june 2006 archives

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Redrawing the map

...of the world of online mapping, again. Just one year ago, the Where 2.0 conference marked an important step in online mapping as it firmly established location as an ingredient of Web 2.0. Both Google and Yahoo first presented their mapping APIs back then for developers to easily build geographic mash-ups. It took an established mapping provider such as MapQuest quite some time to catch up and release their OpenAPI to the developers community.

Last week, Google Maps made a step in the opposite direction. While it has firmly established itself in the developers community over the last year, Google announced its business-to-business offering for the US and Canada: Google Maps for Enterprise. I'm sure that Google Maps for Enterprise and Google Earth Enterprise are just ways for Google to test the waters for other services such as Gmail for Enterprise or Google Office Suite for Enterprise. But for now, the most important question is of course: Why would I pay for Google Maps for Enterprise if the Google Maps API is free?

... implementation guidance, telephone support and the ability to use Google Maps for internal and external applications. ...if and when we start to display advertising on Google Maps, it is optional to include or exclude it

Another step that confirms Google Maps as a serious online mapping provider is its decision to support geocoding through the Google Maps API not only for the US (just like the Yahoo Geocoding API), but also for Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. Interestingly, it is equipped with a client-side cache, so that if the same address is geocoded again, the response will be returned from the cache rather than from Google's geocoder. Furthermore, you can do even batch-geocoding and the documentation also suggests to store these geocoded addresses on your own servers. Now that's a completely different approach than the pricing structure for, say OS Address Point.

Another recent development in the world of online mapping was Telcontar launching its Hosted Web Services. Its Drill Down Server that underpins Yahoo Maps, Google Maps, Ask.com and Rand McNally also powers these Hosted Web Services and allows Telcontar to deliver maps and other geographic services following an ASP-model. Thus, Telcontar no longer positions itself as just a provider of enabling technology, but also as a business-to-business online mapping service provider. This was further emphasised by Telcontar changing its name to deCarta. Never bite the hand that feeds you, or is Google Maps for Enterprise indeed going to compete with deCarta?  permanent link for this entry

Friday, June 16, 2006

Where and elsewhere

The launch party and book presentation of Else/Where: Mapping, New Cartographies of Networks and Territories last Saturday was pretty exciting. Although the book is published by the University of Minnesota Design Institute, many contributors are either from the Netherlands or they are based here. Hence this book presentation in Amsterdam. Of course, there were the usual suspects such as Sam and Esther, but it was also a great opportunity to meet new people, for example Jeremy Wood of GPS Drawing who presented his work as one of the contributors to the book. Another presentation I genuinely enjoyed was by Renee Turner who told about their Unravelling Histories. After the presentations I just could not wait to get my hand on a copy of the book!

The setting for the launch party was the Playmobiel exhibition at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam. Very funny were the cross-stitched picture messages by Kate Pemberton. Another highlight is Screened by Bert Kommerij. Screened is an audio walk through Amsterdam that you can download to your iPod. Playmobiel runs until July 8, 2006

Also this week was Where 2.0, the O'Reilly conference on the future of mapping and local search I attended last year. But this time, I was elsewhere...  permanent link for this entry