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An interview with AND’s (Automotive Navigation Data) Maarten Oldenhof, CEO in GPS Business News shows his belief that geodata is a commodity.
Our goal is to bring to market navigable maps that will cost 50% less than these offered today by TeleAtlas and Navteq.
Joe posted about TomTom share a few weeks ago. More details fall out of this post from GPS Business News.
Will updates from the TomTom system go back to data provider Tele Atlas?
“At the moment, TomTom will not be sharing the information we collect with any of our map providers. This could very well change in the future”, said Karen Drake a TomTom spokesperson.
Should they?
Map Share is a major investment from TomTom because such a solution needs a complex back-end system to process user’s updates, so it is sure the company is not likely to give back user generated map correction for free to TeleAtlas, and to see his competitors Navman and Mio – also TeleAtlas customers - getting the same information.
How might Tele Atlas feel?
However we guess TeleAtlas might be more worried than thrilled by Map Share. So far map providers TeleAtlas and Navteq were fully in control of the map data value chain and business model. Of course end users update were most welcome, but for free and on the map provider websites. But if PND manufacturers such as TomTom enter in the value chain and de facto control these end-user updates, it will change the rules of the game.
A Wired blog notes that Bret Taylor and Jim Norris (part of the GMaps dev team) joined money folks behind “Linden Lab (Second Life), Friendster, eBay and Critical Path.” Their titles? “Entrepreneurs in Residence.” Their quest? “to develop a new consumer oriented company.”
Posted today at Directions Magazine:
- A Governor and a Geologist Meet an Environmentalist and a Hospital Administrator - Result: Executive Champions
- From a New Language to a Common Approach - Dangermond’s Message for ESRI UC 2007
- Satellite Images Bridge Understanding Gap between Climate Change and Individuals
- Interview: Multimap’s Sean Phelan on the Company’s Latest API Release
- Women in GIS: Claudine Bianchi, Vice President of Marketing, MetaCarta
Interested? We have a feed of articles from Directions Magazine or you can subscribe to e-mail newsletters.
AfterCAD caused a small stir in CAD circles when it offered a CAD publishing/markup solution that used an AJAX client (thing Google Maps) for viewing 2D data. Yesterday it released “AfterCAD RealWorld, a patent pending, server-side, 3D publishing solution.” (press release) It too uses an clientside AJAX client and thus requires no plug-in. At the bottom of the release is this tease:
Stay tuned for AfterCAD’s future GIS publishing product, AfterCAD Planet.
The company is a partner with ESRI, Bentley and Autodesk among others.
via TenLinks
