A Spatial Odyssey

So over the past few weeks the competition war between computing's big hitters has ramped up in a number of interesting ways (particularly to those of us in the spatial / location arenas) amidst a slew of product launches and releases. What is clear is that again the competition are not afraid of stepping on each others toes in core areas. Apple's announcement last week that it's mobile devices would now feature their own mapping was not unexpected, and indeed Google somewhat pre-empted the move a few days earlier with it's 'next dimension' roadmap for it's now long-established mapping services. The news has already caused much debate and discussion, and this post does not attempt to dissect or analyse this particular information; although I would recommend that anyone interested reads some of the following blog posts: http://geothought.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/reaction-to-apple-maps-announcement.html http://www.vicchi.org/2012/06/11/a-bipolar-attitud...

So here it is; my blog and my inaugural post in my latest sortie into the world of social media and communication. Why am I doing this? Well to be honest I'm not really sure, other than 140 characters in Twitter is almost always too succinct for my thoughts and having a blog seems like a good way for me conjecture, capture, shape and share my thinking (not that I'm expecting many people will probably ever read this!). I'm way behind the curve on all of this social-media, but like the ethos behind the original garage-punk scene I am loving the DIY 'anyone can do this' spirit behind all of this.  Hopefully the blog title is relatively self-explanatory and I'm fully expecting all things spatial and GIS will be the primary topic covered (apologies now to any misguided Clarke or Kubrik fans). However in the truest sense of an odyssey I would not bet against the journey getting lost, diverted and heading down many a dark-street as we go. If I can figure out w...