What Rich talked about would indeed be very cool for users, blind or
sighted. Linking of transit information will depend upon full access to the
individual bus company databases. Since we only have a few of these
databases so far, we probably have a couple years to go before we can look
at linking the transit districts. Street data initially started out as
separate city and district databases so one can imagine how a regional
databases comprised of multiple transit databases could eventually be
linked. If fuel prices continue to rise, maybe public transit will become
more of a priority and something like this could happen.
In terms of your requests Don, we have things like this on our wish list.
We would like to have new cities or towns automatically trigger as part of
the Look-Around mode. One can of course press C or Chord C to hear the city
name and details but this doesn't trigger without pressing a key. One might
also like to know what city is ahead of me or what city is North.
In terms of embossing the map, this is being worked on by the Smith
Kettlewell Institute. They have developed a web based system for embossing
maps. One goes to a web site and chooses various parameters like the city
he or she wishes embossed and the scale. An electronic file is then
created, which the user can download and then send to their own embosser.
This isn't publicly available yet but I have tried it and it works great.
You can usually find Josh Miele from SKI at conferences and you can have
him produce a Braille map of your favorite location.
Keep these brain storms coming. You never know when one might become a reality.
Mike
It would be cool if the GPS could do some of these things!
1. List all the towns on a certain highway say I57 from start to finish.
2. Get a list of all the towns on the Mississippi river from the head waters to the mouth.
3. Be able to emboss a state or county map with cities.
Of course it would be nice if Santa clause came more than once a year -- LOL!
I don't have GPS yet but I hope to have that all worked out by the middle of May. I like this list because I get to hear aboug how GPS has changed people's lives.
Thanks,
Donald
