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James Kobielus of Forrester Research talks about "dislocation intelligence", that is, the use of GIS and location intelligence by retailers and other corporations to concoct their exit strategies from cities such as Detroit that have fallen victim to economic distress. The result is, of course, vacant storefronts and the "unmalling" of America. I think its a great twist of phrase.
Here’s the official statement from the National Telecommunication Regulatory Authority, but it boils down to GPS devices in cars, computers and cell phones are ok in imported devices. Automatic Vehicle locators have a more stringent set of requirements.
A hat tip to my colleague Joe who continues to cite that at least in his life weather is the killer mobile app. He’s got company, per Compete which released figures on the most used iPhone apps. This from MediaPost, who got a preview of the report:
According to an upcoming report on smartphone usage by online market research firm Compete, 39% of iPhone users cited weather-related apps as one of the three kinds of applications they use most frequently.
Now, Anthony Ha, atVentureBeat, from whom I sourced the MediaPost story, adds the “rest of the story.”
So the fact that users check the weather again and again, even as the novelty fades from other apps, is information that may be useful to advertisers. (I’m less optimistic that there’s a huge opportunity for developers to create a cool, new innovative weather app, although I’m willing to be surprised.)
Another way to look at this: the information may be valuable to developers: how can they “tap into” the compelling nature of weather to make their apps more compelling? I’ll go back to my initial thoughts on the matter from some years ago, when I flew kites: I wanted to be alerted (ideally ahead of time) when the conditions (which I would define based on temp, wind, rain, etc.) were ideal for flying not where I am now, but at my favorite beach (then Nahant).
My former colleague at ESRI-Boston, Shane White recently started as Supervising GIS Specialist aka RIGIS Coordinator at the State of Rhode Island. Shane comes from his position at the City of Worcester, MA. He has some big shoes to fill at RIGIS; he’s taking on the position formerly held by John Stackelhaus, who retired last year.
Geospatial data are relatively easy to obtain in the U.S. but what about in the Asia Pacific region where government policy differs widely from country to country. In fact, today’s challenges in the region have moved from acquiring the spatial foundation data (streets, basic demographics, and political boundaries) to data with finer demographic and geographic granularity. Editor in chief Joe Francica spoke with Sean Richards, director of product management for Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI) in Brisbane, Australia, and Scott Robinson, director of global data products for PBBI about the obstacles to success and whether countries recognize the benefit of a more open data policy.
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