Forum User Trends - What Does the Furture Offer?

 

Technology advances thereby affecting forum usage. Recently I ran across a "Civil War Trails" Android application put out by the State of Maryland that conceptually "wipes out" my North Carolina "Civil War Trails" POI project.
(http://www.poi-factory.com/node/20069)

Recently I also ran across a post in a Windows help forum lamenting the apparent decline in the number of postings of people requesting assistance on the forum and the poster was concerned about the long term viability of Windows help forum.

While the sale of handheld GPS may be currently strong, what is the current trend? Has it peaked? There is increasing competition in that more and more cars have "factory" installed GPS devices. And as previously mentioned, competition from Android tablets.

The State of Maryland Civil War Trails Android application is available through Google Play, also it is available here:
http://visitmaryland.org/pages/civilwar.aspx

How will alternative GPS devices, such as the factory installed version or the Android version affect this forum?

PS: One obvious adaptive action to help the forum in the future, creating Android Apps for the forum.

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Garmin Nuvi650 - Morehead City, NC

The future

Reincarnation: Life sucks, you die, then life sucks again

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Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things!

Too bad

As much as I love my Nuvi 1450, I believe that hand-held GPS's and portable automobile GPS's will be going the way of dinasaurs and newspapers. My 1450 is my hobby and I look for reasons to update it and add new customer POI's to it; BUT, if I'm pragmatic about the future of those kinds of GPSr's, I have to think that phone based GPS's are the wave of the future. It may take a few years, but I think our GPSr's are in the twilight of their technology.

Phil

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"No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won't make it worse."

So far mobile phone apps

So far mobile phone apps don't compare with dedicated gps units for many uses. Phones are still fragile compared to GPS units. My iPhone hates being exposed to sunlight (overheat) or rain (total fail). I think GPS manufacturers need to get better...something they have not done for nearly 10 years. We get modified and more dumbed down interfaces, when we are looking for improved search capability, not simpler or less detailed displays.

I brought a smart phone for geocaching

I've tried more than a dozen apps, all of them worked, most slowly, they ate the battery, harder to load caches onto, some need the internet or cell towers to be able to work, after being frustrated for about 6 months I've brought a etrex 10, not much different to my old etrex H, it's got paper less caching, the main reason for up grading, the etrex 10 is streets ahead of the smart phone and it's at the bottom of heap for handheld GPS's.

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Today is a gift, that's why they call it the present...

the demise of PNDs

The demise of dedicated Personal Navigation Devices is brought to you by the same people that assured the public the advent of television would bring about the end of movies and radio. These are the same people that also prognosticated the cell phone would bring about the death of two-way radio. Next they will tell us the Internet will be the death of libraries and publishing. What's true is all these have had an impact on what was supposed to die but failed to take into account the ability of the affected goods and services to adapt.

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Illiterate? Write for free help.

The FAX Machine

Box Car wrote:

The demise of dedicated Personal Navigation Devices is brought to you by the same people that assured the public the advent of television would bring about the end of movies and radio. These are the same people that also prognosticated the cell phone would bring about the death of two-way radio. Next they will tell us the Internet will be the death of libraries and publishing. What's true is all these have had an impact on what was supposed to die but failed to take into account the ability of the affected goods and services to adapt.

I still wonder why the FAX machine still exists. It has been a "dead" technology for over 30 years.

The cell phone is also now a "dead" technology. Given sufficient Wi-Fi access ersatz "phone" calls (including video) can now be made. We have used Google's talk to communicate with my daughter at college.

PND, even if obsolete, may still successfully exist in a niche for a long time like the FAX. That is what I am trying to explore with this post.

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Garmin Nuvi650 - Morehead City, NC

Future of technology

Fax machines are being used a lot. When email stared to be uses more, the experts said that fax machines were going to be phase out like vhs. Now managers want email and hard copy.
Gps still in my mind a reliable source for directions. Until phones are cheaper to operate many of us will continue using gps. In car gps is the trend.