Location Based Apps for India

Soon several social and biz apps will start leveraging (x,y,z, t, photo/video/other info from remote sensor)!! Time for GIS to come into mainstream and limelight!!

Facebook.com, Apple, Foursquare.com, twitter.com etc all all keen to track your location the moment you use the app from your mobile device. More and more will follow and eventually every app will be trying to get your (x,y at specific time). This is extremely powerful information and will be used in more than one ways by companies. Need I elaborate that? Some other day..

How many LBS apps or apps that use "location" exist in India? I will try and find out. If you know of few interesting ones, please let me know.

Manoj

Is the World’s Geospatial development story complete without India?

Recently I visited IIT Roorkee and was very impressed with the quality of research work that is being carried out in the field of Remote Sensing by brilliant research scholars guided by able Professors. While I was giving final touches to my “different view” report on IIT Roorkee visit, a news-paper analysis caught my attention and I am saving my report to blog at a later time!

Google, Yahoo, Intel, IBM, Adobe, Microsoft - the line-up on MNC’s which have opened their own R&D centers in India is a virtual Who’s Who of the IT industry. India is emerging as a hot destination for investment in research and development. An article in Times of India has analysed Mirosoft, Intel, Adobe & IBM India R&D. Here’s the summary:

Microsoft

• Two research facilities in India – Hyderabad & Bangalore
• Hyderabad center is the largest development unit outside the US
• Products by Microsoft India : Data Protection Manager; Virtual PC 2007 ; Office Mobile which includes Word, Excel & Powerpoint ; SQL Mobile

INTEL

• Intel’s largest non-manufacturing unit outside US is in Bangalore
• Products by Intel India: Teraflops research chip; Centrino Duo technology; Quad core processor; Community PC

ADOBE

• Two centers in India – Noida (biggest outside US) & Bangalore
• Products by Adobe India: PageMaker 7.0; Acrobat Reader on Palm OS & Pocket PC; Frame Maker, Page Maker Pack, Photoshop Album ; Premiere Elements 3.0

IBM

• Two centers in India – Bangalore & Delhi
• Products by IBM India: Web-based, interactive language technology; Business finder technology

Can we map a similar pattern in the world's geospatial R&D? Actually, geospatial industry in also following the similar route. MapInfo has recently opened a development center at Noida, within the last two years Bentley has set-up a development center at Pune, Microsoft development center at Bangalore is focusing on GIS, Google center at Hyderabad is doing the same! Intergraph was the first to set-up India center years back (1994?).

But I have few bigger questions:

• Is India truly seen as a R&D center by World’s geospatial development industry & community?
• Is the world’s geospatial development story complete without India?

Stay tuned to “Different View” to discuss this. Over the next few weeks I will put my thoughts on India’s research and development potential for World’s Geospatial Industry!

Manoj Misra