A Brief Introduction to GPS Navigation
By Brian Underdahl, best-selling “For Dummies” author
Okay, so you’ve been hearing about these GPS things for some time and you finally
decided to see for yourself just what the fuss is all about. Welcome to the world of GPS
navigation!
A Few New Terms Demystified
Let’s start out with some brief explanations of a few of the terms that experienced GPS
users throw about without even realizing that they’re talking a sort of unintelligible code
that most of us don’t understand. You’re going to see these terms quite often so let’s get
rid of the mystery right now:
•
GPS
is an abbreviation for Global Positioning System. This is a bunch of
satellites that the US government launched into very precise orbits so that
the signals from the satellites could be used to determine exactly where you
were at any place on Earth. There’s a lot of fancy math involved, but
fortunately your GPS receiver handles all the tricky stuff for you and simply
shows your position on a map.
•
Waypoints
are simply places you specify along a route from where you are
to where you want to go (in fact, that’s why we call them
Saved Places
in
Ostia). For example, suppose you want to go to the movies but you need to
stop at the ATM first to get some cash for the tickets. A direct route to the
theatre won’t work because you’ll miss your bank (and the ATM). So
instead of a simple route with just a starting and ending point, you add a
third point—a saved place—in between the starting and ending points. That
saved place is, of course, the location of the ATM. Saved places don’t have
to be specific destinations, though. In some cases a saved place is simply
something you use in order to make certain that your route uses your
preferred path—such as a particular scenic highway instead of a faster but
boring Interstate.
•
Points of Interest
are various places that you might be interested in setting
as a destination (or as a saved place). Points of interest are pretty handy
because they are places that your GPS navigation device knows how to find
without requiring that you know their address. For example, you probably
know where your bank is located but you might not know its exact address.
Or, if you’re on a trip, you might be interested in finding a motel or a
restaurant that’s somewhere along your route. By accessing the points of
