The most important thing about today’s Tele Atlas Announcement

Here’s the announcement, if you’ve not seen it. Basically, there’ll be an online tool to report errors in Tele Atlas data. It rolls out in limited fashion on the company website today, with expansion planned on other sites.

This struck me as I was watching the news on Sunday about the airplane crash in Lexington, Kentucky. The “map” was an image from Google. It said Google in the top left of the screen. It made me think that the world now believes that Google is somehow behind aerial/satellite and perhaps all mapping data known the man. And, that’s not a good thing since, well, it’s not!

How then, do data providers, imagery and otherwise, get the “Intel inside” marketing they not only deserve, but which can only help create better data down the road? One answer is to step up, as Tele Atlas has done, and shout from the rooftops that its the company’s data and that the company wants the public’s help in making it better!

Tele Atlas (GDT, back then) tried this sort of thing in a public/private partnership called Community Update (ArcNews article, 2000) in the past with limited success. But now, with the Internet more mature and individual data users more savvy (though perhaps no 100% knowledgeable) it’s time to try again.

Will it work? I’ve yet to see the app work and explore the ease of use, but if it’s easy to use, easy to find on all sites/products that use Tele Atlas data, and end users see updated quality soon after reported errors, I think it will. I think just the fact that users can see the “latest and greatest” at the push of a button is a big step forward at a time when it’s basically impossible to know the date of the mapping data on your favorite portal! And, if nothing else, hopefully the public will applaud Tele Atlas for stepping up to the challenge, which I’m the first to admit, is a tough one.