Sort of.

In effect, the court ruled that it's okay for police to track every move you make. The only thing wrong they did in this particular case was commit common trespass when they applied a tracking device to a car. And future courts in future cases are free to rule differently.

But that does not mean, the majority said, that in the future police may be able to apply a tracking device that does not rely on an unconstitutional trespass. All of this highlights something that has come up in several recent tech cases that have gone before the high court: the document, written in the 18th century, is showing its age.

Even the gadgets in "The Wire," new and cutting edge when the show began its run on HBO a decade ago, are showing their age. In a concurring opinion, Justice Alito noted that very problem: if current case law is having trouble keeping pace with technological advances, then surely the Fourth Amendment is coming up short.

"In the pre-computer age, the greatest protections of privacy were neither constitutional nor statutory, but practical... The surveillance at issue in the case - constant monitoring of the location of a vehicle for four weeks - would have required a large team of agents, multiple vehicles and perhaps aerial assistance," Alito wrote. "Only an investigation of unusual importance could have justified such an expenditure of law enforcement resources."

Or, as Rebecca J. Rosen notes in her excellent analysis of the ruling in The Atlantic, "Today, we need law to make up for the protections that technological difficulties once provided." Alito went on to suggest that the issue may need to be handled with legislation by Congress, much as the legislative branch took the lead on updating wiretapping laws in 1986.

Justice Sotomayor's concurring opinion goes even further, hinting that the Fourth Amendment may need a complete re-imagining. Sotomayor said the third-party doctrine of Fourth Amendment law, in which you can't have a reasonable expectation to privacy when you voluntarily share information, needs to be rethought.

"But today we share information with a third party (often Google) with every email we send, every document we store in the cloud, and nearly every website we visit," Rosen wrote in The Atlantic. "Sotomayor writes that 'This approach is ill suited to the digital age... I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure of every Web site they had visited in the last week, or month, or year.' Instead she says, we need to stop treating 'secrecy as a prerequisite for privacy'."

Add to this China's "national" global positioning system. This Chinese satellite navigation network will obviate the need to use the Pentagon-created and U.S.-run GPS system, which dominates location technology worldwide.

This strictly Chinese system, according to a defense tech expert in today's Wall Street Journal, "could help the Chinese military to identify, track and strike U.S. ships in the region in the event of armed conflict." It has already been used to coordinate the movement of Chinese troops.

The network, called the Beidou Navigation Satellite System (BNSS), began transmitting yesterday, after 11 years of development. It consists of 10 satellites, with another six slated for deployment in the coming year. The BNSS is run by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, a state contractor serving the nation's space program and run by the Chinese military.

Since 2009, China has been very busy launching satellites, and learning from the successes and failures of those deployments. The BNSS is not believed to be as accurate as the GPS system, but it may, in time, get there. Bedou, which means Big Dipper in Mandarin, is only the first step toward a global system, called Compass, which is slated to have 35 functioning satellites around the world by 2020.

Like the GPS system, the BNSS would also make its data available for developers. Now, if you're uneasy with the notion of high-tech governmental scrutiny in an occasionally transparent, more-or-less representational democracy, imagine the kind of fun the government of China could have not just with a high-resolution, wide-coverage satellite network, but with that scifi scrutiny wired into a suite of ubiquitous consumer goods.

The only other GPS alternative is Russia's Glonass. The European Union is building its own, called Galileo, also scheduled to go live by 2020.

Sputnik graphic via Bruce Irving

Avis teamed up with RFID manufacturer I.D. Systems of New Jersey to launch the technology and will roll out the service in the US and Canada next month.

The device itself is a type of radio transmitter that looks like something the Ghostbusters would use. It has two Wi-Fi router-like antennae and a black box with dials on it.

This move marks a change in the way rental companies do business. It's a lot like ZipCar, which enables a customer to pick up the nearest rental car in any neighborhood in their city. Several mainstream rental companies have already made it possible to pick up cars on the street in major cities like Los Angeles and New York.

For those worried about the Big Brother-ification of their rental behavior, it's not uncommon for rental companies to track their cars. It's normally seen as a type of security measure and for the customer's safety. If the car breaks down, it's easier to find the broken vehicle and send help.

