Thursday, July 2. 2009

NAVTEQ: "The phone will not replace the sat-nav"

Not a new sentiment, though I've mostly heard it from sat-nav providers, not data providers. That comment comes from NAVTEQ vice president, Serge Bussat. He goes on to say, in an interview from Pocket-Link, "It's not about building the map, it's about building the layers on top of it." That says the article means not data layers, but apps. The future for NAVTEQ in sat-nav? In-car solutions. As the article points out, most folks commenting suggest phones will indeed push stand alone sat navs aside.

I'm not sure why it matters to NAVTEQ where its data end up. And, I'm not sure why a spokesperson would say, "it's not about building the map" unless it plans to get out of the data business and into the app biz. And, of course, the company is getting into the app biz, at least a bit, with its online and mobile phone directions/traffic apps.

Discussions in an MSNBC article that highlighted missing information in a satnav highlight the importance of the added layer. This was official NAVTEQ response from Navteq spokesman Bob Richter:

“The information for travelling on the I-66 is correctly referenced in the Navteq [sic] map and is made available to our customers. We regret we cannot comment on the actual system performance, as it is our policy not to speak on behalf of our customers who make other necessary decisions in the final system development once we deliver our data.”

- Pocket-Lint

In other NAVTEQ news:

NAVTEQ Vice Chairman (and former CEO) Judson Green is joining the board of human resources consulting and outsourcing company Hewitt Associates Inc.

- press release

MapQuest Adds July 4 Events to its Maps

In the spirit of the upcoming July 4th Independence Day events, MapQuest has added another icon on its maps - it's a startburst firework. Clicking on it shows July 4th celebrations from When.com, which is not all that complete. The icon joins the other regular ones (some hotel chains), grocery stores, bars, pharmacies...

Adding road closures related to those would be a nice addition!

via LA Times

Apps for Democracy 2 Wraps

Version 2 of DC crowdsourcing initiative to better serve its constituents saw its final submissions come in last night. In this version the community determined what sorts of apps were needed and developers were then asked to address them. Then, there's options for more funding. The results of phase 2 are here.

Government folks (D.C. Department of Transportation, the Office of Planning and the office of the city's CTO) took on one request themselves: developing a "Where's My Bus?" app. It details the five route Circulator Buses. A commercial option for that NextBus is back up and running, but having some issues, per the Washington Post.

- ReadWriteWeb

EU Drops Planned Tax on Mobile Phones with GPS, TV

The proposed tax would have menat a 14 percent charge on phones with mobile TV and a 3.7 percent tax on phones with navigation. Phone makers of course were against the plan and a majority of European countries voted "no" ending discussions for now.

- Reuters

Education Tidbits

Western Illinois University and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding support the shared goals of protecting natural resources and enhancing environmental sustainability in the region. Among other things the agreement allows "both organizations to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to enhance planning for sustainable use and adaptive management of river resources and to provide learning opportunities for service personnel, WIU students and the public."

- press release

Danny Vaughn tries to sell geotechnologies to college bound students in the Examiner. He mentions Bob Kerry, Goodchild and the Dept of Labor but not the pioneering work being done by say ESRI or Google. He's done a few articles on geospatial recently. (his article list)

- The Examiner

ESRI finally formally announced its GeoMentor program formed in association with National Geographic. ESRI has encouraged such leadership in the past via an "adopt-a-classroom" program, but this more formal one, with National Geographic's backing may go further. Nat Geo is currently one of the main sponsors of GIS Day, and event ESRI championed, but has encouraged other organizations to lead.

- press release

Everyblock Source Code Now Available

Just as we vote on some of the most influential people in geospatial, one on our list has a big announcement: Adrian Holovaty explains on his blog that as his Knight News Challenge Grant comes to an end, the code behind his project, Everyblog is now being released under an open source (GPL) license. The two year grant has ended, but Holovaty assures the world the site will continue, under the direction of a private company.

via @timoreiily and Brady Forrest