Do you QC your social media map?

In this era of social media, we witness a huge community involvement in spatial data production. Social media maps assemble information from various sources that are mostly derived from 'crowd-sourced' data. For those not familiar with social media maps, check out ESRI's Hurricane and Cyclone social media map. Social media APIs allow content from social networks like Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, and many more, to be embedded on to your maps. Also, certain social media map applications allow active editing by users. Amidst this crowd-sourcing interaction where there is a huge window of opportunity for inappropriate content intrusion, how do you maintain and automate quality check of such social media maps?

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Journey from desktop to cloud!

ESRI has established its 'cloud footprint.' More and more geospatial vendors have started to plunge into cloud services. Presumably, cloud+mobile would dominate the near future!
As a GIS developer, analyst, cartographer, technician, project manager, or whatever role that you are in; how do you perceive the transition from desktop to cloud will be? Do you think it is the beginning of 'end of the desktop'?

Spatialized (Geo) Tweets - Dataset of business opportunities!!!?

The increasing spatialization of tweets or any means of social footprints will serve as a golden dataset for small to medium, large retail businesses to position products with their target customers! Recently, I came across an interesting contour map of New York City's twitter traffic.

http://gothamist.com/2010/06/29/map_nycs_twitter_traffic_as_a_conto.php?gallery0Pic=2

Will ESRI provide integrated space for tweets and/or social media dataset integration and analysis tools that are useful for business in geo-marketing?

Are you geo-centric ? Do you need a personal GIS?

Everyone is getting connected nowadays to the online social grid through millions of personal pages, feeds, status updates, tweets, blogs, profiles,discussion forums, photo tags etc. Thanks to the connection machines like the Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Youtube, and other networking sites. All these sites incorporate 'location' in to their social habitats thus enabling everyone to be geo-centric. The recent eruptions of cloud GIS have enabled more and more online/mobile GIS applications to be made available to consumers. With the increasing use and awareness of GIS, at some point in the future, do we require a personal/home GIS software? How many of you will be open to having a personal/home/lightweight version of ArcGIS installed in your PC as any other tools like MS office?

Is your GIS application ready to 'float'?

Companies like Salesforce.com and Google had innovated business models through their 'cloud' offerings! With increasing advancements in web technologies, it is interesting to see the success of cloud computing. Of course, GIS is not left out! I believe, ESRI has continuously involved in exploring the cloud through its services like MapIT and partnership with Microsoft. Now plunging deep into the cloud, ESRI's corporate alliance with Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a good sign. Business models like Software As A Service (SAAS) is enabled by providers of Infrastructure As A Service (IAAS) - (Source:ESRI ArcWatch) like the AWS. Not far away from ESRI's corporate office at Redlands, CA is another emerging provider of IAAS called Skygone.
Well, we have the platform now. So, how soon will the users be receptive to the 'cloud'? Is your GIS application 'cloud' ready?

ArcGIS 10 - Wishlist fulfilled?

From Mr. Dangermond's podcast on the topic 'ArcGIS 9.4 name change to ArcGIS 10', I noticed that key transformations have been focused on user interface, temporal, and Server /Cloud GIS experience. I am excited. I am sure beta testers got a good feel of the product. As a GIS user, what did you envision for the upcoming ArcGIS 10? Your wish list?

Image search = Google Goggles; GIS data search = ?

A discussion posted by Ric Skinner, a fellow active linkedin member in GIS motivated me to bring up this topic. Yesterday, as I was browsing, I ended up at the ‘Google Goggles’ page and realized that my wish/dream has finally come true. I wished for a ‘Goggles’ type product during a discussion on a hiking trip with my friends. I am a big outdoor person and I always have wondered if I can take a picture, using my cell (smart, of course) phone, of a plant/animal species or a terrain or a rock, then load it in a search engine to learn more about it instantaneously. Well, Goggles has arrived. Though it couldn’t satisfy my type of search, given its infancy, it is an excellent start.

