Preparing My Phone

          Well for those of you who don't know already, my wife and I got new phones.  Not only did we get new phones, but we also switched carriers.  We were with Verizon (for about 10 years) and the location of our new house has very weak signal for Verizon.  We spoke with them and they didn't seem too interested in helping us.  They did have at least one option for us, but weren't too interested in keeping our business so they didn't make it affordable for us.  We then spoke with AT&T, which we knew had full signal at our new house, and they gave us tons of incentives to switch including 2 new iPhones (the 3GS version).  Along with the incentives, we are now on a data plan (ie. internet), so we have a lot more capability with our phones that we never had before.
          Enter the world of "apps".  You know the saying, "there's an app for that".  Well in preparation for this trip I have found and installed a GPS mapping app (yes, the iPhone has a GPS receiver built-in - just like many phones) called "MotionX GPS" (found here: http://gps.motionx.com/iphone/overview/).  This software shows your GPS position, allows you to store "waypoints", navigate to stored points, etc . . . just like your typical handheld GPS receiver, except that it can also download and show you your position on a topo map (terrain map), aerial photo, or road map pulled down from Google, Bing, or MotionX.  Of course you'd have to be concerned with your data usage (unless you are on an unlimited plan), so you are also given the option of downloading and storing the MotionX maps (which are terrain or road maps from an open source) for offline use.  I have gone ahead and downloaded the terrain maps which cover our entire trip from Pittsburgh to D.C. (about 2 GB's of data).  Now I don't plan on using the GPS software that often, but I thought it could be really handy to have, especially in an emergency.
          Here are a few screen captures from the software on my phone:

Basic Position Screen

Position Shown On the Open Source Terrain Map (elevations are in meters)

Position Shown On Bing Aerial Photo

          Of course there are other cool features having an iPhone.  One of those is that photos taken with it's camera (not every camera app, but at least with the supplied app) are "geotagged" (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geotagged_photograph).  This means the lattitude & longitude of the photo's location are stored with the photo.  Most of my photos on this trip will be taken with a digital camera and not my phone, so I won't have coordinates for many of them.  I do intend to keep my phone off most of the time in order to conserve battery power.  I will try to take enough photos with my phone to have some to post to the blog during the trip.

          Other apps that I have acquired in preparation for this trip include an app to write & upload my blog entries and an app to upload photos to my Google Picasa Web Album (found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/108300668976745126881).  The blog app will upload photos, but it shrinks them and doesn't give me any control over the resizing.  The Picasa Upload app allows me to choose what size I want to upload inlcuding the full original size.  By the way, that Picasa Web Album location is where I will be uploading all of my trip related photos.  I can't put every photo from the trip in the blog!  Of course many photos won't get uploaded until the trip is over.  I will probably post one last blog entry that I have uploaded all of the photos. 

          Well that about covers it on the phone preparation.  I only have a few weeks before the big trip so I need to get to moving on posting the actual trip plans (where we plan to stay, how far we're going each day, etc. . .).  So stay tuned for the next blog entry, "Planning the Trip".  Until then, papa fritas! 

-Garry