GPS
One of the things we did at Anna Maria Island while on vacation was use Jeb's GPS "Geiger Counter" to locate a geocache. Geocaches seem to have been invented in order to give people with GPS devices a reason to own them, and vice versa.
So I was trying to think of other things people could do with GPS gadgets. One thing I thought of was an index of historical markers. A lot of times you will be whizzing down the highway and see one of these on the side of the road but you can't stop and read them. I wonder if anyone even knows how many historical markers are in Georgia, let alone where they are and what they say. One way of putting together a list would be geeky GPS owners armed with their geiger counters and digital cameras. They could record the coordinates and take pictures of each sign, later transcribing the text and making this available on a web page. With hundreds of GPS enthusiasts the entire state could be covered in no time.
Something similar is already being done but they haven't enlisted much help yet. The Carl Vinson web site(a great resource for tons of neat stuff that your tax dollars are paying for) has a page about historical markers and they are putting together the database. Unfortunately there is only one geek involved who wants to copyright the list and who is without a geiger counter.
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Comments (3)
I like this idea a lot. I'll even loan my GPS to Dad so he can go out and get the coordinates. I could lend him my digital camera, or he could take rubbings and bring them home to Mom to transcribe.
One of the challenges is teaching people how to scale down and upload digital photos in an acceptable (100K not 1 meg) format.
Posted by Bruthu Jeb | September 15, 2003 4:04 PM
Retract. Carl Vinson's site is already well populated. You could spend years visiting all of those sites! He also appears to have the Long/Lat coordinates already.
I don't think it is a database, though, and it should be. Not sure what good the sort by date (posted?) is.
Posted by Bruthu Jeb | September 15, 2003 7:41 PM
They have *some* pictures and they have *some* coordinates, but they haven't covered all of them. There's no way one person could do all of them in his spare time which is why you'd have to enlist the help of the entire community of GPS geeks in Georgia. As the database were updated it would become a great challenge to track down the few that weren't listed. Plus I think this list came from known sources. There may be other signs out there that people have forgotten about. They have a template for adding information, so I think they are hoping people will come forward.
Posted by Ted | September 15, 2003 8:33 PM