Friday, May 16. 2008

Jane's Puts Global Incident Map Behind Pay Wall

We posted this press release yesterday. The Inquirer isn't too keen on Jane's, the media star for defense and industry news, interactive map.

Using software called ESRI’s ArcIMS Geographical Information System (GIS), which apparently is the thing to use if you want dynamic maps on the Internet, Jane’s says it has built “an integrated intelligence picture by exporting events and geospatially fusing them to third party content".

The resource, however, isn’t a free service and to use it, one has to subscribe.

So if the company you work for is planning to ship you off to Colombia, or Nigeria in the near future and is unwilling to pay for a subscription, you might want to either cough up the cash yourself, or find yourself a free Global Incident map somewhere else.

Jane's is well-respected, but can it parlay that into a specific pay service for this map? It'll be interesting to see the uptake. In the meantime, here's a free global incident map built on Google Maps. The Guardian calls that mashup more of a demo.