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That’s the name of the latest article in Spiegel Online comparing Google and Microsoft’s strategies on creating virtual 3D worlds online. (I read the title as suggesting you can take the data with you.) I didn’t learn anything new, but it’s a nice article. And, there’s no mention of how the two will monetize these investments.
Posted today at LBS360.NET, Directions Media’s publication about location-based services:
Verizon Wireless’ 3rd Party LBS Developer Program (TheZON)
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Analytical Surveys (ASI) is getting out of GIS and moving toward oil and gas, but it’s a tough changeover. The San Antonio Business Journal notes the loss of $383,000 was down from last year and the net income from oil and gas was but $7,000. The positives say CEO Lori Jones can be traced to a sale of Wisconsin property and better performance on GIS contacts.
Glenn noted in a comment:
Actually, any blog that is serving up Google ads (ie. pretty much 98% of the blogs out there) is commercially funded.
I had some extra time over the holidays and went to find out if that 98% number is true in the geoblogs. I visited every blog from Planet Geospatial and divided them between those that had Google Ads, those with more traditional graphic banner ads, those that had both and those that had none. I successfully connected to 83 blogs; 5 were not online during my research. The results:
Google Text Ads 12 (14%)
Traditional Ads 4 ( 5%)
Both 3 ( 4%)
None 64 (77%)
Total 83 (total does not add to 100% due to rounding)
Now, others might have classified things differently or been more savvy than I about how “traditional” ads were served (perhaps from Microsoft, Yahoo or some other service). I do not want to suggest this was a scientific, random or complete survey.
Some examples of each category:
Google Ads: Rusty Planet, Spatial Ireland
Traditional Ads: Windows Live Local / Virtual Earth, All Points Blog
Both: Very Spatial, The Map Room
None: Random Notes (Jason Birch), Datum Shift
