GPS Meets Satellite Communication

To continue my story about SPOT, wouldn’t it be cool if you could not only send an “I’m OK” message, but also a custom message to your friends and family? For example, “Slow progress today, I will be an extra day before I reach the car. Don’t worry.”

A few month ago, a friend who works at DeLorme in Yarmouth, Maine told me that his company was working on such a feature as part of integrating their Earthmate GPS with SPOT to provide that type of service. It was not yet released to the public, so I didn’t tell a soul (or my blog). But now it is public knowledge. Here is a link with a lot more details.

The really cool thing is that I have been asked to be a Beta tester for this, so I will be starting that soon. It will involve a couple of months of testing. It won’t be the best hiking weather but hopefully I can get in a few hikes in rugged areas. I am looking forward to trying this out starting in a month or so. It is pretty amazing stuff, isn’t it? It makes the old map and compass, although still indispensable, look pretty tame!