All Points Blog: Our Opinion, Your Views of All Things Location

Wednesday, November 7. 2007

NAVTEQ Acquires MapSolute

There's never a dull moment in M&A these days. Even as it's poised to become part of Nokia, NAVTEQ announces the acquisition of German MapSolute. Officially, the NAVTEQ German Holdings B.V. unit acquired MapSolute GmbH, a Germany-based developer of geographical software, for about $40 million according to Reuters.

MapSolute offers a platform steeped in OGC standards and was an early adopter of GeoRSS. The technology powers the widely used (in Europe) Map24 website.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in LBS at 19:37 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Who's Benefiting from the Battle over Tele Atlas? GEOY & IMP

While the markets are focused on the battle for Tele Atlas now that TomTom has upped their bid for the geospatial data supplier, who's benefiting from the increased awareness of geospatial data? While the obvious answer is NAVTEQ (NVT) which has seen its stock price rise above $77.50 for the first time in a while you need to look at some of the other beneficiaries.

Both GeoEye (GEOY) and Intermap (IMP) have seen their stock prices rise approximately 30% and 66% respectively since the end of September. GeoEye is still slated to launch the GeoEye-1 earth imaging satellite in Q2 2008 while Intermap has benefited from rumors of a takeover by Microsoft (MSFT) now that they are working more closely together on 3D data. Garmin's stock however is reeling, dropping over 10% today on the news from TomTom.

Posted by Joe Francica in Geospatial Business at 12:35 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Those Who Searched for Fossett in Images Reflect

Wired looks back at the success and failure of the Internet-based effort to find Steve Fossett in the Nevada desert by thousands of untrained imagery analysts. You can tell it's gotten to Mechanical Turk's director, Peter Cohen, as he will no longer do interviews on the topic.

More valuable are thoughts of those who spent hours on the site. Some felt the time wasted with no feedback at all regarding their work. Others noted problems in the process, which slowed them down. I keep going back to comments of Civil Air Patrol Maj. Cynthia Ryan who during the search efforts and today notes the whole thing distracted from her team's mission.

I for one think the process, despite two failures (Jim Gray, too), has potential. There's much to be learned and the best article on that is from Ken Barbalace writing at EnvironmentalChemistry.com.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Remote Sensing at 08:51 | Comments (11) | Trackbacks (0)

Dash Zillow Mashup

The video on Gizmodo shows use of the open Dash API. This is apparently the first mashup of the Internet-enabled nav device. Recall Zillow is the real estate estimate of house prices site.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 08:45 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Tracking Blocked Bus Stops with GPS

BostonNow (one of our two freebie papers given out during the morning commute) reports that that the state's transportation authority (MBTA) will be installing buttons in buses so that drivers can signal when bus stops are blocked by parked cars. The buses are tracking via GPS so the button push will be associated with a location. The idea is to build a database of offending areas and to have police target those. It's unlikely such a system would work in real time. Another plan: up fines for parking in bus stops to $125. As a bus rider I'm fine with both ideas.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in GPS at 08:39 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Deep Local in the News

DeepLocal, got its plug from the local paper, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, just the other day. The company focusses on "deep local" information: "communicating information that might be so deeply hidden in a community that it is only stored in the stories shared by people who live there."

The information is one part, but cartography is the other when it comes to a "good map." So, the mix of content and graphic novel visuals make the new Bike Pittsburgh map (pdf) something quite unique. DeepLocal got a grant to produce the map which will be available in online interactive form this winter.

- PopCity

Posted by Adena Schutzberg at 08:01 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Comments

Daniel about Pretty Picture vs. Satellite Imagery in Use
October 12
Once raw samples are formally available [...]

siva about Flash in Local Gov Websites
October 10
What would be very useful is to have a [...]

Bob Thompson about Update: Siderelis Named first DOI GIO
October 10
Ho hum.

Karen Edelstein about IDC Pegs SIM Market Growth at 14.2%
October 10
Could someone explain how the $2.8 [...]

Sam the Eagle about Update: Siderelis Named first DOI GIO
October 10
In relation to Siderelis' direct [...]

Seth Grimes about Structured vs. Unstructured Data - Let's be clear on definitions
October 10
I don't see a definition of [...]

Roy about "First" Directions App for iPhone
October 8
G-Map is not available at Apple at the [...]

Special Announcement

Newsletter

Calendar

Syndicate This Blog

Top Referers

Our Points