Friday, May 23. 2008

Why have LBS Games not "Popped"?

"Location is something that needs to develop, especially location based gaming. The only reason it’s not out there bigger is that noone has yet been able to develop a valid business model for it."

- Kay Gruenwoldt, Head of Industry Marketing, Nokia on a panel at Digital Media Wire’s LA Games Conference 2008 reported at Digital Podcast

Location Score on Fizber

Fizber.com, the "For Sale By Owner" website, has introduced a "Location Score" to simplify comparing the "location" value of houses.

Fizber automatically pulls this information from a variety of sources, calculates School, Safety and Job Scores for each location, and combines these scores into one easy to read Location Score.

While it's a good idea, I'd want to "weight" it myself. Perhaps that's the next step, at least for geeks; others may be fine with the default.

- press release

Pitney Bowes Soft Launches Business Insight

The Pitney Bowes MapInfo and Pitney Bowes Group 1 Software divisions will be going through a gradual transition to a new name. Pitney Bowes Business Insight (PBBI?) will be introduced throughout the fall. During this time, the MapInfo name is NOT disappearing and the company will still be focusing on location intelligent solutions. Mike Hickey, current president of both divisions will remain as president and will now directly report to the CEO of Pitney Bowes. Hickey said the name change underwent substantial vetting.

My take: At first, I thought it was a clever way to use "BI" as a double meaning but Hickey says that was mere coincidence. The name is OK. It's not lightening in a bottle but is not bland either. It says what they do and that's enough. In general, what you have to appreciate is that the combined entity has a lot of products and a substantial cache of very targeted solutions. The trick, as the company fully appreciates, is that they need to find a workflow to offer clients that clearly shows how the solutions can be used in tandem, or not. PBBI has several stand alone products that don't need to be integrated. Naming is important and not trivial but perhaps of secondary concern to explaining that value of the solutions.

Quote of the Week

"I think we are 20 years into a 40-year transition from a world navigated with maps on paper to a world navigated with maps on screen."

- Sean Phelan, founder of Multimap, at Thinking Digital Conference, reported in nebusiness.co.uk

EBay Seller Victorious in First Round in Autodesk Suit

AECNews.com reports that Autodesk has lost the first round in a court case against an individual who attempted to sell a copy of AutoCAD software on EBay. The court ruled that the sale does not infringe on the license agreement, as Autodesk claimed. The judge will have both sides discuss the situation, but it's expected Autodesk will appeal.

- AECNews.com

India Planning its own "Google Earth"

It won't include sensitive areas, but the new service built on the country's own imagery is expected in 6 months. ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair made the announcement.

- Sify