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?