I'm beyond new to this space, so please forgive my ignorance!   The APRS standard looks like it could be pretty easily duplicated with brewing your own program with an onboard PC.   ok ... i know a bit more of what APRS is now     so i suppose the question now is, how to reliably find a relay point while roaming out in the bush ... much to learn on my end before asking any more uneducated questions ... hehe

What I was curious of is, why not just relay your coords via packet and setup some kind of forward on a server?   edit:  to clarify, i'm basically talking about duplicating the SPOT's tracking capability.   of course, it wouldn't work via satellite and would be limited to being able to relay via HAM from your position.

I have some debian linux instances running now on Amazon's EC2 - so server space is cheep!!   

cheers,

-ike

That's how it works already. There are many websites that display the information both current or archived. There is also a Google Earth KML file that you can use to show peoples location in Google Earth.

http://aprs.fi/

There is also OziAPRS, UIView, and I'm adding APRS support to Overland Navigator. If you are interested in this sort of setup, check out the TNCs from Elcom. http://www.elcomresearch.com/shop/

Craig