Tuesday, September 29. 2009

Flickr Connects to OSM

The full announcement is on the Flickr Code blog, but in essence the new connection means that developers can tag photos with their nodes and ways (points and polygons) over on OpenStreetMap. For now, the sample is quite simple. If you visit this Flickr image you can view the single "machine tag" under View Machine Tags (1) or click on the linked text for St. George's house under additional information and visit the OSM page for that node. It'll be interesting to see how developers use this connection.

More importantly, it's another indication that OSM is becoming a "must have" option for those developing today's online and mobile map-related apps, not matter what API they are using.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source at 07:21 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, September 22. 2009

Podcast: deCarta Supports OpenStreetMap

This past week's big news was deCarta's announcement of support for the crowdsourced OpenStreetMaps geographic data across its product line. What does that mean for other companies in the mapping tools space, the data space and for end users of these products?

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source, Directions on the News Podcast, Geospatial Business, Tele Atlas, NAVTEQ, Data at 06:00 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, September 17. 2009

deCarta to Offer OpenStreetMap Data Across Product Line

Today deCarta (the company whose engine powered [updated per confirmation from deCarta below, was "powers"] things like Google Maps and currently powers other mapping site and many personal nav devices) announced beta support for OpenStreetMap data. Here's the plan: The beta program offer data for just selected cities; a full release coming in October will support complete OSM coverage.

The data will be free (recall that deCarta does not sell data, but offers partner data - NAVTEQ/Tele Atas/etc. so it's not losing anything on this deal) and available for server and client side use and through its developer program. "This includes self hosted solutions using deCarta's Drill Down Server, deCarta's Hosted Web Services, Personal Navigation Devices, and Mobile Phones. Developers will also be able to quickly prototype and demonstrate location-enabled applications using OSM content through deCarta's Developer Zone available to developers at http://www.decarta.com."

You can play with a demo here.

I could find no details about planned maintenance of the data - that is - how and how often it will be updated, but posed that to the company.

- press release

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source at 08:07 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, September 14. 2009

NZ's Second Biggest Power Company Removes Oracle, Goes SQL Server

New Zealand’s Powerco pretty much removed its Oracle instances in favor of Microsoft’s SQL Server. There were also changes in hardware, virtualization and a drop in the number of Citrix servers. The GIS moves over this week; hopefully after a user presentation at Tech Ed, we'll learn more about how the company was using Oracle and how it'll be using SQL Server for spatial data (or not). The company uses Televent Miner and Miner apps built on ESRI tech (source). The money saved: $390,000 a year.

Open source was not considered as the goal was to standardize to one system from a mixed Oracle/SQL Server solution.

- Computerworld NZ

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source, Microsoft, Oracle at 06:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, September 8. 2009

TomTom Shares OpenLR Standard: What is it?

The press release says:

OpenLR has been designed for traffic information systems and dynamic route
guidance, and is available as an open-source technology a
http://www.tomtom.com/page/openLR. It can easily be adapted to the requirements
of system integrators, and the technical community can contribute with their
ideas to improve it.

Location data can range from static road sign information to highly dynamic
traffic and weather situation information as well as safety-critical information
- anything that needs to be accurately linked to a specific piece of or position
on the road network. The OpenLR technology allows location content providers to
reference any location on any navigable map, completely royalty-free.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Open Source, Standards, Real-Time/Dynamic Data, Satellite Navigation, TomTom at 06:17 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, September 2. 2009

Commercial GPS Data Typically Two Years Old: A Reason to Use Crowdsourced Data?

ZDnet interviewed Google Ed Parsons who offered the "two years old" comment. The article highlights Google's Mapmaker (but not OpenStreetMap). Geraldine Kor, director of customer marketing, Asia-Pacific, at NAVTEQ explains that when users report errors to NAVTEQ often the update has already been made, but is not in the user's dataset yet.

Recently NAVTEQ stated in a press release release that yearly updates are about right. "Typically GPS system maps need updating about once a year. "

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, Open Source, Satellite Navigation, NAVTEQ at 06:26 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |