Gary Price at Ask/Resource Shelf sent on this one:

Geographical Location Extraction (filed July 3, 2007)

"A geographical location extraction method and tool to infer a likely geographical location from one or more search terms entered as a query by a user on a search engine or the like."

From a quick look it seems to be a process of examining words to determine how likely it is they are geographic and intended as part of a geographic search. I supposed it's yet another way to try to determine location or location of interest, this time without GPS or Wi-FI or TV but using just words.

This week editors Adena Schutzberg and Joe Francica tackle a question and why it's so hard to answer. The question is: How big is the geospatial market or a part of it? That's often followed by: Who has the definitive numbers on how much money is to made and how many users and potential users are out there? They take a look at some resources and tease out why definitive numbers are so difficult to acquire.

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Jason Lee Miller at WebProNews reviews Hitwise's latest stats on the MapQuest vs. Google Maps battle. In short, Google Maps is catching up, if slowly. One stat:

"This [Google Maps up 7%] throttled down MapQuest's lead over Google Maps significantly, falling from 429 percent more visits a year ago to just 126 percent more visits.

Still, MapQuest has more than 50% of mapping hits to Google's 22% and Yahoo's 13% (and dropping).

Heather Hopkins VP at Hitwise offers that "Google's aggressive promotion of Google Maps – search result embeds and sponsored search results have helped drive the spike in traffic." I'd tend to agree if only because there's suprising little "coverage" of Google Maps in the press. Google Earth? Yes. Google Maps? Not so much as shown by mailing daily explorations.

This week is the Consumer Electronics Show - the extravaganza for available and soon to be available gadgets for end users ears, eyes, cars and more. I plan to offer one per day on the event as I watch for geo-related tibdits via the Web from home.

First off, The New York Times highlights that the show is so big that perhaps its no longer the best place for an announcement. Recall that several big shows imploded in recent years included AEC SYSTEMS in our world (note the passing of one of its founders) and COMDEX, which I attended representing ESRI and its 50 x 50 booth.

Now on to the goodies announced: