Thursday, January 19, 2006

A New Kind Of GPS

What a great idea.

Have you ever tried to get your exact GPS address? They are long and complicated. This solves that problem. Think of this as a location based identifier. It's universal, and provides pretty targeted information.

What I'm wondering if this can replace GPS, or compliment it? I know this provides a static location, but couldn't this be used for so many applications?

From GISuser Universal address system gets adopted in China

The Natural Area Coding System is a new geodetic system that uses simple codes called Natural Area Codes (NAC) to unify all geographic coordinates, area codes, addresses, postal codes, map grids, map sheet codes and property identifiers in the world.

A two character NAC can uniquely represent an area about 1200km by 750km anywhere in the world; a four character NAC can represent a 40km by 25km area in the world; a six character NAC can specify every square kilometer on the earth surface; an eight character NAC can uniquely represent every area about 30m by 25 m in the world; and a ten character NAC can represent every square meter on the earth surface.

Usually, any city in the world can be represented by a four character NAC such as NAC: 8C Q8 representing Toronto, NAC.

A ten character NAC can be used to specify roadside small objects such as a fire hydrant, an electric wire pole, a street light, a sewage exit, etc. Since an eight or ten character NAC has reached the resolution of street addresses, they are also called Universal Addresses.

To find your code Try IT

My 10 digit code is 89S9V MCLK3. Google Maps didn't recognize it.

Specifying locations on location based services, especially mobile location based services is a big problem because (i) addresses are always very long and time consuming to input, (ii) addresses are language/character dependent and difficult to input, (iii) addresses are full of variations and difficult for software to parse successfully and (iv) addresses do not exist in more than 99% locations in the world that can’t be specified by street addresses and make street address based location services completely fail.

Locamagic is already using this application on Motorola phones.

I see many opportunities with this for location based services and mobile marketing.

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