This Friday Fave is a little bit different. My interest in geospatial technologies (although we just called it GIS back then) largely because I wanted to measure my running routes more accurately and efficiently than the paper map & scrap of paper method I was using in the early 90s. When I was introduced to GIS, I knew what I was going to use it for. Now that GPS technology is ubiquitous–I’m currently using four different GPS devices, at the same time, on my bike rides–I seldom have to use a map to measure my routes.

When I first found out about GIS, the first application that came to mind was using it to map my running routes. At that time, I was using paper maps and scraps of paper to measure how far I was running each day. GIS obviously offered a better method. Almost twenty years later, GPS has become so common place that I think we have four or five devices in our household that have GPS capabilities and measuring my runs has become ridiculously simple.