Sharing Knowledge

Every month I write my editorial and in doing so give you, our reader, a little bit of myself; a thought, view or experience. But what do we know of you? If you subscribe to GIM International we know your name and address, position, profession, organisation and main business. And if you are a dedicated reader and yearly fill in the renewal form we send you (which we greatly value), we also know your present job and sometimes the type of products you use.

But we know more than that! We know which articles, news items and job offers you feel worth scrutinising. And since this is a matter that might be of value to other readers, you can now find the most popular items on our website. Looking, for example, at the most read articles, I find the Intergeo Preview of 2008. So I'm happy to say we will be publishing this year's advance Intergeo Preview 2009 in our next issue!

Another of the things we find greatly to our readers' liking is news about free GIS software downloads, like ESRI's ArcGIS for AutoCAD, a free AutoCAD application that allows CAD users to visualise and query GIS data within the CAD environment without conversion. This made news in 2007, but readers are still posting positive comments on our website, some fifty so far. It is for just such appreciative readers that we have made a special page on our website that offers an overview of and access to free GIS software. Often these applications are open-source software, trial versions or viewers.

I bet there are plenty of you with tips on other applications of interest to fellow readers that have so far been omitted from our list. I should like to invite these to send their suggestions or comments to our content manager Joost Boers (e-mail: Joos...@reedbusiness.nl). We realise this section will never be complete and may need updating over time, but we hope to be of help to you.

And what am I giving of myself this month? Well, apropos of what has gone before, I will tell you that I am Dutch, and admit that here we always like things that come free of charge. Yes, the Dutch are known for their stinginess and money-grubbing, hence the term ‘Dutch treat'. But sometimes ‘going Dutch' can also mean fair sharing.