With GPS, when gamers play Angry Birds Magic in certain locations, "magic happens," explained Ramine Darabiha, Product Manger for the game at ReadWriteWeb's 2WAY Summit earlier this month. But not every location will be magic, he said, only those that "make sense" for the brand.

That's why B&N is the first location to be transformed into a "Magic Place," as these special locations are called. It can promote Angry Birds both on its Nook Color e-reader and within its store, through merchandise displays.

In order to unlock the free Mighty Eagle character, gamers have to play Angry Birds Magic on the Barnes & Noble Nook Color while visiting one of the company's 700 bookstores across the U.S. The Nook version of the game is available for $2.99 in the Nook's app store and can be played over B&N's free in-store Wi-Fi.

In addition, B&N will capitalize on their new partnership by offering Angry Birds-themed games, toys and other merchandise for sale and will offer free stickers and temporary tattoos to Angry Birds fans who visit the store.

More to Come, via NFC

This is just the first of many partnerships for Rovio. Other rewards will be enabled through the use of NFC, a short-range wireless frequency that enables data transfers over short distances. With NFC, you just tap or wave your phone over a sticker, tag, poster, object in order to enable a connection.

For NFC work, it has to either be built into the phone itself, or added on afterwards, via a case or microSD card. However, for its use with Angry Birds, it's possible that you could simply place an NFC sticker on your phone to let the "magic" to happen.

Rovio previously said that the NFC features would be limited at first to Nokia's devices, but would roll out to all other NFC-enabled phones soon. Currently, this is a short list, including Google's Nexus S, some variants of the Samsung Galaxy S II and the upcoming BlackBerry Bold phones (9900/9930), among others.

The data has been sold to local and regional governments in the Netherlands for use in helping the police establish speed traps, according to the Dutch newspaper AD.

The company's CEO Harold Goddijn issued an email apology to customers on Wednesday, writing "We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it." He adds that licensing agreements in the future will "prevent this type of use in the future."

The news is the latest in a string of episodes concerning technology companies and their use of location data, following questions over the last week about the practices of Apple, Android, and Windows phones all tracking users' location.

For its part, TomTom insists that any information it shares has been anonymized and cannot be tracked back to an individual user, their device, or their driving habits.

The Turkish European peninsula of Gallipoli in the Dardanelles was a lynchpin in the fight against Germany's ally, the Ottoman Empire. During the eight-month campaign, which began 100 years ago Monday, over 70,000 allies and 20,000 Turks lost their lives. Now a group of archaeologists in Turkey are uniting GPS and WWI-era maps to create a definitive record of trenches, redoubts, battle lines, tunnels, roads and paths and burial grounds.

The high rate of allied casualties, caused by repeated hesitations and screw-ups on the part of the commanders are remembered by the countries who participated. Celebrated as the memorial Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand, it is also a day of pride for Turks, who were wildly under-estimated and dismissed by the allies as the "sick man of Europe."

The survey, the only one since a 1919 post-mortem, is being led by University of Melbourne Professor of Archaeology, Antonio Sagona. The first survey took place in late 2010 and the process is ongoing. His group consists of Australian, New Zealand and Turkish archaeologists and historians. The undertaking is funded in part by the Australian Department of Veterans' Affairs, the New Zealand Department for Culture and Heritage and Turkish authorities, according to Opti-Cal.

Australia's News4us quotes that country's Minister for Veterans' Affairs, Warren Snowdon on the project's import.

""Despite the historical importance of the Gallipoli battlefield, our knowledge of this area to date has been based on maps and written accounts. This area has never been studied in detail through modern archaeological survey methods. "This is the first time that we have had the opportunity to corroborate and further explore the events surrounding the Gallipoli campaign which proved such a defining moment in the formation of our nation's identity."

The project is using Differential Global Positioning System technology with a hand-held GPS receiver with "an external high-accuracy antenna" in the field and a fixed receiver at the project base.

Gallipoli photos from Wikipedia Commons | other sources: Gadling

In an article in The Guardian today, Keegan talks about his research into mapping the history of London theatre. Many of the popular venues of Shakespeare's time no longer exist, and at inns and the like that do, there is rarely any sort of plaque or landmark.

Of course, if the Bard and Elizabethan theatre aren't really your bag, there are other apps - just like there are other guided tours - that offer insights into other authors' haunts. The aptly-titled, Literary London, for example, plots the places connects to a variety of famous authors: Charles Dickens, Aldous Huxley, Agatha Christie, Graham Greene and the Bloomsbury Set.

Neither of these apps are free. Shakespeare's London is $2.99 and Literary London $7.99. And neither of them have incorporated this wonderful technology of MegaReader, an augmented reality e-reader that lets you actually see through your iPhone as you read and walk. All of this seems to point to what seems to this literature geek, at least, as a huge market for some digital humanities types.

I mean, there's a bar in the town where I grew up where Ernest Hemingway was supposedly a regular, on the occasions he was in the region for hunting or fishing trips. There's no plaque in the Wonder Bar to commemorate it. Is there an app for that?

Search On the Go

If you use Google on your desktop or mobile phone, you know how valuable search suggestions can be to finding what it is you are looking for. Driving and searching without a keyboard is challenging as it is, and now search suggestions from the dashboard will make 4-wheeled searches easier to complete. Drivers need only enter in a few letters and results based on their current location will populate automatically.

One of the tricks with navigating to an unfamiliar location is knowing the lay of the land before you arrive. Perhaps a business is tucked away in some strip-mall or parking is in an awkward location. With "pictures at your destination," Google is hoping to make this process easier. The service aggregates visual data, including satellite photos, Street View imagery and creative commons images of specific locations to make them easier to find.

Unfortunately for U.S. drivers, these services have yet to make it state-side, but there are other options available. Ford is doing a pretty good job of integrating various navigation and entertainment systems into its cars with Microsoft's Sync technology, which includes streaming Bluetooth audio and mobile app voice control.

In-Car Safety Concerns?

Google makes a point to note that its improved search suggestions are not just expanding the functionality of ConnectedDrive, but are also making it safer to use the technology while driving. But how much is too much? In an age where TVs, games, and other distractions are flooding our vehicles' dashboards, at what point will government transportation agencies be forced to limit our in-car technology?

Oh no, officer, I wasn't texting while driving! I was performing a Google search and viewing satellite imagery of my destination!

If some states are concerned that fuzzy dice might impair your vision, then they will certainly become increasingly wary of distracting dashboard technology. A promotional video for ConnectedDrive actually says, "On the way home from work I can read the news displayed on the screen, or the stock market quotes. In other words, BMW ConnectedDrive makes driving more comfortable and safer."

Comfortable? Maybe. But safer? Only in the fact that if you find yourself stranded or in an accident, you can use the GPS or emergency call buttons for help. As more tech enters our dashboards, the likelihood of distracted driving increases. Perhaps it's better to focus on making those cars that drive themselves so we can enjoy all that our cars will have to offer us in the future.

Google has added "Walking Navigation", a marriage of walking directions, turn-by-turn GPS navigation and satellite imagery, to the newest version of Google Maps for Android.

Simply enter the address of where you're trying to go, chose the "Walking" option from the navigation icon and the app will guide you, following along and vibrating when you reach the next turn. The map even rotates as you turn the phone, orienting the map to the direction you're facing. As Google engineers Andrey Ulanov and Kevin Law note in their blog post, you can "use it like a virtual compass with satellite imagery to look ahead or help pick out landmarks along the way."

If the satellite view doesn't offer enough in the way of contextual clues, the new and improved Street View navigation for Google Maps on Android should help. The feature brings street view straight to your phone and adds "smart navigation", wherein you can simply drag the "Pegman" around to move your vantage point. Take a look:

We often joke with friends about how the smartphone is like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but it's features like this that make that notion more and more a reality. It wasn't long ago that GPS navigation in a car seemed like a modern day luxury, and now we have access to turn-by-turn directions and imagery in our pockets. The integration with satellite imagery is just a step away from Street View integration and we can't imagine that an augmented reality addition is far off. While we often feel silly holding our phones up to the horizon to look for the nearest pizza joint, having this data on-screen as we navigate about our lives may prove even more handy.

What do you think - what's next for mobile personal navigation? That is, aside from getting similar functionality for the iPhone?

