Filed under: GPS, Ireland, People, Places, Volvo Ocean Race, tourism | Tags: galway tourism, Volvo Ocean Race, volvo race galway
The Volvo Ocean Race will visit Galway in the summer of 2009. On the 23rd of May 2009 the Volvo Ocean Race (VOR) will arrive in Galway following the transatlantic leg, racing from Boston, and it will stay in Galway for a two week stopover before leaving on the next leg to Göteborg in Sweden.
The Volvo Ocean race, also known as the Round the World Race, is run every four years and will cover 39,000 miles. It begin in Alicante, Spain and will visit around eleven ports including the Middle East, Southeast Asia, China, India and Boston. In-port racing will take place in all ports as well as the race around the world. The Galway leg of this race begins in June 2009.
The Volvo Ocean Race is expected to be Ireland’s biggest ever sporting/festival so far, with Galway city expected to welcome over 300,000 people and generate approx €100 million in revenue over the course of the two weeks.
Visitors to Galway will get a chance to experience the spectacle of the VO70 sailing boats including in-port racing and enjoy everything special that the West of Ireland has to offer.
Filed under: GPS, Ireland, People, tourism | Tags: comedy festival, failte ireland, travel, U.S credit crunch
Galway Tourism is ‘holding up’ well against the effects of the US credit crunch and remains Ireland’s number one destination accroding to Failte Ireland. These assurances come as rumours that many five star hotels in the west of Ireland are planning to slash prices by offering ‘euro for dollar’ rates in a bid to attract American tourists who have been discouraged by the weak dollar.
It is understood that the plan will be announced in the next forthnight and will only include five star accommodation, however it may be expanded to include three and four star hotels in the wes at a later stage. A spokesman for Failte Ireland acknowledged that hoteliers and businesseswho are reliant on the US market would have concerns about the weakening U.S dollar, however he added that ‘Galway is in the best position at the moment’.
‘It is the destination in Ireland that can withstand the pressures of the U.S credit crunch. It is the most solid destination we have. There’s the big festivals and the races, the comedy festival has been a huge hit. It’s been a strong year because it is not just reliant on one market, it appeals to the young and the old and it is the spring board to Connemara. However, if a business is reliant on the U.S market we would encourage them to broaden their appeal.
‘Overall in the west, over the last few years there’s been a mix of business, the main market is domestic then there’s the UK and continental Europeans and then the U.S. There’s a good spread. In the north American market there will be more challenges because of the credit crunch and because consumer confidence is low and travel is normally down in general election time. Most Businesses will take that into account’ according to Failte Ireland.
Filed under: GPS
A new modernized Global Positioning System satellite, designed and built by Lockheed Martin, was launched successfully on 20th December from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Delta II launch vehicle.
This represents the second successful GPS IIR-M mission in just two months, the satellite recently launched joins four IIR-M satellites and 12 other operational Block IIR satellites within the current 30-spacecraft constellation.
For general information about GPS technology see gps.ie.
Recent reports have stated that GPS-like maps are being used to help spine surgeons take some of the guesswork out of tricky procedures. As we have previously posted GPS has many diverse uses, this has also being published on gps.ie. Most people are aware that GPS is often used to help motorists plan routes to avoid wasting gas and time. The navigational system for spine surgery works on those same principals. Fixing a patients debilitating back pain was going to be a big issue.
The patient from Greenfield in the U.S had two degenerative discs and had put off surgery because he knew there was a reasonable chance that it would’nt help. He knew that fixing the problem required two operations in one, receiving cadaver bone grafts through an incision in the abdomen and then securing them with screws with an incision in his back. When he learned of navigational technology that promises precision, the patient decided to go for the surgery. The doctor involved said the sophisticated tracking system takes out the guesswork. The navigation works with an antenna hammered into the pelvis and mapping software that keeps a virtual eye on the patient’s spine. The patients surgery was six weeks ago, and he is now back to work, was up to walking two to three miles a day and is also lifting weights.
Recent news reports are showing the diversity of potential uses of GPS technology. A quick scan of GPS news items show the following headlines:
- GPS could soon carry out abortions
- Golf Course offering free GPS system tryout
- GPS tracking devices used to protect college students security
- GPS to track ophan tasmanian devils
- GPS to track sex offenders in New Jersey
It seems more and more that GPS technology coupled with human ingenuity is creating many different uses for a technology invented by the U.S military for surveying.
Members of Congo’s Mbendjele Yak tribe are using GPS that come with mobile phones to protect their forests from commercial loggers. Sacred sites and trees they want preserved are identified and tagged using GPS. These sites are then linked to a map used by logging companies and international conservationist groups.Behind the conservation project are the global environmental group Tropical Forest Trust, logging firm Congolaise Industrielle des Bois (CIB) and others. CIB sought the help of London School of Economics anthropologist Jerome Lewis, an expert on the Mbendjele tribe, to assist the company by designing pictorial icons understood by the pygmies, who do not read or write.
According to VNUNET.com global shipments of GPS-enabled mobile phones are expected to more than quadruple between 2006 and 2011, market watchers predict.Research firm iSuppli said that GPS mobile handset shipments will jump from 109.6 million units in 2006 to 444 million units by 2011.Nearly 30 per cent of all mobile phones shipped by 2011 will have GPS capability, up from 11.1 per cent in 2006.
GPS Magazine: If you still don’t own a GPS unit, then you are truly a step behind. Tribes across the Amazon Basin have begun acquiring these portable navigation units and using them to map out their lands.
These tribes have begun mapping the 20 million acres of land that they traditionally charted by foot and canoe in order to avoid getting overran by developers, ranchers, loggers, miners, oilmen, and biopirates. Much of the help in this effort has come from the Amazon Conservation Team, a Virginia environmental and cultural preservation organization, which provided equipment, cartographic expertise, and financial assistance.
In addition to GPS mapping, tribes are also using Google Earth as a tool to track their territories. They have been using Google Earth’s satellite imagery to identify threats such as an encroaching soy farm or a river stained by the runoff from a gold mine. A few tribes in Brazil with Internet access are marking the coordinates of surreptitious activity they see in the images, then investigating on foot or passing the information to government enforcers.
If you need more proof that GPS is the wave of the future…look no further.
