Friday, August 08, 2008

GPS in Israel

According to the driver of the bus I was on earlier tonight: In every Egged bus there is a GPS device in constant communication with Egged headquarters. The people in headquarters have a computer system where they can see a map, with a little dots on it indicating the current positions of each bus in the city.

I wonder how long until this system is publicly accessible - let's say, until you can get a SMS automatically delivered to you once the bus comes within 500 meters of your bus stop, so you know to walk to the stop.

Speaking of GPS, a couple months ago I was in a taxi where the driver was totally Ignorant of any of the streets in town, but he had a GPS thing to direct him to my destination. Only problem was, for some reason he didn't use the GPS (perhaps he didn't know how to). So when he started going in the wrong direction, I had to give him directions myself (not so easy, as we were going to a friend of mine, at an address I'd never been to before, in a city I don't live in). Ridiculous!

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