GPS Improves Hearing — Great ROI
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.
A fellow with a hearing deficit refuses to allow the reduced ability to rule his life and, among other accomplishments becomes an aircraft pilot. Great story in itself but then comes a better part … he decides to fly around the world in a small plane. Hmmm getting more interesting. Now comes the twin problems of how to finance the expensive endeavor and, at the same time, get some money for his favorite charity.
The Internet has had a few success stories sin the past few years, such as the “Million Dollar Web Page” where selling off small bits of a resource cheaply added up to a pretty sizeable sum at the end. So since the round the world flight wasn’t measured in pixels but in miles, the organizers hit upon the great idea of selling sponsorship by the mile. Sort of like letting the alumni buy a brick each for the new Student Union. Very cleaver, and successful.
The GPS tie-in? Go to the website and look at the effective use of Google Maps, the sophisticated GPS systems in the aircraft and the intelligent use of a blog format to promote the event and still attract interest after the event has concluded. If you’re a participant, an event organizer or even a web designer looking for a niche market I can’t see you coming away from this story without some good ideas.