Feeling lost? Wondering about your position in life? This week we explore the technology of the Global Positioning System (GPS), used by the military, surveyors, and now consumers. We also comment on Gil Amelio’s and Ellen Hancock’s resignations from Apple, report on a new version of HTML, and note the newly released Disinfectant 3.7.1. Also, Tonya takes a break from her series about Web publishing software, but plans to continue next week.
Disinfectant 3.7.1 -- On the heels of last week's Disinfectant 3.7, John Norstad has released Disinfectant 3.7.1, which corrects an error that could cause a crash while scanning some rare types of large resource files
On 09-Jul-97, Apple Computer announced Gilbert Amelio had resigned as CEO and chairman of Apple Computer. Amelio replaced Michael Spindler as Apple CEO in February of 1996, making his tenure at Apple slightly more than 17 months
Those who regularly visit the Web site of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) have seen hints about the next version of HTML, codenamed Cougar. Last week, the W3C updated and consolidated those scattered hints by releasing them in a public draft of HTML 4.0
Until about five years ago, the Global Positioning System (GPS) existed in the realm of high-tech military thrillers. Fictional spies would tote hand-held units that precisely displayed their locations (or that of their objectives) anywhere on earth - with street maps and 3D topographic representations to boot!
Reality imitates art
Karen Nakamura, who wrote the GPS overview article in this issue, contacted TidBITS with an interesting proposition: Would we be interested in testing some GPS units in tandem with her software, GPSy?
Although none of us on staff have a good reason to use a GPS unit in the near future, we were tantalized by three factors: the futuristic ability to pinpoint one's position on Earth using orbiting satellites, the fact that Karen offered to write an article about a subject that interested us, and the chance to play with cool toys.
Preparing to Race Satellites -- Karen shipped us a copy of GPSy and DeLorme's Street Atlas 3.0, along with two GPS units, a Garmin GPS 12XL and a DeLorme TripMate