Saturday, July 12, 2008

GPS Tracking: A Useful New Tool

By Fabian Toulouse

In a world that is ever more interconnected by telecommunications, with highways and airlines that make possible rapid transit, and in a culture heavily influenced by commerce with its explosion of affordable goods, sometimes the trick is not purchasing something or moving it from place to place, but purely knowing where things are.

GPS tracking is an impressive technology that individuals, businesses and other organizations can use in their quest to locate nearly anything. Whether it is something as simple as figuring out where you are on a hike in unfamiliar wilderness to recovering a shipment of merchandise to keeping track of how fast a teenager is driving from home to school, GPS tracking offers a powerful tool to locate people or vehicles.

Created by the United State military, GPS, or Global Positioning System, is remarkable. Over thirty satellites circle the earth from a distance of almost 13,000 miles. A receiver at ground level reads the satellites' microwave signals and allows the user to recognize his or her location, speed, direction and precise time.

In addition to its uses for individuals, GPS tracking offers corporations a reliable, unobtrusive way to make sure company vehicles are being properly used. A GPS tracking system can determine if an employee is misusing the company car, or is exceeding the standard speed limit, thus raising the fuel costs. Using the system lessens overtime and, in a worst-case scenario, helps locate a misplaced vehicle.

For organizations in which employee travel or merchandise delivery is important, GPS tracking allows managers and owners to determine that the time spent on the road is time wasted or time well used. Even though the satellites that make GPS possible are thousands of miles overhead, the benefits of a GPS tracking system are down-to-earth. This system gives users a better way of managing resources and tracking productivity.

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