The Value of Print Media in Geospatial?

You see, I can’t say such things, but James Fee can!

He asks: “Fall 2005 ArcNews is out and does anyone really care?”

Google, Froogle, Shmoogle

According to the Associated Press (See San Jose Mercury News; login required), Google has linked the shopping store locations displayed from Froogle, the company’s website for product shopping and item comparison, to Google Maps in order to show driving directions. Froogle allows the site visitor to do comparison shopping between stores in a specific zip code. Google Maps will be employed to provide routing directions between stores. The new feature went live today.

Geodata Collection on Marketplace

If I heard correctly last night, the folks at NPR’s Marketplace will be doing a piece on geodata collection with one of the data vendors on tonight’s edition. I suspect it’s NAVTEQ as its marketing department has done a great job of getting stories on its field workers in most of the big papers.

Too bad they couldn’t run it during Geography Awareness Week!

So, “wind up your radios” and tune in.

MapInfo’s Stock Seeing Movement; Location Tech Sector Growing

MapInfo’s (MAPS) stock is trading much higher in recent days, drifting above $14 per share. The stock is up 27% since September. Some of the message boards are indicating that institutional investors are starting to add the company to their portfolios due to the "hightened awareness" of geospatial technology in the marketplace. Not to dwell on the "Google Phenomenon" too much, but all the signs are out there that other public geospatial companies have seen their stocks rise because of a much greater interest in location technology. Case in point, Intergraph (INGR) is up 60% since May. I’d suggest either one is a take-over target. See also @Road (ARDI)- up 66% since late July. Suffice to say there’s lots of interest in the market.

9 million Downloads of Autodesk DWG Viewer

update 11/22: It seems that number, 9 million refers to DWF viewers, per this PR. I’m not sure of the source of the free DWG viewer number. It’s not on the website referenced below. It is however in the e-mail version I received: “The numbers are stunning, about as jaw-dropping as Autodesk’s nine million downloads of its DWG viewer software.” [end update]

I noted Autodesk’s new free DWG viewer when it was released in October. Now, reports Ralph Grabowski, the company claims nine million downloads. Gee, I guess the world was really waiting for that software!

Other goodies from Grabowski’s coverage of Autodesk’s quarterly call last week relevant to geospatial include (Q&A’s are paraphrased):

CEO Carol Bartz is now calling DWF “an industry standard format.”

Q: “How much of the installed base is now on subscription?”
A: “It’s in the 700-800 thousand range.”

Q: “What phase are we at in 3D adoption. Last statement you made is that it’s roughly a 10-year cycle to get everyone on 3D.”
A: “It’s less than 10% of our base converted to 3D, which is good news. We’re growing our 2D customers at 20%. It’s a wonderful decade-long process to get everyone on 3D. We’re far, far from even getting to the inflection point.”