If a car suddenly slows ahead of you, the app will detect the approaching vehicle and warn you. It can also detect other cars in neighboring lanes, and can tell when you change lanes. The app can be configured to provide any combination of visual, audio and vocal alerts, and the color of the HUD is interchangeable as well.

It seems that a lot of the application's accuracy depends on your ability to mount it and calibrate it correctly before driving. The app requires the device be level, and asks for information regarding the height of the camera and the width of the car. If you happen to have an extra iPhone 3GS lying around, this could be a great use for it so you don't have to remount your phone each time you go for a drive.

Is this a super cool example of augmented reality? Yes. Will people actually use it? Probably not. At least not with their phones. We do too much on our phones to dedicate the entire device to one function while in our cars.

I have no idea why Garmin, TomTom, Magellan and all the other in-car GPS makers haven't jumped all over augmented reality. Or maybe they have and we just don't know yet. Future generations of GPS units should have cameras on them that capture a view of the road and provide directions and warnings from a dedicated device. People would actually use that because it wouldn't mean awkwardly mounting their phones and anything beats those ugly 2D maps that we deal with today.

For now, however, imaGinyze's app serves as a reminder of the powerful capabilities of the magical pocket computers we all carry around each day.

A release by analyst firm iSuppli says that four out of five cell phones will integrate GPS technology by the end of 2011, with the adoption of smartphones leading the march.

As a result of this massive adoption of GPS-enabled phones, iSuppli also predicts the slow death of "Portable Navigation Devices", with smartphones exceeding PNDs in that realm by 2014. On this point, we would venture that we wouldn't be surprised if this happened sooner than that, even.

Dr. Jagdish Rebello, a principal analyst for iSuppli quoted in the release, says that "social networking services and applications spurred by GPS-related features are critical elements in the smart phone market today."

"This is illustrated by Google Inc.'s decision to make turn-by-turn navigation, LBS and mobile ads the central features in its bid to take on Apple in the smart phone market, and make up the central pillars of its strategy to increasingly monetize mobile search," Rebello says in the release.

Beyond smartphones, iSuppli also predicts that 18% of laptops and 42% of portable handheld video games will have integrated GPS by 2014.

While this feature doesn't seem to be showing up for Google Maps quite yet, it looks like Mapquest 4 Mobile has released a new version that will speak driving directions and more.

This new version of MapQuest 4 Mobile not only speaks street names, meaning you don't have to take your eyes off the road, it does it quite well. The voice used in the app was quite understandable and gave not just the street name, but the entire direction, out loud. In addition to speaking the directions, the app also re-routes the directions automatically if you miss a turn - another must have for an in-car GPS system.

The latest version of MapQuest 4 Mobile also offers iOS4 compatibility, meaning background location. This update "allows MapQuest 4 Mobile iPhone to organize the myriad of purposes afforded by fast application switching and background GPS (via iOS 4) by continuing Voice Guidance  & Spoken Street Names whether on a call, listening to iPod, or saving battery with the application hidden."

Of course, our only complaint remains the same - the iPhone's GPS can, at timez, be absolutely terrible. We tried mounting the phone directly under the windshield and even holding it out the window to make sure nothing was blocking its view of the sky, but still it told us we were miles away in another location. When the signal is good, however, everything works great.

Beyond the new features, MapQuest 4 Mobile offers some standard ones that you find online with Google Maps, but not in the iPhone app, such as being able to avoid toll roads and highways or plot out walking directions instead of driving directions. The "avoid highways" feature alone is enough to make us download this app.

MapQuest 4 Mobile for the iPhone is available for download in the iTunes App Store.

Adding GPS data to Google Earth is a fun and handy tool for individual users, but the real benefit is to the greater crowd of Google Earth fans. By collecting user data from hikes, bike rides, walks, runs or any other outdoor activity, Google will be able to create better maps that feature paths for these types of activities. If Google knows which way is most popular to get from Point A to Point B on a bike, they can serve that info up to people searching for directions on Google Maps.

This is similar to the way Open Street Map has collected user data to generate maps. The open source mapping project asks volunteers to send in GPS data collected from walking, biking or running around on city streets. By combining that data, Open Street Map can create highly detailed maps of city streets with much less effort than traditional mapping services.

