SPOT again, the confusion

Alas, my fantasy life is not Clark Beek exhilarating. In fact you might deem it rather pathetic, like yesterday’s imaginary turn at the New York Times copy desk red-lining the bejezum out of a blurb about SPOT. The NYT’s Circuits section is usually sharp on gadgets I already know something about, but this particular piece is loaded with mistakes and misunderstandings (bigger edit image here). Ditto the commenters section on a recent Endgadget SPOT entry (which I tried to correct). And this PLB rescue story apparently confused that technology with Spot’s before it was corrected. In fact, SPOT is racking up some rescues (see Anchorage article), and there is good dope about it on the Web (like on Panbo, I think).

But there’s a larger problem here, I’m pretty sure. An already tech inundated boating citizenry is about to be deluged with all sorts of gadgets that combine GPS and communications for one purpose or another, or several at once. Let’s see, we’re going to have VHF radios that do DSC (maybe tracking too), cell phones that chart and track, little blackbox security thingies, and lots, lots more. How about GPS-Buddy, which turns your Garmins into fleet tracking, monitoring, and management tools (vehicles now, boats eventually?). This stuff is going to confuse everyone, including a lot of tech journalists. Mistakes will be made. En garde!

PS. Yo, New York Times tech edit department: call me!