A colleague alerted me to this cool site, which shows where Tim Hibbard, a software architect from Kansas, is physically located at the moment. He’s using his company’s GPS tools on top of the Google Maps API.
Since GPS tracking is now more accessible, news organizations might
want to think about ways they could deploy it. This could make a nice
feature when a correspondent or columnist is reporting overseas — say,
you visit the ABCNews.com website and can view where its foreign correspondents
are right now. Or a political reporter following a campaign might be
tracked on the map, which would link to her recent coverage. (Yeah,
think through the security implications before trying those!)
And of course, GPS tracking could be useful as an internal newsroom
tool. At a glance an assignment editor can see where all the staff news
photographers are (let’s hope it’s not in some bar), to select the closest one to a breaking news event.
Big Brother-ish, you say? I suppose so. But nevertheless, potentially
useful to a news organization in lots of ways we probably haven’t
thought of yet.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this item incorrectly spelled Tim Hibbard’s name.
