Tuesday, March 10. 2009

Podcast: Exploring Three Geo-related Lawsuits

This week we look at several lawsuits within the geospatial community that have made news in the past few weeks, and while we are not legal experts or lawyers, explore what they may "really" be about. Microsoft is suing TomTom; the Borings of Pennsylvania are going after Google once again and Pictometry and GEOSPAN continue to duke it out about patents.

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Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, Microsoft, LBS, GPS, Directions on the News Podcast, Geospatial Business, Tele Atlas, NAVTEQ at 01:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, February 12. 2009

TomTom Map Share Feedback Even Surprises Tele Atlas

This week, Tele Atlas (TA) announced the first release of their global street network that is augmented with data from TomTom Map Share, a service offered to users of TomTom portable navigation devices (PND) that allows them to independently report a variety of road network changes including impedences, new signage, etc. The feedback is sent to TA, a TomTom company, but as a consequence of collecting so much additional data, TA recognized that it was also capturing new road geometry not previously mapped.

Users of TomTom PNDs have the option of providing feedback in a few different ways. One is to manually indicate road blockages, for example, but another is to share certain bits of data such as speed and position. As it turns out,TomTom users were leaving their PNDs on even in areas where there was sparse or no road coverage such as certain regions of Eastern Europe. This feedback made it's way to TA database managers that are recognizing that new road segments were being added to the community contributed data. This new information allows the company to selectively dispatch crews to verify new road geometry and perhaps identify pockets of new users for additional marketing and advertising.

I spoke to Mr. Arnout Desmet while attending the Map World Forum conference in Hyderbad. Directions just recently interviewed Mr. Desmet when it was announced that TA had signed a agreement with the Survey of India (SOI) to incorporate SOI data into the TA road database. He also informed me about TA's historical speed profiles which are now being incorporated into traffic information. TA began collecting speed information in 2006 and now has a database of historical profiles in 5 minute increments for various times of day and now over months of time. Essentially, TomTom users are acting as probes on the street network collecting a vast amount of data that now equals twice the entire road network of Europe every 24 hours according to Mr. Desmet. He believes this is a unique service that TomTom provides to users.

Posted by Joe Francica in Sensors, Navigation, Routing, Tracking, Logistics, Tele Atlas, Map World Forum 2009 at 02:08 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, February 11. 2009

TomTom Takes the Next Step in Crowdsourcing for Data Updates

In a press release issued today Tele Atlas (part of TomTom) explained that its first dataset updated in part by data from user generated GPS tracks shared via its Map Share program has been released. Back in October the company announced the first dataset that took advantage of the options to mark errors in the data via Map Share such as incorrect street names or the wrong direction of traffic.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Tele Atlas at 06:00 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, January 22. 2009

TomTom Announces Job Cuts

TomTom announced cuts of 7% or 115 staff members. The news comes after a resetting of expectations earlier this week. Tele Atlas will have no additional cuts now; 125 position cuts were announced late last year.

- EETimes

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Geospatial Business, Tele Atlas at 08:39 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, January 12. 2009

Consumer Electronics Show 2009: A Geo-Highlights Wrap Up

This long-ish post pull together the announcements from the consumer sphere that may relate to geotechnology, or that you shouldn’t miss.

Bottom line themes: more connectedness, convergence and location data. Big geo news? None really. Big device news? Palm’s Pre.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Microsoft, Tracking, GPS, Remote Sensing, Sensors, Real-Time/Dynamic Data, Local Search, Satellite Navigation, Navigation, Social Networking, Apple, Tele Atlas, NAVTEQ, Infrastructure at 06:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

TomTom and Tele Atlas Heads Don't Fear Downturn

TomTom President Jocelyn Vigreux sees prices stabalizing and notes that the use case for phone-based navigation and car-based is quite different. Further, the U.S. market for PNDs is far from saturated at 17%.

Bill Henry, CEO of Tele Atlas suggested pedestrian navigation is about orientation, quite different from true navigation. That allowed a plug for TA's new Urban Maps.

The interviews were done Friday by Tech Trader.

Barron's Blog

GPS Business News has a video interview with Henry.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Satellite Navigation, Tele Atlas at 06:00 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |