The LAPD said Wednesday it'll set aside plans to map Muslim communities.

"There was a clear message from the Muslim community that they were not comfortable with it. So we listened," said Mary Grady, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Police Department. She couldn't immediately say when the plan might resume.

Grady said the remaining part of the initiative, which includes outreach efforts to strengthen ties with Muslim communities, would continue, and police planned to meet with Muslim leaders Thursday.

If I had to guess, the plan will never be back.

- AP

Darrin Clement from Maponics sent me a note about last week's "podcast on how local news is using mapping."

He notes:

"We just announced a relationship with PublicPress.org that might be interesting."

From the PR:

Public Press, Inc. the company behind the ground-breaking citizen journalism site publicpress.org, announced today the integration of Maponics Neighborhood Boundaries™ to enhance local search and drive more relevant stories to viewers.

While the two are in a bidding war (Garmin is said to still be mulling a second counter offer that'd raise it above TomTom's) the two companies settled all the intellectual property cases pending in the U.K., the Netherlands, Wisconsin and Texas. No details on terms of the agreement.

Bloomberg offers up an analysis of the Tele Atlas bidding war which matches a lot of what I heard at deCarta's devCON over the past few days. PND makers are getting squeezed by in-car systems on one side and cell phones on the other. (deCarta sees the solution as connected PNDs and I think they make a good point.)

Among those quoted was the day two keynoter: Jeff Rath

"They're trying to protect themselves as the whole world goes wireless around them,'' said Jeff Rath, an analyst at Canaccord Adams in Vancouver, who tells clients to hold onto Garmin. The auction for Tele Atlas, based in Den Bosch, Netherlands, is about "self-preservation.''