march 2004 archives

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

North American online mapping arena

Map24, the Germany-based mapping website, has received a major overhaul: it's now available for public beta testing. Not only have they changed their logo, the geographic coverage has been extended to include all of the AND European mapping data. Furthermore, they are also aiming to get a piece of the pie in the North American online mapping market with the launch of a US and Canada portal! Curiously this portal cannot be accessed from the public beta.

Fair enough, the Map24 Java interface is pretty impressive, but will they make it in a market arena among big players such as MapQuest and Microsoft MapPoint? Also, it was interesting to learn that Telcontar is taking aim at these very players too. Telcontar's opportunity lies in the fact that Microsoft is trying to convert Vicinity customers [...] and that MapQuest is plying older technology. Counting Yahoo, Hutchison 3G, and Rand McNally among their customers, Telcontar believes it is the most heavily used location-based services platform in the world.

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Mapping websites and their data suppliers, an update

Just after I blogged about mapping data providers two weeks ago, it was announced that NavTech has changed its name to NAVTEQ! The new name underscores the company's commitment to its core business and rich history while also reflecting its focus on innovation and growth.

Has Maporama started a new trend here? Who's going to be next to change its name? Place your bets now! Following on from this announcement, NAVTEQ has also joined the OGC as a strategic member. Or is this yet another way in which NAVTEQ follows Maporama: continuously sending out press releases to fix people's attention?

Going local with Google

It all started with Google's 2002 Programming Contest competition. The last few months, it's been maturing in the Google Labs and last week it finally made it to public beta: Google Local. Indeed, it's only been one week since Yahoo launched SmartView, its mapping makeover. Search engines are now competing in the geographic search arena. Where does that leave mapping websites? Will they finally resume their core business of delivering maps and routes?

Google Local not only gives you the dry business directory-style factual details, but garnishes this information with content appearing on the websites of businesses themselves. Pulling from Google's main web page index, users can not only see the businesses but also what everyone else is saying about the business as they can access reviews, commentary, and other information produced by the web community. Furthrermore, users can obtain maps and there's a button to get driving directions (thanks to MapQuest). Since users can opt for Google to store the location they submitted (using a cookie), users can easily obtain personalised, one-click driving directions to a particular business.

Let's hope Google Search will extend its geographic coverage soon. Going by their own market research, a.k.a. Google ZeitGeist, “routenplaner” and “map” were the most popular search terms in Germany and Japan respectively during the month of February!

Saturday, March 20, 2004

Map Mongers II

After the success of Map Mongers I earlier this year, next wednesday marks the second Map Mongers meeting! So if you are into locative media, geowanking, open source mapping, psychogeography or if you are just curious to meet the people behind socialfiction and webmapper.net, make sure to be there and then:

When: wednesday, March 24, 2004 at 7pm
Where: Diep Bar
Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal 256
Amsterdam

Monday, March 15, 2004

Mapping local information

With SmartView, Yahoo is taking the next step towards the “hybrid future”. This additional service to Yahoo! Maps provides local information from various parts of the Yahoo network. Apparently, that's not all:

... Yahoo maps have recently been enhanced with faster panning and zooming, a new large map view, turn-by-turn maps with driving directions and improved in-car readability of printed directions. Yahoo plans to roll out several additional features in the local search arena over the coming year...

I made a typo entering “Seatlle” in the search box. Confusingly, I was informed thus: Your search matched multiple cities, and I had to choose from “Barcelona” in either Arkansas (AR), Louisiana (LA), or New York (NY)! Would this be one of the additional features? It almost goes without saying: you can only search locations in the US and Canada!

Congestion charging: payment finder

Last year, the congestion charge was introduced in London. To mark this introduction, I blogged about various geographic angles to the congestion charge scheme. One of the gripes I had concerned the poor implementation of the PayPoint store locator.

TfL seem to have realised this. Furthermore, it's not just PayPoint outlets where you can pay your congestion charge. Now, the TfL website features a Payment Finder. Instead of an attribute search as implemented on the PayPoints store locator, the Payment Finder uses a spatial search to find the nearest outlets, thanks to Multimap.

Thursday, March 11, 2004

Mapping websites and their data suppliers

There are only a few big players in the mapping data arena: AND, GDT, NavTech, and TeleAtllas. The former two specialise in continental, small scale data sets, whereas the latter two provide large scale street-level data. Focussing on street-level vector data, mapping websites choose either TeleAtlas or NavTech data, whereas their map rendering engines are usually able to take either of the data sets. The reason for choosing one of the data sets used to be coverage and range of attributes associated with each feature in the data set. However, as these data suppliers are competing head to head, nowadays their offering is almost equal. So why are mapping websites still going with one vector data supplier? Cost is the overarching concern. Because of their coverage and their richness of attributes, these data sets are rather expensive. Furhermore, mapping websites have their data preparation and data quality assurance typically set up for either of the data sets.

To introduce some variety, the UK mapping websites Multimap and Streetmap supplement their offering of vector data with raster data sets from Ordnance Survey and various cartographic publishers. Thus, business to business customers can choose the mapping of their liking and even add their custom mapping layers.

The other day, it was announced that Mapquest and TeleAtlas are teaming up to deliver a new product. Interestingly, Mapquest has always been a stronghold of NavTech! Is this a strategy in reaction to Microsoft MapPoint, a sign of a maturing industry, or actually both? It would be interesting to see whether other mapping websites will follow suit.

Monday, March 08, 2004

Multimap trials driving directions in continental Europe

Just noticed last night: Multimap has published its driving directions in continental Europe for beta testing on its public website! Note that you can only calculate routes between locations in the same country. Also, you can get walking directions for the UK. Multimap has had these services available for its business clients for a long time, so it's great to see it appear on the public website now. Keep up the good work, folks!

Monday, March 01, 2004

Canada: herald of GI things to come?

When it comes to web cartography, the Atlas of Canada is a great example. At the moment the atlas is featuring its health maps. Well, it's not quite like the National Atlas of Public Health, but the Atlas of Canada certainly excels in its range of topics and its technology! Furthermore, Canada is not only leading the way in web cartography. Its geographic information infrastructure is rather impressive as well, cumulating in the GeoGratis website that distributes geospatial data of Canada. Data is available for download, without charge! Why? Read this.

Last year, the Canada-based company DM Solutions expressed its commitment to open source GIS as it contributed significantly to MapServer. This year, the Ottawa MapServer Users Group is organising the Open Source GIS Conference 2004 & Second Annual MapServer User Meeting to be held June 9-11, 2004, in Ottawa, Canada. Unfortunately, there's just no way I can afford to attend...