january 2009 archives

Friday, January 30, 2009

Virtual Earth for Dutch geo developers

In case the recent posts about Microsoft Virtual Earth piqued your interest, sign up to secure a place at the MSDN InTrack: Virtual Earth in Barneveld, the Netherlands on 12 February 2009 (via Nederkaart)! Through the course of the day, there will be several presentations explaining how you can use Virtual Earth in your web applications.

This reminds me of the Google Geo Developers Day in Amsterdam back in March 2007. Maybe it is a good means to attract the attention of Dutch geo developers and have them consider Virtual Earth for web applications that they otherwise would build using the Google Maps API. However, Google Maps has such a headstart when it comes to familiarity and recognition among web developers, customers and end-users.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Multimap's dinosaurs

The founders of Multi Media Mapping Ltd. (a.k.a. Multimap) Sean Phelan and Audrey Mandela have left the company, a year after the acquisition by Microsoft. Their departure was marked by a party with all current and former Multimappers at the Globe Theatre in London two weeks ago. Find the evidence on Flickr!

It was a great opportunity to catch up with the old crew. Some were still with Multimap/Microsoft, others had moved on to do something else. Interestingly, quite a few of them are still well in the mapping business, for example with eMapSite and Geofutures, or involved in building websites such as RateMyArea, LocoMatrix, and the O2 Store Locator.

However, not all goes well for Multimap. The latest evidence on Flickr and Twitter indicates the Multimap Istanbul office has just been closed down. It seems like the current downturn is now starting to hit the online mapping industry too!

Monday, January 26, 2009

Live Search Maps goes lokaal

Just over a week ago, Live Search Maps Netherlands was launched (via Virtual Earth, An Evangelist's Blog). Although the mapping website was built exclusively on the Virtual Earth platform, the interface is fully in Dutch and the business listings contain locally sourced content, provided by the telephone directory De Telefoongids and the business directory De Gouden Gids.

Could Live Search Maps Netherlands become a player in the Dutch online mapping arena among the likes of Google Maps Netherlands, the ANWB Route Planner, and Routenet? Going by the 2008 Dutch Websites Top 20, Live.com comes only second after Google.nl. The ANWB (#20) is at the very bottom of the Dutch Websites Top 20, whereas the Dutch route planner website Routenet had left the Dutch Websites Top 20 already in 2007 when it dropped to (#31)! The second position of Live.com in the Top 20 should ensure good traffic to Live Search Maps Netherlands. For example, about 0.6% of all traffic to Google.nl goes to Google Maps according to the traffic details from Alexa.com!

Funnily enough, the Live Search Netherlands website does not have any hyperlink to Live Search Maps. Furthermore, the Microsoft Live Search product tour only features web search, image search, and mobile search. MSN Netherlands, another Microsoft property in the 2008 Dutch Websites Top 20 at (#7) does have a hyperlink to a Routeplanner, but this takes you to an almost empty page (note the reference to MapPoint in the URL)! So who's going to find out beyond the group of online mapping groupies, that Live Search Maps Netherlands is available? Let's assume this secrecy is merely a means to ramp up online traffic to the new website. On the other hand, I wouldn't expect online traffic from the Netherlands to make a significant dent in the VE platform either. Hey, that's probably where De Telefoongids and De Gouden Gids come in. Although VE is ready to cope with the additional online traffic, these contributing platforms may not be ready yet.