Google says most GPS units will work, like Magellan or Garmin devices, but it is unclear whether smartphones, like an Android or iPhone device, can be used to gather data. Traditional GPS devices also collect information like elevation and speed which users can use to graph various sets of data in Google Earth.

In addition Google has embedded a full Web browser into Google Earth so users can explore the home pages of business they might discover in the application. Pro users also can view parcel, demographic and traffic layers, as well as take advantage of improved GIS importing, better overlay generation, and support for the Military Grid Reference System (MGRS).

If you'd like a different way to visualize potential hiking or biking trails, check out this Web-based tool that can graph out elevation change using the Google Maps API. Simply place two or more points on a map and the app will create a graph of the elevation between those points. This can be helpful to the outdoorsy types that want to see if the bike trail suggested by Google maps is leading them uphill or downhill.

As you can see, the app quite skillfully places the directions on the live video of the road, but the size of the path and arrow still leaves a large blind area for drivers. You can also see the directions jitter a bit when the car is in a tunnel, a problem with the GPS signal weakening in the tunnel. What this also tells us is that the app is not yet able to take advantage of the live video feed as much as it would like to.

Due to platform limitations, the app cannot digest the live video and map the directions more accurately to the road. While it does a fair job of guessing where the road is, the ability to process the road and run it through image recognition technology would make it much more accurate. Mobilizy says they are working on an iPhone version of the app as well - a platform that will soon support live video processing with an upcoming OS update.

With Wikitude Drive, users can quickly switch to a traditional elevated 3D map view by touching the screen, but which perspective will drivers use? Depending on the price of the app, Android users may download the app for the basic directions to save some money. The other common concern with these apps is what happens when a phone call comes in while providing directions? Can users easily answer and call and continue to receive directions? Or will they be interrupted and forced to later relaunch the application?

Either way, Wikitude Drive seems like a great use of augmented reality and a logical next step for the platform. Mobilizy says it plans to integrate the Wikitude World Browser, and it's database full of points-of-interest, into Wikitude Drive in the future. Combine this type of direction capability with GM's idea for an augmented reality windshield and a fascinating future of cars with heads-up-displays could be just around the corner.

According to Boeing, the Block IIF series of satellites include a host of enhanced features and functionality that will improve GPS signal strength, quality and accuracy. Boeing says the new satellites will have "two times greater predicted signal accuracy" than the previous ones, as well as improved signals for aviation and military use. Additionally, this new fleet of satellites should improve the overall accuracy of GPS signals from the rough estimates of 20 feet to a tighter radius of between two and three feet.

For mobile location-based applications, these improvements could be monumental. Not only would location apps as we know them today be greatly improved, but increased power and accuracy could create entirely new breeds of applications. By boosting the signal, the possibility of having GPS function in large indoor facilities, like malls or convention centers, is significantly increased. Mobile apps could be developed to help stranded cave divers, rock climbers or even victims of landslides and earthquakes be located by rescue personnel. In fact, NASA already has plans to continually improve on the GPS satellites for the purpose of creating a better search and rescue system.

Mobile augmented reality, a field that relies heavily on GPS data, would also see large improvements with increased accuracy. With the current limited accuracy of GPS, mobile AR apps can only give users a rough estimate of where locations are relative to their position; these new satellites could make it much easier for an app like Layar or Wikitude to point users directly to the nearest ATM or subway entrance. Combine this with enhanced visual recognition technology and AR could quickly evolve to recognize our surroundings and help us navigate the world.

But what about privacy? With increased accuracy, users' homes could be identified by their location data, not just what area of town they are in. Location-based applications may need to implement privacy controls that limit the amount of data shared with other users. I wouldn't mind if an app used as much data as it needed to find me and provide relevant information, but once that is complete, I should have the option of what level of location to share with other users.

The Block IIF satellites are the first step in creating a highly accurate GPS network for consumers. The second step is creating smaller, more capable GPS chips for mobile devices, and the third is updating databases of location data to reflect more accurate results. It's not good enough anymore to just know the address of an establishment, especially if it is in a mall or shopping center. In the near future, our GPS devices won't simply drop us off at the block a business is on, they will walk us right through the front door.

Image from Boeing.