June 18th, 2008 arthurfreydin
I wouldn’t trust myself locating my car in the driveway without using a GPS. I’ve left the house in the morning on my way to work and have turned around because I’ve forgotten my handy TomTom OneXL (I’ve been making the same exact trip to work for a few months now and can get there blindfolded). Needless to say, I’ve become pretty dependent on that little piece of gadgetry.
GPS units have come quite a long way since the first models came out - but they still have a long ways to go. Below is a list that I, a heavy GPS user, have put together over the past month or so.
- Compute Toll Charges
Computing toll charges would be a huge bonus to anyone that lives in a state where you are constantly slowing down for a toll plaza (hi New Jersey).
- Compute Gas Cost
This one’s a bit more difficult since the GPS unit will require quite a bit of information about your car, amount of gas you currently have and aggregate $ /per gallon (which some GPS units already have). Even without all that data available, a GPS unit can also provide the user an option to estimate total cost.
- Add 1+2
This little mashup of tolls & gas cost can give you a pretty extraordinary result: total trip cost! So now you can tell your parents “Hell no, I’m not paying $34.87 to drive to grandma’s house just so she can pinch my cheeks”.
- Driving / Cost Analytics
We (or maybe it’s just me) love the word “analytics”. How does a weekly/monthly/yearly breakdown of driven miles/costs/frequently traveled areas sound to you? This would be huge for fleet managers & those that expense travel expenditures. Said report can be automatically generated and emailed once a month to your superior for review & compensation.
- Walking Mode
Some GPS units may already have a walking mode but not as comprehensive as it could/should be. Walkers would typically use the GPS for site-seeing in tourist towns so why not also provide them with pertinent touristy information?
- Scenic Travel Mode
Bored on a Sunday at 6pm and realize that everything is closed and you now have nothing to do for X hours? Great! Fire up that GPS and look through all the scenic routes you never thought existed in that boring state of yours and go for a drive!
- GPS Radar Detector
Duh! When do you use your GPS the most? If you’re anything like me, you use it most on the highway. You also wish you didn’t have to use that stupid cigarette lighter splitter (why we haven’t replaced those cigarette lighters with usb plugs is beyond me) to power both your GPS and radar detector. What do you do? You take your GPS and your radar detector and smash them together to form one wonderous trip companion!
There. Now your GPS is actually useful.
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