Ed. note: I originally published this article in 2010. I occasionally re-run it as it generally receives interesting reader response. Get It Surveyed (GIS) always brings out a small roar of laughter at the local RPLS chapter meeting. Hardee, har, har. The irony is that if you laugh at that joke, then you might as well wear a sign on your head... read more
Location privacy issues have the power to put the skids on our industry. When I stepped into the Where 2.0 show, little did I know I was about to see Apple publicly open its kimono, reveal its location collection practices, and further fuel public and government outrage on location privacy. Apple doesn’t stand alone as Google also stores similar data on Android devices. And in a smaller breach, TomTom’s user location data was sold to the Netherland’s government, helping to optimize the placement of speed traps. Congress responded by hauling Apple and Google into a Congressional subcommittee meeting. read more
Tired of hearing about LightSquared? Think it’s a bunch of panicking journalists hungry for something to write about? Listen, it usually takes a lot to get the hairs standing up on the back of my neck. On the LightSquared issue, they are at full attention. Why? read more
Last December I wrote about the exponential growth of geospatial technology in an article titled “Will We Be a Billion Times More Geospatially Intelligent in Thirty Years?” This week, well-known game developer David Braben said he’s working on a computer that will cost only $25. This represents one of those growth technologies that might be exponential in bringing geospatial (and... read more
This column rarely covers privacy as a critical issue to build location-based services markets. Why? It was our contention that most LBS are opt-in — or opt out — at the discretion of the consumer, making privacy an important issue, but not a market stopper. Frankly, many privacy panels at location conferences either bordered on hysteria, or were not relevant to market growth. However, since the recent Where 2.0 conference, which revealed that some entities were storing location information without users’ permission, the privacy issue has the potential of suppressing products and markets before they even start. Some are dubbing this new privacy concern Locationgate. read more
Four years ago my wife and I moved to Lake Guntersville as our ultimate retirement location because it seemed to have ideal factors we were looking for — mountains, lakes, great fishing, mild weather, low taxes, low cost of living and genuinely nice people. This inland location had navigable water to the Gulf of Mexico and even to the Great... read more
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