My Big Fat Greek GIS Contract

In a press release picked up from Forbes today, Intracom IT jv of Greece has signed an €11.2 Million ($17.5) deal for the Greek Information Society to develop a GIS for urban planners, engineers and citizens for the prefectures and municipalities in Greece. The press release isn’t posted on the Intracom IT website yet and with some digging it was hard to determine which GIS was chosen for the project. But in snooping around I did find that Intracom has in the past implemented ESRI solutions.

LBS Giants Qualcomm and Nokia Settle Lawsuits; Qualcomm Revises Guidance

Two of the biggest movers and shakers in LBS, Qualcomm (QCOM) and Nokia (NOK), announced that all outstanding lawsuits had been settled. Under a 15-year agreement, the two companies have resolved difference covering various Qualcomm patents for use in Nokia devices. In a separate announcement, Qualcomm announced (PDF) their Q3 results and revised guidance slightly downward for the remainder of the year but it did not dampen the deal with Nokia; QCOM stock soared 20% in earth trading today.

Update: Columbiana County Ohio Drops TIGER Maps for 911

Update 7/24: An article in today’s SalemNews.net by the same reporter includes: “The NAVTEQ maps will cost $7,875 for an annual subscription.” The original article cited below still includes the $77,875 value which per comments below is incorrect.

—- original post 7/23/08———-

I was surprised to see the county was using what are refered to as Tiger data for E-911. In testing they were not found to be very good. Further, the company that provided them (not named in a Review article) was not responsive enough. Thus, the county will move NAVTEQ data. Cost:

The annual map subscription will cost $77,875 with quarterly updates. The cost to import the maps had not been determined at the time of the meeting.

The plan is to move to the NAVTEQ data and eventually to street centerline data currently under development.

Microsoft Make trueSpace Free, Ties it into Virtual Earth

This is the next phase after Microsoft acquired Caligari (apb post) and its trueSpace 3D toolkit this past February.

Chris Pendleton at the Virtual Earth, Evangelist’s blog explains and provides an answer to “how to make money with 3D.”

Further Convergence of Maps and Social Media

All the talk is about LBS and social media, but I think the folks at Trails.com have a valuable proposition, too. The site now offers not just searchable maps, but a full social network build on Pluck. Unlike freebies such as FaceBook or MySpace, the business model here is subscriptions (you get map downloads, trailguides non-subscribers cannot access) and I suspect the powers that be figure an “exclusive” social network is another key draw.

- press release