Google maps, ZoomIn maps and et are like the MP3 of the GIS world. It has made mapping and spatial visualisation available to everyone with a browser. Just as MP3 maybe not be good enough for audiophiles, google maps is not going to be powerful enough for a lot of serious GIS work. The simplicity of Google maps is going drive the consumption of GIS information into a new era.

Joel Sposky talks about business strategy and compares it a simple concept that he learned in the army - Fire and Motion.

Here is how it works. You fire at the enemy. That’s the fire part. And you move forward at the same time. That’s the motion. Get it?

You’re firing because then your enemy has to take cover. He can’t fire back at you when he’s cowering behind a wall. But firing is not enough. You also have to move forward, or you won’t make any progress.

Its all sounds all pretty standard stuff. When you start to think about the parallels in the business world that it start to really hit home.

If you look at a competitive market, the successful company is always the one setting the agenda and forcing competitors to match it.

If you’re constantly looking at matching your competitor’s features, thats equivalent to firing at the where your enemy was, not at where they are or where they are going.

Joel offers some insight on how to break this cycle.

The good news is that this isn’t terribly difficult: Instead of paying attention to what your competitors are doing, start reading your customer feedback e-mail personally.

…

Rest assured that your customers are already trying to tell you that this opportunity exists, if you’ll only listen.“

And finally here’s a quote from the ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky that sums up what business strategy should be about.

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

Here’s my wishlist for Xmas:

• $NZ500 smart phone with 2MP camera and GPS - iPhone has redefined what a phone should be all about. (And at a sensible price $US399) I want to update my aging Treo to GPS phone and N95 is too expensive.
• Instant messaging style status on Phone: When I look up a number in my address book it tells their status .eg In a meeting.
• Long life batteries: Must have more power ! Maybe sooner than we think
• Global TV / Movie release times: We live in a global economy, so why is media still lagging behind. We should have global release times for all content. Why torrent, when download a legit copy from iTunes.
• Decent broadband speeds: Other countries have 24+MB broadband, why can’t NZ.
• Lower cellphone charges: We’ve been paying too much for too long!

We moved office over the weekend. We’re now located on Willis St above Roti restaurant. (Across the road from Catalyst and Ascent. Hi Guys !)

Our new contact details are as follows:

ProjectX Technology Ltd.

Address:
149A Willis Street
Wellington
Phone / FAX:
+64 4 910 3100

Postal Address:
PO BOX 155
Wellington

Techcrunch have posted about some of the user numbers behind facebook. Paul Francis compiled a spreadsheet of the numbers.

NZ has 250,760 users - 71,600 male (28.55%) and 179,160 female (71.45%) ! Women outnumber men more than 2 to 1!

Looking at those numbers I would guess that we have a lot of ex-pats still calling NZ home. That’s a lot of people using face book! If what they say is true that more than 50% of facebookers log on once a day. That should put it squarely behind Trade me in terms of visits (althought bebo is more popular in NZ than facebook).

So if you’re looking for a captive NZ audience, then launching a facebook app to that audience is very very appealing. I’m not convinced that people pay any attention to the advertising!

I’ve been ranting about how expensive mobile calls and data rates have been for years…. Going back to India, highlighted just how crazy the price gap is. I was in Mizoram, which has only had mobile phones for about 18 months and they have super cheap rates!

How cheap?? How about a pre-paid phone with local calls from 0.6c per minute !?!? and free night-time calling ! (Ok, this is a promotion with super-low prices but still !)

Having a look at one of the top providers rates (Airtel and Vodafone)

I’ve taken data from Airtel’s website and tried to extract info from vodafone. Broadband pricing is slowly coming into line. Its time to get Mobile prices inline with the rest of the world. The impact of lower mobile prices was a wider effect to the economy. More New Zealanders would benefit to lower mobile prices than wold benefit by broadband. It will help development and innovation in the mobile space, thus creating jobs and growth opportunities for NZ companies. The future of computing is mobile, its time we grew up and get with the rest of the world!

This came as a very pleasant surprise: In last night’s NZ Open Source Awards, ProjectX won the “Open Source Use in Business” category, and NZ Summer of Code took out the “Open Source Use in Education” award.

We’ll write some more soon about the advantages we’ve found to using open source, and some specific software that we can’t do without; but for the moment we’re all just rather stunned!