Monday, September 29. 2008

MetaCarta Unchained and Unbundled

Today, MetaCarta announced some new ways to access the "secret sauce" of their search engine technology and launched their Geographic Search and Referencing Platform (GSRP). The bottom line here is that they have "disconnected" some of the primary tools from the basic platform. In other words, you can separately license their API's but still have access to their geo-referencing engine. So, if you only want to use their geotagging or query parsings applications in conjunction with the underlying geo-referencing engine software developers will now be able to license them as they need them. In the past, the six modules (geotagging, query parsing, geosearch, location finder, save-search-notification, and document density) that comprised the MetaCarta platform were highly inter-related and did not work independently. The objective for MetaCarta is to enable more developers and clients who may want to geo-enable lots of location-based, Web 2.0 applications. MetaCarta is also transforming itself from not just a product company but to offering software as a service (SaaS). MetaCarta says more details will be out on that later this fall. What will be challenging for MetaCarta is offering their applications through a SaaS transaction model based on CPM, which may be appropriate for some news organizations who may want to develop a map indexing view like the one they have on their home page.

New Montana GIS Portal

The initial release of the GIS Portal is focused on the needs of GIS professionals. For the general public, the Portal contains an on-line map viewer that anyone may use to view basic maps and air photos of any location in Montana.

"The initial data catalog includes 400 databases and over 200 sample maps from the collections of the Montana Base Map Service Center, the Montana State Library, Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, and Flathead County," said [manager of the Montana State Library's GIS section Gerry] Daumiller. "During the next year, our staff will vigorously pursue other GIS data providers and help them add their data and maps to the Portal."

- Montana Business

WSJ on IP Geolocation

The article reviews its use for marketing, compliance and fraud prevention. The usual suspects appear: Digital Envoy, Akamai and Quova.

Google Comes to Washington to Sell Cloud Computing to Feds

The Washington Post reports on the new 18 person office in Reston Town Center aimed at educating and then selling to the feds.

Google wants agencies and the firms working with them to give "cloud-computing" a try. That means, for example, using Google Maps and Google Earth to visualize massive amounts of information, or using Google's search tool to organize internal data, and storing that information on Google's servers "in the cloud." The enterprise versions of the tools, which come with extra storage and security features, cost around $50 per user, per year.

I figured Google already had a sales office there.

Update: Senator Proposes Making Dash-mounted GPS Legal in California

The governor signed the bill this past weekend.

- SF Gate

---- original post 8/8/08 ------
A current law bans anything from be affixed to the windshield (with few exceptions) or dashboard. Senator Jenny Oropeza has introduced Senate Bill 1567, the GPS Windshield Safety Act, which allow drivers to mount their devices on their windshields without fear of citation and out of reach of any restless back-seat toddler. So far so good: "Editors at several newspapers, including the Torrance Daily Breeze and the Long Beach Press-Telegram, have given it their stamp of approval. And both houses of the Legislature on Aug. 4 overwhelmingly approved the bill with broad bipartisan support." Now, on to the governor.

- California Chronicle

Corrections made 8/12. Source above cites Oropreza as author of the article and the bill and an Assembly member. She is, per comment, a State Senator. Her website confirms that.

Have LBS? Don't Need Post Codes

Damien Mulley makes that argument regarding Ireland (which has yet to implement post codes) but it runs into a snag: An Post (the Irish post office) owns the best data about addresses and OSI (Ordnance Survey Ireland) owns the best maps of the country. And they won't share. If they do, there's no need for post codes.

- Times Online