Travel Tips: Maps

If you are busy outside everyday, you may use the "maps" such as Google Maps, Bing Maps, Apple Maps, and Nokia Maps(Here Maps) on your phone. Especially, urban explorers such as in New York, losing your ways means losing half a day of your work. However, you phones help you and find a way to get rid of because automatically they can track your locations, and precisely display on your phone.


What kind of information is used by the apps are:

Global Positioning System(GPS Data)

GPS is with the geosynchronous satellites. Originally, these were for military purposes on the coldwar era. They correctly tracked the location of ballistic missiles. After the coldwar ended in the end of 1990s, countries spread the use of the satellites to the commercial uses. Therefore, the information is very precise. This was mainly installed to the automotive navigation system for cars before. Now mostly every smartphone has it.

WiFi ID/IP Addresses

If you use the Internet, you never fail to use with IP addresses. IP addresses indicate some important information: who the administrators/users, and where the locations are. When you establish the Internet connection, the information is provided for the network. WiFi ID is also the usable information that indicates your locations. When Google created the street maps, they collected these information with the photos, and this became a huge problem in countries. Now many apps collect these IDs when you use. Users mostly automatically provide these information.

Phone ID

Your phone ID is one of the blind points for detecting your locations. Your phones have some specific ID numbers. One of them is your phone number. When you call, your phone connects near the base station and establish the phone call between your phone and the system. Each base station has each location ID. It can calculate the distance between your location and the base station. Especially, if you are with 3G phones or newer, your phones can track multiple base stations. Therefore, your phone precisely indicate your locations with GPS.


For the reasons, if you are with your smartphones, you have not lost your ways in most of Ecumene where people can live. According to NORAD ( http://www.noradsanta.com/ ), they can track Santa Claus because of these systems.

"Trepak(Russian Dance)" 

(From Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite)

Sochi Olympics comes soon. According to media, they had a lot of troubles for the torches, and also media indicates the bribery of high officials. The construction progresses also delayed, but finally, the games open on February 7, 2014. I checked about Sochi on the Internet, but it's difficult to find the information in English. However, using these map apps, we can travel around the resort town Sochi before the Olympic Games come.

Sochi A-Go-Go

Last year, London Olympics was open in July. The games were impressive, and many Olympians showed their artistic body moving in front of the audiences.

Well, what is the next? Some people like the Olympic Games. They can't wait for next, and prepare for the next destinations.

Here is a summery of 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi (Russia). Sochi is a leisure city on the shore of the Black Sea. This game happens from February 7 to 23 in 2014. The motto is "Hot. Cool. Yours." The tickets are already on sale on their website ( http://www.sochi2014.com/ ).

When Soviet Union was alive, Moscow Olympics was occurred in 1980. Then many Western countries such as the United States, Canada, Sweden, West Germany and Japan boycotted the games. Ironically, this was the symbolic games of the Cold War. After 34 years later, the Olympic Games comes back to Russia. In Sochi, athletes plays for 15 sports. There is no physical border on the map like the western and eastern countries, and only the athletes have the mental and financial borders for the games now.

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Personally, I checked the Internet to find about Sochi, Russia, but there are only some websites related to travel and sightseeing. I think Lonely Planet is the best one to check about Sochi.

Sochi, Russia (Lonely Planet)
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/russia/russian-caucasus/sochi

In Sochi, the games happen near the leisure city. However, the scale of the city is not big like London. If you want to visit there, carefully you need to decide the accommodations and transportation you use.