Daliesque MacBook Pro

I have been playing with earthscape for a while now and I still think it is pretty cool app, but needs some work, and a couple of days ago I talked about these errors, but didn’t have any details. Well I made a trip up to DC and had some issues with the accuracy, as well as some in the office this morning…

Here is an example of a picture that is right on, standing still in a Starbucks parking lot…

This picture was taken real close to the location on the map, but not uploaded for a while (Maybe an hour), because of crappy coverage, I had several EDGE bars, but data was not moving to the earthscape servers.

Sitting at a signal light 4 3G bars of coverage, I get this…

Here is an example of the moving vehicle issue. This picture was taken while going over the Rappahannock river, but the earthscape app puts me a mile down the road…

Then we have this picture which was taken about 30 feet from this picture and neither are correct.

This picture and this picture were taken at the exact same place, yet are miles apart.

It seems to me that unlike the way the iPhone Camera app works by GPS tagging the picture when it is taken, the earthscape app doesn’t do that and as far as I can tell the picture isn’t GPS tagged until the “Use Photo” button is pushed. The question is then why doesn’t earthscape tag the picture as soon as it is taken, because they don’t I checked, unless they decided to .

Just to clarify I do understand how GPS works, and limitations when under cover etc…, but the same device in the same environment should have the same error regardless of application.

I am taking my first road trip since I got the iPhone, and I decided to do a head to head with the google maps app and my Garmim GPSmap 60CSx. The routing in some cases needs some work, or at least a way to change routing preferences, because it pretty much insisted on sending me to the highway, even though city streets were over 5 miles shorter. Once I got to highway 13 the google maps app and the GPS were in agreement on the route, but not even close on the dirving time.
Both units were within a mile on the distance to go, but the time was over an hour off. The google maps apphad the driving time a full hour and twelve minutes longer then the GPS. Highway 13 on the Eastern Shore pretty much averages 55, and real world speeds are a bit faster. The google maps app figured out to an average speed of 40, while the GPS came in with a more realistic 55. So I guess the moral of the story is let the google maps apps route you, or locate you (it does a real good job at that, close to my GPS), but don’t rely too much the drive time.
Sorry about the quality of the GPS screenshot, it was taken at night, with the iPhone at 55 mph.