The days of buying a plain vanilla software are over. Almost all software suites
come packaged with terabytes of terrain, and more is offered for download. It
was the most sensible thing to do as most of us have spent quite some effort and
time getting base layers together. The software-data bundle offering is here to
stay. Taking a cue from such value additions are mobile phone manufacturers,
and I do not mean the navigation applications available on our hand-held-communication-devices.
Early this month was the news that '
Texas Geology' available for iPhone! last week '
New York, New Jersey, Connecticut Geology'... I took the first announcement as a location based offering/demand
for/from the oil rich land with obvious linkages with the geology. A faint doubt the
actual usability of such complex data on the small viewing area of an iPhone did
linger. Now with the latest 'geological' offering, I am forced to rethink... not just on
the usability but also on the practicality, though no doubts are being cast on the
ruggedness of the hardware in question. So, is it value addition to geospatial, or is it value addition - geospatially?
Hrishikesh Samant
