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I've been playing around with an "iPod Touch" this evening. That's an iPhone
without the phone capability, if you haven't seen one. The iPod Touch has
full Internet access via "WiFi" wireless networks. It does NOT have GPS
capability. Apple and Google recently added a function to the Google Maps
application on this device. There's a little button you press on the touch
screen that looks like crosshairs. Sure enough, when you hit it, the map
re-draws and puts a circle on the screen around your current position. I
decided to experiment. I drove around town stopping whereever I could find
parking. I found five networks that I could get on without a password. The
position was amazingly accurate --to within thirty feet most of the time and
only once more than fifty feet off. A neat little trick! It's getting
position data by knowing what wireless network it has accessed and then...
hmmm... doing some sort of spooky Jobsian magic.

Not so much "navigation", this is more of a data-entry saving feature. I
could just as easily have typed the names of the streets into Google Maps
(then again, with only a screen-based touch keyboard, every keystroke saved
is a big help). On the other hand, the iPod was smarter than me on one
occasion. I didn't notice that I had passed an intersection before one test,
and when I saw the indicated position I thought at first that the iPod's
system was displaying a larger than average error. Then I noticed the street
sign and realized that the machine was right.

 -FER


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