Where 2.0 Overviews by Non-Geo Geeks

Daniel H. Steinberg of O’Reilly describes a few of the presentations from EyeBeam, NAVTEQ and others. The NAVTEQ one suggested something that I suppose I’m believing more and more: you must field verify your geodata. Just the other day I drove a 100 route that several cyclists will follow next week. The route was pretty well laid out, turns were markedЕbut a key bridge would be closed during the ride. Any way to learn that other than driving it the week before? Perhaps calling each town to confirm construction plans, but that’s a lot of work…

Wired‘s Ryan Singel also covered the event, in particular the release of Google’s and Yahoo’s mapping APIs. Here’s a telling observation, one I wish I made: “The API announcements illustrate that both companies are serious about devoting resources to outside projects that the companies have little control over.” That’s true and certainly is not the vision of “old guard” of GIS. There’s also some valuable insight in the difference between the two offerings - including that Yahoo will host the maps and Google will not.

Ok, now back to geo folks. Ed Parsons comes to this conclusion after Where 2.0: “The old guard of the established mapping agencies needs to take note, although their core business will remain unchanged, consumer mapping applications have changed forever.”

I agree that the core businesses for GIS software will remain unchanged: cities and towns, the defense department, forestry companies are unlikely to change vendors anytime soon. But, their expectations will change. They’ll want elegant APIs, simple interfaces, speedy response and tons of data easy to access. I’d put it, “consumer mapping applications have changed the mapping landscape for consumers and business/gov customers forever.”

Predicting Traffic

On Wednesday California will get the US’s first predictive traffic forecasts. In addition to regular traffic reports, TV viewers on channel 10, will receive predictions for up to a week in future. The service from Triangle Software relies on input to its model from sensors, as well as historic patterns, weather conditions, road incident alerts, road work and sporting event calendars. Nineteen other cities are on-deck for the service in the coming months. You can have a look at the 3D visualization here.

TheFeature Closes up Shop

One of my favorite blogs, TheFeature, posted its last post today. Funding by Nokia (but not branded that way) the site hosted a number of posters who commented on the mobile Internet. The statement in todayТs goodbye is that with so many other quality blogs and websites, TheFeature did its job of creating a community and will now sign off. I will credit TheFeature and SmartMobs with convincing me to get a blog, which Directions quickly provided when I joined earlier this year.

Cellular Carriers Brace for LBS in the US…Again

From the Where 2.0 conference came these insights from two cellular carriers, Sprint and Nextel, which by the way, just announced the branding strategy of the newly merged company:

Peter Distler from Spint LBS said that they were 12-24 months away from full scale consumer adoption of LBS mainly because of support for rolling out a such a large scale program to existing customers, promotion, and business model. He said that the constraints on the LBS market inlcude:

1. Network and handset-based LBS requires 3G technologies
2. Operation must deliver high quality performance environment
3. Location application partners must deliver better and more accurate content
4. The user interface experience must be better than it is now
5. There must be low latency fixes

Sprint has, for now, focused its marketing on business applications such as asset tracking, field force management, and roadside assistance.

Mary Foltz from Nextel was more exuberant about LBS possiblities and well she should be since NEXTEL is the only company delivering GPS-equipped handsets at this time and where you can actually subscribe to an LBS service. NEXTEL wants a substantial engagement with developers and touted the open platform, open API that they support. See Developer.Nextel.com. She praised the work her company is doing with TeleNav and mentioned the 40+ applications that NEXTEL is or hopes to leverage with the NEXTEL platform, such as the FindMe application with MapQuest.

So, now what happens when the companies merge? There are obviously competing groups at NEXTEL/Sprint that both look the market for LBS services.


 

At Where 2.0, Dangermond schools the “young mappers”

Jack Dangermond, president of ESRI, had a few pointed, but polite comments for the audience of O’Reilly Media’s Where 2.0. "There have been ‘old guys’ who have been doing this for a long time; there are young guys who are just starting; they are coming together through the magic and standards of the web."

There are two "take-aways" here. One, we welcome the ‘young pups’ but maps have been cool to us for a long time. Two, there are web standards that are emerging from the OGC that you need to carefully understand, appreciate, and use.

Dangermond also said, "Google is one expression of the world. GIS networks contain libraries of information and layers that are managed and serve up data." In other words, wake up and smell the terabytes of geospatial data that exist (e.g. Geospatial One-Stop) already; there’s more to the world than streets and points.

Dangermond issued a caution as I spoke to him after his presentation. "This reminds me of LBS." He was referring to the hype that surrounded wireless location-based services, a bubble that burst and has yet to recover.