Simon Hendery: iPhone's GPS feature points way to potential goldmine

Until a few years ago, United States military authorities had a guarded and paranoid view of the power of GPS technology.

The US network of satellites that controls the global positioning system, which enables pinpointing of an object's location anywhere in the world, was considered such a valuable tool it was not a resource to be shared.

Data from the network was scrambled so that results - unless you had the secret military unlocking codes - were deliberately skewed to make locations slightly wrong.

The aim, apparently, was to stop competing powers from using this otherwise highly accurate tool to do things like, say guide a missile to a precisely specified target , particularly one within US borders.

Thankfully, this concern abated and accurate GPS has been liberated, unleashing a flood of related technology developments that are benefiting businesses and consumers.

A relatively cheap cellphone can tell you exactly where you are, and how far away - to the nearest metre - you are from where you want to be.

A $300 in-car navigation system can warn you when you exceed the speed limit, and the same type of unit is increasingly replacing human memory as the means of ensuring the taxi driver takes the shortest route to your intended destination.

This week, directory company Yellow (formerly known as Yellow Pages before that brand become too low-tech to be associated with) said its new iPhone application, which makes good use of that particular device's GPS capabilities, had become the most downloaded local Apple software tool just four days afterrelease.

The application lets users perform functions such as "local search" - using GPS to find details of, and directions to, the nearest business of a specified type.

Done well, this is a cute trick, particularly if you're a visitor from out of town, in desperate need of a curry, perhaps, but without the first clue about where to find the local Indian restaurant.

The Yellow iPhone app's popularity is a good example of how businesses and consumers are both eager to make the most of location-based services using spatial information combined with mobile data transmission.

But a new report commissioned by Land Information NZ, the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Economic Development says we're missing out on the full economic benefits of our own Government's treasure trove of spatial information.

According to the report - Spatial information in the New Zealand economy - innovative use of spatial information added at least $1.2 billion to the economy last year through productivity gains, but that figure could have been $500 million higher if technology developers had better access to the Government's various repositories of spatial data.

"Whether it's an organisation like Fonterra knowing where its milk tankers are so they can be redirected depending on actual pickup volumes, or someone finding a wedding ring lost at the bottom of Wellington Harbour, the story is the same - location matters," says LINZ chief executive Colin MacDonald.

He sees innovative technology concepts using spatial data as being an ideal export chance for New Zealand tech firms, some of which have already shown themselves to be adept at finding business opportunities based around this type of smart thinking.

"It's a small, dynamic sector with the potential to lead the world. However, industry leaders have been saying for a long time that if they had easier access to data they could do so much more. The opportunities are boundless."

The new report calls for the Government to develop a "national spatial data infrastructure" and Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson - himself a techie from way back - is at least making encouraging noises in agreement.

It's now a matter, as Williamson puts it, of "knocking away the remaining barriers to more widespread adoption of spatial information".

The minister seems prepared to do the knocking. Let's just hope his Cabinet colleagues open the door.