Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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alternative to GPS

 have city lampposts/roads etc beam out location information
  (+2)
(+2) 		  [vote for,
against]

don't need GPS installed in your car. Bluetooth & a laptop with mapping software should do the trick. Tall buildings, cloud cover etc, no problem. OK, You would need satellite in the countryside and abroad.
—arfbaked, Jun 21 2003

Galileo satellite navigation system http://europa.eu.in..._transport/galileo/
When it comes online... a real alternative to GPS. [waugsqueke, Oct 17 2004]

[link]






       How? You seem to be missing that one teensy-weensy little ingredient: infrastructure.
—bristolz, Jun 21 2003
   

       Put em up on traffic lights. Lampposts ? Street signs ? There are wi-fi cafes around, so why not this? All these microscopic (or nanoscopic, for all I know) thingies would do is broadcast the latitude & longitude. If you want to make it more sophisticated, let it blat out the intersection & the city name. Personally had the problem in SF where the tall buildings downtown (& the 30 or 20 feet GPS imprecision) prevented me from finding out where I was exactly for half an hour. The mapping s/ware in your laptop could do the rest, once it found out the lat&long..
—arfbaked, Jun 21 2003
   

       I think we should learn to use the stars again. Maybe an electronic star-chart doohickie.
—RayfordSteele, Jun 21 2003
   

       I never had a problem with good, old fasioned street signs or even asking for directions.
—demtangs, Jun 21 2003
   

       What is the difference between a base station, an indoor artificial satellite, and the lamppost mounted things that the authors proposes here?
—bungston, Jun 21 2003
   

       Well, hmm, they're all spelled differently, for one.
—bristolz, Jun 21 2003
   

       Systems are being trialled by which cellphones can locate themselves by using time-delay and triangulation from their base stations. And the infrastructure's already in place - nothing much new needed.   

       I'll try to post some links.
—8th of 7, Jun 22 2003
   

       Yes, because it is so much easier to put broadcasting boxes on every friggin' street sign on the planet than it is to toss up a couple of dozen satellites.   

       See link for the real alternative to GPS.
—waugsqueke, Jun 23 2003
   

       How is Galileo an alternative to GPS? Looks to be the same technology to me.
—Don Quixote, Jun 23 2003
   

       The infrastructure thing is discouraging, but in some ways perhaps dependence on something even as nondecentralizable as infrastructure can be a lesser evil than dependence on the military industrial complex, especially in these dark times.
—LoriZ, Oct 22 2003
   

       (bumping the idea to the top and adding a croissant as I almost posted the exact same thing)   

       There is an easy way to get the infrastructure started. If the device could provide not only location informtion but also something like a website then shops could add in small maps of where they were and advertise special offers.
—st3f, Jan 01 2004
   
      
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