There was some Geocaching interest in another thread, so to keep from 7500ing Johnny LAs thread, I decided to start a new one and post some of the nifty GPS resources I have found in the past year or so of GPS ownership:
www.geocaching.com - This is a kind of GPS based scavenger hunt. People hide caches of varying sizes and contents and then post the coordinates on the website, so other people can find them. Often, small trinkets are left in the cache, for others to find and exchange. Some people see it as a treasure hunt, of sorts.
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_radius.prl - This is part of the website of the National Gedetic Survey. It will list the coordinates of survey benchmark disks/controls within a certain radius of your position. Some of the benchmarks were placed in the early 1900s, and they are fun to try to track down with a handheld GPS. This has caught on at geocaching.com too, you may find them easier to search for on www.geocaching.com/mark/
www.expertgps.com - This software will upload or download waypoints/tracks/routes to your GPS. It will also download aerial photos and topo maps from terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com and superimpose your GPS data on the maps. It’s neat to see your trip to the supermarket superimposed as a blue line on a satellite photo.
www.jdmcox.com - This guy writes USAPhotoMaps, software that will also download aerial photos from Terraserver and superimpose your GPS data on them. This program is free, but he asks for a small donation.
www.joe.mehaffey.com - This is a good website for general GPS information and GPS unit reviews.
www.gpsdrawing.com - Website with a gallery of GPS created drawings. Hard to describe, you have to check it out.
www.soar-high.com - There are instructions on this website on creating rendered 3d representations of your GPS tracks, and overlaying them over bumpmapped terrain. Kind of like gpsdrawing.com but cooler.
www.garmin.com - Large manufacturer of GPS units. They are buttheads about using non-standard connectors and memory, though. I own the GPSmap 76s, if you want to ask me anything about it.
www.magellangps.com - Another large GPS company.
www.navicache.com - Another site with a geocache database.
http://groups.google.com/groups?group=sci.geo.satellite-nav - Google access to the Usenet Newsgroup sci.geo.satellite.nav, home for most GPS discussion on Usenet.
http://www.geocities.com/asarangan/garmin.html - Website that will automate downloading airports and navaids as waypoints in your non-aviation GPS.
www.confluence.org - This websites goal is to have people visit every major lat/long intersection in the world. The website explains it better than I do.
If anyone is looking a for new outdoor hobby, take a look at some of these websites. A GPS is a great way to get outdoors and still be engaged in a geeky hobby.
If you have a GPS and know of something cool, please share it with the rest of us.
