If you travel at all these days you know the feeling of arriving into an unknown town and not having a clue how to get anywhere. I travel quite a bit and routinely get lost. But not anymore. Last year I bought a portable GPS from Magellan and it's the most liberating device I own (besides maybe my cell phone).

So this week I'm in Atalanta for a video shoot, which I haven't been to in almost 20 years, and I don't know where I'm going. I get my rental car and turn the GPS on and enter the hotel's address.... and boom, the satellite tracks my location and starts telling me where to go (I have one that talks to you). Only problem? I entered the wrong address. I compared where I was going to a map I printed off Yahoo, and something wasn't right. So I pulled over and re-entered my location and figured out I had put in "Avenue" instead of "Street". In Atlanta there are about 20 different "Peachtree" streets. So, the system is not completely fail safe, but once I entered the CORRECT address it took me right there. Nice.

Next day I had to go to the convention center and the hotel concierge gave me directions on a handy little pre-printed 3x5 index card. It also included directions for the return. The directions were good and I got there with ease. BUT, for the return... I had to park in a parking garage that when I exited put me onto a side street that was not mentioned on the 3x5 card. Nothing worse than driving around a downtown area with one-way streets, etc. and not knowing where you are. I just so happened to throw the GPS in my camera bag (glad I did), so I fired it up and got directions on getting back. Worked perfectly.

There are a lot of GPS brands out there and they pretty much all work the same. And the costs are coming down too. I think I paid around $400 for the Magellan over a year ago, and you can now get a good one for probably $250 or so. Tom Tom makes a good one and so does Garmin.

If you're a filmmaker going to different cities and/or varied locations around the globe I think a GPS is a must have these days. In the not too distant future I think the idea of being "lost" will be gone.

Now if it could just drive the car for you then we'd really be talking... :)

-Blake

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