GeoReference - Winter 2011

ARTICLES

Enhancing Investigations with GPS Evidence

By Ben LeMere

The value of collecting evidence from GPS devices has been well established over the last several years. GPS evidence has played a major role in several high profile cases ranging from terrorism to homicide to kidnapping.

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A Picture is Worth...

By Ken Case

As smartphone sales continues to rise, the number of applications and activities users enjoy while on the go also increases. While these users utilize their phone's GPS abilities to willfully provide geotagged data for certain activities, it's easy to forget that the phone can also add geotagged data to other information on the phone which in turn can inadvertently reveal where one works or lives or other personal information.

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INDUSTRY HIGHLIGHTS

Russia's Sistema Unveils First GLONASS Mobile Device

By Gleb Bryanski

Russian company Sistema unveiled on Tuesday the country's first mobile device equipped with the GLONASS navigation chip promising to start sales in two months. The state has spent more than $2 billion in the last decade on developing the GLONASS system seen as a potential rival to the U.S. global positioning system. Russia hopes the project will spark a domestic technology revolution.

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Software Will Take Half of the Total Navigation Market by 2011

By ABI Research

In 2009, almost 95% of revenues came from established, hardware-based technologies such as factory-fitted navigation and unconnected PNDs. Software-focused markets such as handset-based navigation and connected PNDs were negligible. By 2014, more than 60% of the installed base will consist of software-based navigation solutions, and the off-deck location-based services (LBS) market will be primarily funded by advertising rather than direct fees.

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FEATURE FOCUS

Cache Google Maps for Offline Use!

As of BerlaCorp’s latest Blackthorn update, the feature to cache Google Maps for offline use has been added. Users simply need to open Blackthorn and go to the Online Maps section while connected to the internet and scroll/zoom around the area they want to cache. Blackthorn will cache all of the map tiles from Google and make them available to a user when the machine is not connected to a network.

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UPCOMING EVENTS

IN THE NEWS

Bahamian Man Pleads Guilty to Migrant Smuggling A Bahamian man faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty in Florida to two counts of migrant smuggling. He was paid $12,000 and provided the boat and a GPS preprogrammed with the pickup location in Abaco and drop-off coordinates in Florida. Floating Cocaine Bales found with GPS Tags Drug smugglers are flying under the radar by dropping floating packages at sea to be picked up by local fishing boats. Customs officials believe criminals are using global positioning satellite (GPS) technology to direct vessels to shipments tossed from the sides of passing yachts. The method is one of the biggest loopholes in Bermuda’s border protection efforts. Colombians Jailed for Cocaine Smuggling Two men who smuggled £2.5million pounds of cocaine into south Essex have been jailed for 14 years. Both men were wearing wetsuits under their clothes and had bags, mobile phones and GPS co-ordinates to get back to Rotterdam.