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Mapping Software   The Software   Streets & Trips is a mapping application sold by the Microsoft Corporation. It contains a large map of the United States and Canada showing, landmarks such as mountains, rivers, lakes, railways lines and roads. It features a route planner to find and schedule stops, set route and driving preferences, plus calculate and optimize a driving route. It also contains a search function whereby you may search for cities, airports, businesses, attractions, and other points of interest including any point on the map specified by latitude and longitude.     How to Use it Here   When you enlarge any photograph in this article you will find located beneath each photo the coordinates (Latitude and Longitude) for that particular photo along with the bearing. If you have Microsoft's Streets & Trips application installed on your computer you may copy these coordinates into the Find Nearby Places dialog box and the location where the photo was taken will be shown on the map. The bearing shown with the photo indicates the approximate direction the camera was facing for the shot. (000 degrees is North, 090 is East, 180 South, and 270 West.) A GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver should have been used to obtain coordinates, but in this case, only an approximate location is supplied.     GPS Receivers   GPS receivers take in data from the Global Positioning System, a group of 24 satellites orbiting the Earth. The 24 satellites that make up the GPS space segment orbit the earth at about 12,000 miles. They are constantly moving, making two complete orbits in less than 24 hours. These satellites are travelling at speeds of roughly 7,000 miles an hour. GPS satellites are powered by solar energy. They have backup batteries onboard to keep them running in the event of a solar eclipse, when there's no solar power. Small rocket boosters on each satellite keep them flying in the correct path. The satellites were developed and launched by the United States Department of Defense at a cost of more than $12 billion. This system is the most advanced navigational technology ever developed. It can provide precise latitude, longitude, bearing, altitude, time, sunrise, sunset, plus speed and direction to a moving receiver anywhere on Earth, in any weather, at any time. There are no subscription fees or setup charges to use GPS.   There are some limitations to the Global Positioning System. All civilian GPS receivers are subject to degradation of position and velocity because of Selective Availability (S/A), an operational mode imposed by the American Department of Defense that degrades civilian signals for security purposes. Consequently, the accuracy of civilian GPS receivers may be degraded by up to 100 meters (330 feet). SA was intended to prevent military adversaries from using the highly accurate GPS signals. The government turned off SA in May 2000, which improved the accuracy of civilian GPS receivers. GPS receivers equipped with WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) capability can improve accuracy to less than 3 meters on average. Also, because a GPS receiver must track data from at least three satellites at once, it must have a direct line of sight to the sky when used.   To work with Streets & Trips, a GPS receiver must be compliant with NMEA (National Marine Electronics Association) standards, and its input/output format (interface) must be set to support NMEA 0183 version 2.0 or later.     Photo Location Accuracy   Although GPS receivers are available in Canada for as low as $199 dollars I don't have one as yet. Consequently, the latitude and longitude coordinates given with each photo are approximations derived from the Streets & Trips software. The coordinates are NOT accurate to within 3 meters. However, using this software and my coordinates you should be able to easily drive within walking distance of each photo location.   Streets & Trips is mainly intended for route planning so the road maps are reasonably accurate. However, when it comes to railways the software displays some glaring errors and is not reliable. Natural landmarks such as rivers are shown in some cases but disappear when you zoom the map. The coordinates supplied were obtained from Streets & Trips 2001. They have not been tried on any other version of the software. Hopefully later versions of this product will contain less errors. For now, the road map display is workable.     Entering Coordinates in Streets & Trips You will use your mouse to highlight first the Latitude coordinate and then return to highlight the longitude coordinate displayed beneath a photo. Exclude letters and include numbers plus any minus signs. For example, using the longitude value W -117.4370, highlight only the blue portion ignoring the W.   (With latitude coordinates, positive numbers indicate North, negative numbers are South. With longitude, positive numbers indicate East, negative numbers West.)   Press both the "Ctrl" and "C" keys to copy the value into memory.   Transfer to the Streets & Trips program then press the Find button located on the topmost menu to display the following dialog box.     Paste the latitude coordinate into the latitude field then return to the photograph to copy the longitude value. Come back to Streets & Trips then paste that value into the longitude field.   Now that the coordinates are copied into the Street & Trips dialog box fields press the "Find" button just to the right. Streets & Tips will then place a marker on the map in the location where the photo was taken. Click the OK button and the position will be labeled. Associated Links   Microsoft Streets & Trips   Garmin GPS Products   National Marine Electronics Association     © 2002 William C. Slim       http://www.okthepk.ca