GIS Development Weekly January 7, 2008

John Naughton a control engineer -cum-journalist in his Keynote Address at UK Marketing Society in February, 2006 talked about our transforming world. He started with a Latin phrase - "terra firma" or solid earth, which may give an impression to an individual that the ground on which he is standing is quite firm. But a geophysicist knows that the ground on which we are standing is shifting, continously. The ability to sense change also depends upon where you are with respect to the reference plane!

The change has always been subtle.

Although on a Year-On-Year basis perhaps the change detection would not have been so explosive as compared to what it appears in a decade or two. At no point of time we felt we were undergoing a revolutionary change in the way we communicate access information and conduct our business. But we have a mark shift from early nineties to present day in the way we communicate.

Looking into what has changed between 1st Jan 2007 and 31st Dec 2007: we had Radar Imaging satellite launches, satellite imagery getting crisper, acquisitions getting large, some big money is being talked about with Tele Atlas and Navteq acquisitions and the mainstream giants talking about more and more Aerial Photographs of cities around the world. With the giants in the geospatial boxing ring, there would be availability of more and more funds for the research leading to some exciting products in days to come.

A milestone has been crossed by the geospatial community with the commercial large scale availability of the maps in mobile phones. It is now common to find an 'Off-The-Shelf' mobile phone with satellite navigation software. And it is not just N95, iPhone(for not having GPS) or Android. They may be making waves today, but we are going to see a deluge of similar applications and platforms in days to come. We are also quite sure it is not just going to stop with street routing. It is matter of time before the entire topographical map is squeezed into the pocket phone and bundled with sundry location-based applications.

There is little doubt, that in the 'Mobile War' GPS will Rock! And so will the geospatial applications. Although for many regions of the world, street and other important land marks data are not available in ready to use manner, but this is not stopping cell phone companies from integrating the Google Maps in cell phones to start with.

Let us cherish this moment in geospatial history when we are moving into the revolution phase.

With best wishes for the New Year 2008

Maneesh Prasad
maneesh.prasad@gisdevelopment.net