Where 2.0 Overviews by Non-Geo Geeks

Daniel H. Steinberg of O’Reilly describes a few of the presentations from EyeBeam, NAVTEQ and others. The NAVTEQ one suggested something that I suppose I’m believing more and more: you must field verify your geodata. Just the other day I drove a 100 route that several cyclists will follow next week. The route was pretty well laid out, turns were markedЕbut a key bridge would be closed during the ride. Any way to learn that other than driving it the week before? Perhaps calling each town to confirm construction plans, but that’s a lot of work…

Wired‘s Ryan Singel also covered the event, in particular the release of Google’s and Yahoo’s mapping APIs. Here’s a telling observation, one I wish I made: “The API announcements illustrate that both companies are serious about devoting resources to outside projects that the companies have little control over.” That’s true and certainly is not the vision of “old guard” of GIS. There’s also some valuable insight in the difference between the two offerings - including that Yahoo will host the maps and Google will not.

Ok, now back to geo folks. Ed Parsons comes to this conclusion after Where 2.0: “The old guard of the established mapping agencies needs to take note, although their core business will remain unchanged, consumer mapping applications have changed forever.”

I agree that the core businesses for GIS software will remain unchanged: cities and towns, the defense department, forestry companies are unlikely to change vendors anytime soon. But, their expectations will change. They’ll want elegant APIs, simple interfaces, speedy response and tons of data easy to access. I’d put it, “consumer mapping applications have changed the mapping landscape for consumers and business/gov customers forever.”