GPS Tracking ROI

SkyCaddie marries two things I’m really passionate about–golf and GPS technology. Location is a powerful piece of information, and there are lots of killer applications being built around it.
Knowing where you are is very important to knowing where you’re going. In the game of golf, strategically being able to manage your play against the course–where you are now and where the hole or hazard lies–is equally important as your skills. SkyCaddie is like walking the course with your own personal caddie–it knows the course intimately, automatically and in real time calculates distances and shot angles based on course knowledge, alerts you to hazards and traps, and reliably moves you through the course with the accurate information you need to be successful in your play. More about this $260 trinket here

Years ago when I was tasked the very first time to work on a GPS-driven AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) system the general who gave me the tasking did so with a heavy heart. At one of the Air Force bases he was responsible for an child in a base family housing unit had a critical medical emergency. The child’s frantic mother called 911 and the base hospital dispatched and ambulance almost immediately. Unfortunately it was snowing and blowing (think North Dakota in January) and the ambulance driver was unfamiliar with the housing area and took a wrong turn in the blinding snow storm. (more…)

CYCLISTS SET TO BECOME THE FIRST TO BE TRACKED FROM END TO END IN REAL-TIME

Two cyclists hope to become the first to be satellite-tracked in real-time, for the entire 975 mile journey from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

Two cyclists from Reading, Berkshire, are expected to set off from Land’s End on June 9th with the aim of cycling the entire length of Britain while being satellite tracked every minute of their entire 14-day trip.

Olympic distance triathlete, Tony Stevens and fellow cyclist Steve Young, will be carrying GPS tracking devices for their 950 mile journey – allowing anyone, including their sponsors, to monitor their progress via the Internet.

The duo are hoping to raise funds for the Royal Berkshire Hospital’s Loddon Ward, and the Bishopswood School for Disabled Children in Reading, Berkshire.

The handheld tracking devices will use satellite and GPRS technology to transmit their location in real time. The cyclists will also use the devices to communicate directly with their mobile support crew and should they encounter a problem, rely on the device’s security features such as SOS alerts or ‘man-down’ notification alerts. The trackers will also automatically notify their family, friends and sponsors by text message when they come within range of their final destination, John O’Groats, on 22nd June….

Recently a good online friend of mine, Brendon Sinclair rode in a 1000 km bike event for charity. Brendon is a web developer and marketer by trade so he did a bit of work with a blog and some mapping websites to help get publicity for the project. It helped.

I suggested using GPS tracking for the riders, both for the safety aspects (especially “Man Down” annunciation) and for the publicity real-time tracking of the riders was sure to gain. For whatever reason, the GPS-side of the project never came off.

Stevens and Young cited here, though, have wisely (with respect for their money-making efforts) decided to go with the GPS “wave” from the beginning.

• It costs them nothing … the GPS vendor, SimplyTrak, is more than happy to provide units for the race, they stand to make a good rate of return too.
• They will be safer
• More money will go to their charities, because the necessary overheads of running a ground support team will be minimized.
• And they get BUZZ!.

An event like this is praiseworthy and even fun … I’ve wanted to go from Land’s End to John O’Groats for years … sad that I didn’t do it while I lived in England … however, “praiseworthy” doesn’t make news. But just some simple mention of their GPS tracking plan in trade publications make sit’s way into the Web’s search engines promptly. While looking up the Bishopswood school’s website, for example, just to make my blog posting complete, I couldn’t at first find the actual site amongst all the search engine results reference this article about two cyclists riding a route that’s been “old hat” in Britain for a couple hundred years. There is no doubt at all in my mind that GPS can create buzz.

If you’re planning an event like this, write me at davestarr (at) gmail (dot) com or call me on 1-719-423-8872 and I’ll point you in the right direction.

I didn’t at first quite follow what this has to do with Google, but I thought the golf part was interesting.  Later I read more of Donna Bogatin’s work and I see her points, clearly now … undoubtedly more clearly than Google … I’ll be writing ore on that subject soon.  But you can read the complete Google … GPS … Golf blog entry here at ZD Net. 

 Looking at the technology furnished I can really see that you can triple the price of anything and still sell it to a golfer. S/he will shell out the cash as long as the promise of a stroke or two is saved … and no cost comparison with the non-golf market ever seems to take place.

A large number of golf courses have equipped carts with roof-mount GPS’s … these were a big thing in Japan years ago when I lived there, but the course manager at one large Tokyo area course told me the only real reason he made the investment was to make much more money of “drink girl” sales by virtue of the instant “Press for Service” button in the cart.

No cart-mounted device is going to be inherently as useful as one that a golfer carries on his/her person, because you obviously cant always drive the cart up to the ball.  The Shy Caddie seems well designed, if significantly over priced and is certainly a great gift idea, but frankly, I’d go to the sporting goods store and by a much cheaper hiking and camping GPS and plug my own coordinates in by physically walking the course … it would be cheaper, more accurate and I’d have the experience of playing another round and the exercise of walking 6 or 7 thousand yards.

But Father’s Day is close at hand, so here’s the Sky Caddie in all its glory: 

According to SkyGolf:

No aiming, no missing. You don’t need a clear line of sight or reflective target with the SkyCaddie. Because the targets are pre-programmed, the SkyCaddie eliminates the need to aim through a lens, accidentally hitting the wrong target on a hole, or trying to hit a pin with a laser beam at 200 yards.

More time to focus on your game. Since distances are automatic with the SkyCaddie, you can quickly select the right club and think only about your swing.

Avoid hidden trouble. Get accurate measurements over hills, trees, and obstructions to any target. Play confidently and knock strokes off your game.

Measure the distance of your shots. Learn how far you hit your drive, 5-iron, 9-iron, or wedge with a touch of a button on the SkyCaddie.

Use it on any golf course. With a SkyPlayer membership, you can choose from thousands of available SkyCourses to download to your SkyCaddie. Or you can record the front, center, and back of each green on the courses you play using the built-in SkyCourse Setup module.

 Hope you have a great weekend, and do let me know if you already use this tool, if you try it out, or if you use any other GPS aids to golf or other sports.  This blog can do no better than supply what readers want to see.

As is our custom here at the GPS ROI Tracking office we keep our noses pretty tight to the grindstone most of the work week. On weekends we often like to explore the “prettier” aspects of GPS.

My friend Reinier Fleuren over at Trip Tracker SPORTSMATE sent me a nice piece of java code that let’s you see his great GPS tracking site right here in the blog without going searching for it. A nice touch that a lot more blogs that review things out to adopt the technique … thanks Reinier..

We’ve reviewed Reineir’s and several other on line GPS trip tracking visualization tools here before, and I love them. It is time to move GPS technology out of the closet and make it acceable and fun to use for more people.

Explore for yourself, and if you find any other nifty on line applications or come up with any nice uses for these tools, give me a shout, I want more eye candy..

Have a nice weekend.

Another Google Maps “mashup” to look at today.  In case you are wondering the view above is an imaginary hike up Pikes Peak … actually the Pikes Peak Cog Railway route that I put together just as an example.  You can see this route for real at this URL:

http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=878800

And you can save or create your own routes by simply clicking on the map/overhead imagery with your mouse. At the bottom of the picture you can see a representation of the vertical distance along the trip (a few unexplained “canyons spoil the effect”, and if you type in your weight the site will even tell you how many calories you would burn.

It’s not just for walking and running, you can plot a trip to and from just about anywhere with it … a very useful tool … especially if you have a list of GPS coordinates and wonder how you can get them on a map … you can type latitude and longitude directly into the Google Maps search window and Google will put it on the map for you.  Recommended.

Am I the only one a bit mystified and appalled by this?

TAKOTNA, Alaska (AP) — A 61-year-old rookie Iditarod musher turned up on the wrong trail Thursday, hours after race officials started to search for the woman thought lost along a treacherous stretch.

Deborah Bicknell of Juneau was spotted from the air driving her team through Ptarmigan Pass, a route formerly used in the race, said race spokesman Chas St. George.

“It appears she took the wrong trail,” St. George said.

She was seen driving her dog team 18 miles from the Rohn checkpoint, where she arrived late Thursday. Other information about her was not immediately available…. read the full CNN story here:

OK, here we have what has become probably the most historic and closely followed dog race in the world. We have a small fortune in special sleds, racing equipment, hundreds of expensive and beloved canine athletes and a bunch of brave, if half-crazy mushers, racing across some of the most demanding and physically dangerous country in the world.

And this lady takes a wrong turn … as others have done before her and and others will no doubt do in the future. And in the year 2007 with GPS even tracking Big Pussy Bompensaro’s golf cart and high school kids playing GPS hide and seek with their cell phones … and we send these teams out into the wilderness without a real time GPS? (more…)

This caught my eye this morning:

Is there anything this shameless promoter (me) won’t bring up to interest you in GPS? Well I don’t really know … I haven’t gotten around to sex yet. but who knows?

Yesterday I talked about GPS controlling the weather … hope you had a nice respite from the winter blues. A friend of mine, Brendon Sinclair is riding his “push bike” (I wonder when the Australians are going to figure out what those pedal gizmos are for … reminds me of a funny chain saw joke, but I digress) in a charity event later this month (see here if you’re interested in good causes), and we’ve discussed the idea of tracking riders in the event via GPS and using a tool like Google maps to follow the event’s progress. Not sure if the GPS Tracking is going to come to pass, but the organizers have grabbed on to the map idea pretty effectively.

I was casually looking around for other sites with this idea when I came upon this beauty. (more…)