Also, discussion on the topic of image search pushes me into another one. My experience portfolio spans across different industries like renewable energy, health, economy, environmental, logistics, and few more. There are numerous state, federal, county level, private, non-profit organizations that supply data in each of these industries. I always had to search for data using different data collection strategies depending upon the industry. Although there are GIS data resources out there, I am sure they are not that robust. It would be more appropriate, if ESRI or any other organization provide an exclusive, centralized, free GIS data search engine. Is there already one that exists and that I can bookmark? Or yet to come? Who can complete my equation?

Image search = Google Goggles; GIS data search =  ???? ‘Geoggles’ ?

Bizarre GIS Poll - list

I thank all the participants of the 'Bizarre GIS' discussion. It was so much fun to read comments and learn about the bizarre GIS applications. I think its time to conduct a fun poll! Following is the list of bizarre applications that we received (forgive me if I have missed anything, please notify). Kindly review the same and cast your vote on the one that you think is the bizarrest! Just for fun!

#	Applications	Link , if any	Links shared / posted by
1	GIS to understand dance patterns in Choreography	http://esri.twi.bz/b	Sentil
2	Mapping the Rectum	http://ij-healthgeographics.twi.bz/a	Ric Skinner, GISP & Viswanathan G Kumar
3	GIS to map the surface of cells to locate areas of specific cellular activities and/or external protein binding sites		John Roach
4	GIS for mapping neural networks in the brain		Ariann Nassel
5	Hominid foot print map		Brien Green - MBA.
6	Space-time paths of people - temporal GIS	http://osu.edu.twi.bz/a	Kamal Paudel
7	Integration of GIS to 'Sixth sense technology'	http://indiatimes.twi.bz/e	Kevin D. Balmer
8	GIS for Ghost tracking		Sentil
9	GIS in Lymphoscintigraphy	http://govtech.twi.bz/a	Ric Skinner, GISP
10	GIS to map personal movements in space		Ariann Nassel
11	Use of GIS in 'Gapminder'	http://www.gapminder.org/	Shari Forbes
12	GIS landuse map NeckTie		Ric Skinner, GISP
13	GIS in Art	http://aaronkoblin.twi.bz/a	Ric Skinner, GISP
14	Mapping of congressional bills		Richard Wagaman
15	Fun Cartography	http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/	Duane Marble

Bizarre GIS !

As a practicing systemic thinker, I always wondered about the power of GIS applications in various spectrum of human life. Being passionate about geography, travel, and business, I watch Travel channel a lot. While watching the 'Bizarre foods with Andrew Zimmern', this thing just popped up in my mind! Why not 'Bizarre applications of GIS' ?
Please go ahead and post all the bizarre but cool applications of GIS that you may have read, heard, and/or experienced! You can also post bizarre stuff that you want GIS to be applied on! Well, be professional. When sufficient number of applications reach to suffocate us, we can conduct a poll to vote for the bizarrest.

Let me push the start button:

1. I read in ESRI ArcNews about how a choreographer used GIS  to understand dance patterns.
http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/summer09articles/gis-to-understand.html

 
Isn't this cool ?

Please post your comments either on this page or in my Linkedin page. Go GIS!

Follow me on Twitter @sentilGIS

Google Wave and "GIS wave"

I finally received my Google Wave invitation (thanks to one of my friends) and started using it. Cool and truly game-changing features! I am wondering how Google Wave will change the spatial game. Google wave is open source, which is Google's core strategy to increase dependency and foster easy, quick adoption by millions of users. I am sure, the sandbox account for Google wave along with ESRI Flex/Silverlight APIs could come in handy for developers to play with and enable spatial publishing in Google Wave. There are many mind-boggling questions for the future:

Will GSPs (GIS service Providers) use their own Google Wave servers to share their spatial products with their clients?

GOOGLE EARTH has replaced/gradually replacing the use of ArcReader documents; Google's launch of its own programming language, 'GO'; GOOGLE WAVE is expected to replace traditional emails; What's next? 'Google GIS' to replace ArcGIS?

Is ESRI prepared for this 'Dark Knight'?