Sun and Google Announce a Partnership

This afternoon, Sun and Google announced a partnership. Exactly what they were going to do together was a little vague. Enhance the Google Toolbar, maybe sell some more hardware to Google and share in the advertising were mentioned as possibilities. The key phases that kept re-appearing were Open and Java. Questions were deflected, answers were obscure. Wonder what is really happening? Is this a big deal, or does it just sound like a big deal?

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Google’s San Francisco Experiment

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Google is offering to provide free wireless service to the entire city of San Francisco, a move that the Journal says may cost between $10 to $20 million. The proposal is to have 20-30 Wi-Fi hotspots every square mile. With that type of density, deriving a location with good accuracy seems highly feasible. What’s Google’s logic? On first glance it is to provide more opportunities for Googlites to use its Google Talk and GMail services. But the obvious purpose is advertising, of course, and without too much difficulty you should think "local" advertising…even micro-geographic advertising…down to the block level. Need a Starbucks? Shoot me the closest location and by the way, tell me if a parking space has opened up within 50 feet of the store front; and send me a map, too. Want to increase business? Send a coupon to your favorite customers, as they Google Talk their way down the street. It’s possible, it was tried before and failed (remember GeePS?), and it will happen again in a newly reincarnated feature offered to Googlites. Bet on it.

New Wiki for Extensions to Google Maps/Earth, MSN Virtual Earth and Yahoo Maps

“I [M. David Peterson] have taken a few moments to set-up a communtiy wiki such that we can begin to work together to develop a one of a kind resource regarding web service-based mapping technologies such as Google Maps, MSN Virtual Earth, and Yahoo! Maps.”
(via OnLamp)

New Level of CAD Marketing

Yeesh. Latest Bentley Press Release:

” Bentley Systems, Incorporated today announced that Rosendahl and Associates, Inc., a leading civil engineering and land surveying firm based in Mesa, Ariz., has released an open letter to the civil land development community. The letter, which was written by Wayne Rosendahl, principal of Rosendahl and Associates, shares the firm’s motivations and experiences in its move from Autodesk Land Desktop to Bentley PowerCivil site engineering software.” In the PR the text follows.

I wonder if this will work? Would you be proud to tell your Mom you crafted such a piece?

MapQuest Offers “Find Me” on BlackBerry

It’s the second company to offer such a service through the Sprint network; Nextel (now part of Sprint) has one, too. New features in MapQuest Find Me include group sharing of location information and notifications when devices cross boundaries. Sound familiar? It should: “’MapQuest Find Me’ was developed in partnership between MapQuest and uLocate.” uLocate is here in Boston and began offering its service based on MapQuest maps in 2003.