A Spatial Odyssey

Last week the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) put out a paper titled 'Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision' ( available here  as PDF). Now I must confess prior to reading the document and seeing tweets from people I knew who appeared to be attending a session of this group in Qatar I hadn't heard of the UN-GGIM. However it appears to be a group that's been set up in recognition that geospatial information can assist with development of nations; national and region initiatives on geospatial information need to be better coordinated and that 'developed' countries can lend a hand and resources to the benefit of less-developed countries. Some laudable aims there certainly, but anyway I digress slightly from the future-trends document itself... Overall I think the document is a well-constructed ‘snapshot’ on the current main trends in geoinformation. Whils...

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...