CompuServe Messages

I first worked with a GIS in 1979 when I implemented a system that assisted in balancing territory loads for field engineers. As I recall it printed out the expected monthly workload for an SMSA(Standard Metropolitan Staistical Area) for a given product. These were copied to acetate and then overlaid on physical maps to assist the Field Service Manager in defining territories that had approximately 176 hours of workload per month for an average FE. Not very elegant but it did help especially in showing an employee who thought he was overworked that his territory was, indeed, equivalent to other employees. I also worked with a friend who had a business selling advertising on maps that were given away at hotels, tourist attractions, etc. This was all cut and paste work but it made me realize how inaccurate most maps were. I'm currently in the thinking stage of a software application that would allow a walkup user to locate and print out a map for his desired destinations. Such systems are currently in place in some hotels & car rental agencies, I believe, but must be pretty expensive since they aren't more prevalent. Of course, such a system could be used in amusement parks, shopping malls, outdoor recreation areas, department stores, K-Marts, etc. It could even be done over a telephone with resulting maps sent to a Fax machine. My only experience with GPS is the one that was on a used boat I bought last year. Since my boating is limited to the Lake Erie islands, a very small area, I don't use it much. It does output the location coordinates to an LCD screen which is displaying the local charts. I imagine it would be pretty simple to read in the coordinates and overlay a symbol or identifier on a product such as Map Expert since each GPS tranmitter must have a unique ID. Jim