Spatial services directory

The task of finding the right supplier is never easy, especially when services are concerned. Industry specific directories can be a good starting point for preselecting potential candidates for contact and further evaluation. SpatialSource.com.au is the leading portal for the Australian spatial industry. It publishes a directory of suppliers of “all things spatial”. There are over 200 providers listed in a variety of categories, divided into five main groups: Data Supply, Geospatial Services, Hardware Supply, Services to Spatial Industry and Software Supply – from top tier multinationals to small operators like ausemaps.com. Bookmark the following link for your future reference: http://directory.spatialsource.com.au/

If you are a local supplier of spatial products or services consider registering your company in Spatial Source Online Directory – listing is free. The directory offers good exposure to potential customers. Help your prospective clients find you!

 

The Texting – Google’s Next Social Circle?

Texting, invented in 1992, has changed little over the past 19 years. In the absence of innovation on the part of the phone companies, a number of companies have stepped in and created this new class of texting product that adds a significant value layer to the basic texting function. Group texting is like adding a party line (for those of you that remember them) to your text messages.

Texting is one of the most personal of communication technologies, it is ubiquitous and typically reaches into the most intimate social circles a user has. It has always been a one to one or a one to many product. Group texting does it one step better and puts any given circle of users into the same context and allows many to many communications through an online hub.

The players in the field, GroupMe, Disco.com, Huddl, FastSociety and Beluga offer up pretty much the same basic functionality of being able to create a new group of texters and an associated voip number via an online interface or a smart phone app. When a message is sent to the group’s unique number by any member, all members of the group receive the message. It is a service enhancement whose value is immediately obvious to even the most technically illiterate user. Group texting allows a group of users (up to 25 99) to coordinate their activities and/or movements quickly and easily.

To experiment with the technology I created a group for my four family members. To the right you can see their responses. My daughter, immediately upon experiencing it, set up one for her small group of 4 girl friends and has since been using it enthusiastically.

There is a business use case for the technology as well as a personal one.  When I showed it to my brother-in-law, a surgeon in a small practice, he created an account to allow the four doctors in his practice to help communicate hospital call schedule conflicts without the intervention of a secretary/intermediary, an immediate stress and time saver.

Beyond the basic functionality each of the services has a slightly different feature set that differentiates them.

Disco.com, perhaps because it is so new, is a bare bones product with just group texting. GroupMe and Fast Society add Latitude-like and mobile tele-conferencing features. Huddl adds more social integration and image sharing options.

Obviously the big boys think the space is important. Beluga was bought up by Facebook in early March. Disco.com, released at the end of March, was created internally at Google by a group that functions independently of the mother ship.

At the time of introduction, TechCrunch speculated that  Disco.com would stay independent of any social efforts at Google. I see that as unlikely. Any development in a corporation ultimately needs to contribute back. While disco.com might be able to make it as a stand alone product it would be much more valuable if integrated with the likes of Latitude, the new Offers or even Google Voice.  The team that created the product might stay as an independent development unit but ultimately the functionality of disco.com, like Hotpot, offers too much long term value to not bring it back into the corporate fold much.

Ultimately, group texting is a activity that is not only extremely useful to the users but also very social and very local in nature. It reaches into the inner sanctum of our lives and exists where we are the most influenced and are the most influential. If leveraged appropriately, it could offer advertisers an incredible opportunity to understand and participate in those inner worlds. The technology, in adding a layer to a trusted medium, holds up the promise of making the telcos dumb texting pipes and foreshadows them losing out on the value created by the layer. It offers who ever runs the service the best view of our most intimate circle of friends and family, the people that we most trust and love.

My sense is that functionality of group texting is so useful and obvious that capability will soon be everywhere. Who the leader will be is not yet clear.

Maps APIs over SSL now available to all

As public WiFi becomes increasingly ubiquitous, we spend more and more of our time on shared networks. This can expose our personal data to third parties if the sites we access are not secure. Many sites use Google services to store and manage Google data. In response to this, Google is today announcing improved support for SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) across many APIs, and recommending that any application that manages user data switch to using SSL.

We want to ensure that applications using the Google Maps API are free to follow this recommendation. As such we are happy to offer free access to the Maps API v3, Static Maps API, and Maps API Web Services over HTTPS to all developers from today. To load the Maps API v3 over HTTPS, the API must be loaded from the hostname maps-api-ssl.google.com. For the Static Maps API and Web Services, please use maps.googleapis.com.

In addition to offering access over HTTPS, all of the Maps APIs (with the continuing exception of the Places API) will continue to be accessible over HTTP, and we recommend that sites that are using the API purely to display public data, such as store locations, continue to use HTTP for optimal performance.

Please also note that although SSL access is now available to all developers, the terms of the Maps API have not changed. If your site uses SSL because you charge for access to your application, or because your application is not publicly accessible to all users, you must still purchase a Maps API Premier license. For more information on Maps API Premier, please contact the Maps API Premier Sales team.

We hope this change assists in making your users feel safe and secure using your applications. If you have any questions or concerns about this change, please post to the Maps API v3, Static Maps API, or Web Services forum as appropriate for the service you are using.