from one region to another, and many shots can be several years old. Last week Microsoft followed suit with MSN Virtual Earth (virtualearth.msn.com).Both services are free, and both give you a fascinating view of your world, from the house next door to a mountain or skyscraper on the other side of the country.In the satellite map space, who are the companies that will dominate mapspace? Google is the obvious early leader. By cannily releasing its service for outside use, it has harvested hundreds of man-years of free software development and experimentation. Europe Maps It Saves
It saves time. Verizon, Cingular, and Sprint/Nextel each offer robust GPS services on a growing selection of smartphone handsets.Turn-by-turn driving directions spoken through the cell phone handset speaker and shown in 2-D or 3-D on the handset display are but one feature of existing cellular GPS service. The initial factory option cost was up to $2,000 with mapping software updates on top of that. Even people who have been ho-hum to GPS sit up and take notice the first time they actually use a GPS navigation system to get turn-by-turn directions to an unknown destination. Instead of an Italian restaurant may you want to know the nearest bus stop or taxi stand.Cellular GPS service is currently priced at about $10.00 per month by the major cellular phone companies. Industry experts expect this number to grow at a compound rate of as much as 40 percent annually. As popularity and production increase the cost of GPS technology and devices decrease so that now turn-by-turn driving directions are available across even economy model lines at a fraction of the original cost.Qualcomm, a leading manufacturer of cell phones, estimates that about 200 million cell phones world wide are presently equipped with GPS-enabled handsets. GPS turn-by-turn driving directions have been available on luxury cars for more than a decade. That means that the number of GPS-enabled cell phone handsets will double in about two years and then double again two years after that if the growth rate estimates are correct.Because the initial cost for GPS-enabled cell phones started at a much lower level than vehicle GPS navigation systems we can draw some reasonable confidence in the fantastic growth of cell phone GPS. If you do not travel frequently enough to justify subscribing to a monthly plan, Verizon has a 24 hour plan so you can get cellular GPS service on demand for just a few dollars only when you want it.. Because mapping software is kept up to date by your cellular phone company you can always download to your handset the most recent and most detailed street maps of almost every city in the USA and Canada. Major US cellular service providers have acted on the trend. Hop in a friend's car to find a factory outlet on the other side of town, punch in the address on your handset, and off you go. Pedestrian oriented features are constantly improving. It prevents aggravation, and for many solitary drivers it relieves the stress of navigating through unknown and unfamiliar neighborhoods.If your cell phone is GPS enabled, and you subscribe to one of the cellular GPS service plans, then your GPS navigation system goes with you everywhere you go.
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