Trimble Acquires @Road

The acquisitions continue as the GPS folks absorb those services that rely on their technology… This time Trimble scoops up well-known logistics company @Road for nearly $500 million.

Remote Sensing Underlies Map Books for Fishermen

It’s rare to profile a new mapping business that doesn’t involve the Net, but the Florida Times Union found one. Mike Madigan of Florida launched Outfitter’s Mapping, LLC to produce spiral bound books for fishing areas in the state. The aerial images are infrared making “the vegetation takes on a pink cast while the water remains blue and sand is white.” The article doesn’t explain who took the images.

They Map (and publish) Anything!

All the new tools for mapping mean one can map and publish just about anything. And, that’s fine since most maps are for personal or small group use. But then you get things like C|NET publishing a map of where a reporter went to look for and finally find “Zune love” that is another Zune with which to share music. It goes along with a gallery of images. Folks, if you want to publish such silly map/gallery pairs at least link them… that is put the photos on the map! These offerings were not on a blog but under the “news” tab.

Positioning Against Google Earth

It doesn’t matter if you are a leading GIS company or a map provider focused on a single coutry: you must position yourself with respect to Google Earth. And, that’s rather unfortunate since many offerings are best compared to Google Maps. Here’s the positioning of MapMyIndia, a solution for mapping on the Web and mobile phones, from its company’s CEO, CE Info Systems’ managing director, Rakesh Verma:

Google Earth and MapmyIndia are as different from each other as chalk and cheese. While Google Earth provides pictures, we provide detailed maps of roads in various cities in India. Unlike Google Earth, which includes picture maps of several countries, presently we only provide road maps of Indian cities, as we believe that we know India well.

If Google does decide to introduce Google Maps in future, we would only welcome the competition, here are bound to be comparisons with Google Maps and the superior quality of our maps would swing the users in our favor.

- Moneycontrol India

Wrong Mountain…

AFP reports about a travel poster encouraging travel to Nepal includes a picture not of its Himalayas, but of Peru’s Machu Pichu.