So roll on 2008, it’s a great time to be involved with geospatial technology in all it forms, and for its great to be part of an industry that is touching so many more peoples lives…
Part of the excitment I feel is due to the fact that the industry is changing to finally better suit the needs of a wider community of users rather than just the professional GIS users. Some indication of this rate of change can be seen in a simple analysis of the search terms used in our favourite serach engine and how these have changed over the last few years.
Using the Google Trends tool it is possible to track how often a term is searched for, and to compare this over time.
Search for “Ordnance Survey”
For example it is interesting to compare the decreasing trend for “Ordnance Survey” with the increasing trend for “Tele Atlas” and “Navteq”.
Search for “Navteq”
The change reflected here I would suggest is the change is focus of users away from local data provders to international suppliers and of course the move away from paper mapping to electronic mapping for many consumers.
Of course it’s easy to read too much into these trends, but as a measure of interest or attention amongst internet users these trends are interesting, I’ll leave it up to you to stop other geospatial search term trends, but look forward for another 12 months of upheaval as the structure and focus of the industry concerned with geographic information continues to change and broaden its appeal beyond the professional (paleogeography) market.
Happy New Year !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
One reply on “Here comes 2008 !”
So it’s not just me seeing trends that reflect a wider base of end-users developing greater interest in these technologies vs. the more ‘professional’ set? It’s a great time to be a part of it all, Ed.