Tuesday, January 12. 2010

Podcast: Pushing Vendor Ideas and Products into the Community

At the end of last week's Geodesign Summit ESRI made it clear it wanted the community, not ESRI to lead the concept forward. ESRI is not the first to attempt to free ideas or products made within corporate walls - consider Google's KML or Autodesk MapGuide. How well have efforts like this worked in the past? Can you ever remove a product or idea's origins?

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Thursday, January 7. 2010

Zillow, Trulia Doing Well in Down Economy

Spencer Rascoff, Zillow's chief operating officer, reports that the real estate site was up despite the down economy. Why? Uncertainty benefits information providers. The details:

An average of 8.2 million unique users per month in 2009, up 57% year-over-year
37% growth in page views year-over-year
3.9 million for-sale, rental and Make Me Move listings, up 43%, the result of more listings feed partnerships with brokerages and Multiple Listings Services.
550,000 loan requests were submitted on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace in 2009. 46%, or 253,300 were for refinance loans as mortgage rates. Lenders responded with more than 10 million custom loan quotes. To date, over 7,000 lender ratings and reviews have been submitted by borrowers.
171 U.S. newspapers partnered with Zillow to use their search and listings technology

And, the company's iPhone app, released in April has had 870,000 downloads.

Over at Trulia, it was a big year, too as the site saw a total of 62.3 million unique visitors, the highest figure ever.

Visits grew by more than 45%
Total page views grew by 105%
Property views grew by more than 130%
Consumer questions doubled over 2008 on Trulia Voices
Nearly 1 million home buyer inquiries were sent to real estate agents
Trulia became one of the Top 5 Real Estate sites on the web, according to Hitwise

And, the company's iPhone app was downloaded more than 300,000 downloads. It's got a sibling: a mobile site accessible on any mobile handset.

Both of these sites have grown with almost no recent hype, a sign that they are not "one visit wonders." Turning a profit? That's not mentioned in the coverage of either one.

via Search Engine Watch

Tuesday, December 29. 2009

EveryTrail: $1 million in funding

I was just looking at the new Pennsylvania Dept of Conservation and Natural Resources trail finder ExplorePATrails site. It's built on Google Maps and "powered by you." I was thinking every state should have such a site. While it's not as "social media" as some sites, you can provide updates and post events.

- Pittsburgh Live

A moment later I see that GlobalMotion Media, the folks behind EveryTrail, a membership trail site, has raised $1 million from private investors via the Band of Angels group. EveryTrail is a powerful site (one of my students reviewed it a few semesters ago) but an iPhone and mobile apps make uploading trips even easier.

- TechCrunch

Tuesday, December 22. 2009

Podcast: Google's Slow Walk to its Vision for Geospatial Cloud Computing

Last week Google added some search tools to its Map Data API. The announcement made few waves in a holiday focused geospatial community, the announcement and its implications are worth considering as they lay out the small steps Google is making to draw developers to its vision for geospatial cloud computing.

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Thursday, December 17. 2009

Acquisition/Parntership Roundup

On4 Communications, Inc. wrapped up the acquisition of www.Pets911.com. Ten year old Pets911.com offers pet lost and found and adoption services with relationships with over 14,000 rescue organizations across the United States.

- press release

Austin entrepreneur Jeff Chambers, former U.S. product director for HomeAway, Inc., has acquired PropertyMaps.com, a leading residential real estate search engine. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The site is Google Maps based.

- press release

TeleCommunication Systems, Inc. (TCS) provider of mission-critical wireless communications announced the successful completion of its acquisition of Networks In Motion, Inc.

- press release

Rummble, the U.K.'s answer to Foursquare’s has bought wi-fi finder Total Hotspots. The latter has an app that finds Wi-Fi hotspots and the two companies had partnered in the past.

- VentureBeat

Tuesday, December 8. 2009

Netezza Geospatial Code Subject of Lawsuit

We've profiled Netezza and its ability to manage spatial data within its very fast appliances. A Boston-based company Intelligent Integration Systems (IIS) wrote the original spatial software for a Motorola-based appliance. Now Netezza is moving to Intel's TwinFin chips. At issue: IIS says it was not aware of the planned move and is not obligated to re-write the software for the port to the new processors. Netezza disagrees. Netezza is not only filing a suit against IIS, but ending its relationship with the company according to the lawsuit.

- The Street