I had a reader ask me if I was planning on publishing a cool, Top 10 GIS stories of the decade article... indeed a great idea although no small task by any means.

 And so, I'll ask our faithful readers, what do you think is the biggest GIS/Geo technology news story of the 2000's?? Indeed there's plenty of stories to ponder. The following are but a few news items of interest that stand out in my mind (off the top of my head):

• Google's buy-out of Keyhole and the launch of Google Earth - no doubt this has changed the World!
• High resolution earth imaging satellites launched by DigitalGlobe and GeoEye - what would Google Earth be without all that fabulous imagery??
• The google Maps API - Indeed map mashups are a huge story and have changed the way we think about creating maps. Google maps has single-handedly brought GIS and map mashup awareness to the masses and we can all thank them! Now the GIS guy can easily explain to people what he/she does!
• ArcGIS 9X and Arc Data Online - You can't argue that Jack Dangermond hitting the Forbes Richest list last year has plenty to do with the success of ArcGIS. Now with ArcData online the sky is the limit as access to data has been opened up to the masses.
• Removal of Selective Availablity - When the government removed the degradation of quality of commercial GPS signals the game changed... this was huge!
• Carol Bartz leaves Autodesk and makes a splash with Yahoo! - With the departure of Bartz is almost seems like Autodesk has left the minds of the GIS user... no doubt GIS is still a huge part of what Autodesk does but its also mostly about CAD/GIS integration. Where oh where has Autodesk gone...
• Nokia buys NAVTEQ, TomTom grabs Tele Atlas - Data is kind and the 2 largest data providers have been snatched up by industry giants. no doubt these moves have affected the industry, big time!
• The smartphone - If you don't have a GPS enabled smartphone (think iPhone 3G S, Nokia N95, N97, Blackberry) then you need to get with the times... sorry but it's true! Geospatial technologies and mobile location services have infiltrated the World.. really, who doesn't use some kind of location-aware app on their mobile device?
• Twitter's Geolocation API - with the release of the location API developers have cart blanche to roll out cool, location-aware applications and services that link up with Twitter and facebook. The opportunities here are huge!