A New Directions

Today, we are pleased to announce several changes.In a nutshell:

We have renamed our company to Directions Media
Launched a new publication, Location Intelligence Magazine in our media group
Updated the design for all of our publications
Changed the delivery days for publication of our newsletters

Let me offer this brief FAQ to clarify what we are doing:

Why did you change your name?

We changed our name to Direction Media to recognize the addition of other publications and conferences that comprise our publishing group: Directions Magazine, Location Intelligence Magazine, The Location Intelligence Conference, and All Points Blog.

Was there a need to redesign your website?

As a Web-based publication, we believe it is essential to keep things "fresh" and not just by updating new content on a daily basis.We believe the new format will be more readable for subscribers and viewers and more useful to our advertisers.All publications in our media group will have a similar "look and feel".

What will happen to the newsletters?

Instead of delivering three Directions newsletters each week, we are now publishing only two.Readers have indicated in recent polls that three newsletter are too many; we are listening to that request and will now offer Monday and Thursday e-mail publications.If you have subscribed to our Monday newsletter you will continue to receive headlines, a recap of the previous week's key issues, and new products plus links to new jobs, RFPs and events on Monday.Subscribers to the Wednesday and Friday newsletters will receive a newsletter on Thursdays that will provide editorials, application and technology articles, interviews and other in depth material..

Why a new magazine? How will it differ from the Directions Magazine that I read now?

Directions Magazine will continue to focus on FOUNDATION TECHNOLOGIES: GIS, desktop mapping, GPS, data, Web services and the applications that are related to the management and analysis of geospatial information.You will continue to find all of this at www.DirectionsMag.com
Location Intelligence Magazine will focus on INCORPORATED TECHNOLOGIES or the methods and practices of integrating location technology with enterprise computing applications such as business intelligence, predictive analytics, spatial databases, supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, financial systems and others.Primarily, we will seek to keep readers one step ahead about how to "profit" from location intelligence.You will find it at the place where you may have looked for information about our conference: www.LocationIntelligence.net. That website will host the magazine and conference information.If you would like to contribute an article on any of these topics, please write to Hal Reid, Managing Editor, at Info@LocationIntelligence.net

Won't there be issues that overlap?

Undoubtedly.The explosion of information about popular Web mapping portals from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Multimap and MapQuest, plus technologies offered by other companies that support both the foundation and incorporated applications like, Telcontar, MetaCarta, Skyhook as well as location technology for wireless consumers and businesses that "enable" many mobile and internet location services will crossover to both areas of our publications.We hope you will trust us to decipher the differences.

Why separate the All Points Blog from Directions Magazine?

AllPointsBlog.com is our way of getting news to you fast.It is a service where you will find your daily fix of quick facts and sometimes "our take" on the issues that we think are important.In addition, we will add blog entries from other geospatial technology professionals who we believe to be equally (or more!) knowledgeable on certain topics.We hope you find time to stop by daily.We aim to make it as interesting, accessible, and insightful as possible.

We appreciate the loyalty of our readers.We've seen a 40% growth to our readership this year already thanks to you.We hope you will tell others to subscribe or to bookmark the pages of our publications.If you have something you want us to know, write to us at editors@directionsmag.com

Thank you.
Jane Elliott, Publisher
Joe Francica, Editor-in-Chief & Vice Publisher