The Value of Free Websites

Conversations over dinner one night echoed those of a representative from STI: PopStats in the closing session: free websites generate value for the company behind them. In the case of those providing APIs this is information about what sorts of maps are requested for what areas/topics. In the case of PopStats, its free website (I apologize for not writing down the name) offers but a subset of its demographic data, and gives the company a clue about its use and helps it determine in what sort of data to invest in for its “for fee” data.

Observations

There seemed to be quite a number of Mac users among the presenters; many had to ask how to remove the PowerPoint menu from the screen.

A crowd of programmers in t-shirts filled two couches Monday afternoon coding a mashup to be shown on Tuesday. Several of them were on Macs.

I saw but one mashup that I found confusing in the sense that I tough I’d have a hard time navigating it: MapZierge.com. The app is a mashup of events and maps aimed at planning a day or evening out. MapQuest commissioned it (said, “build us something cool” as I undertand it) from Seisan Consulting, unlike many “home brew” mashups. BTW, I couldn’t get it to work today.

Quotes of the Conference

“My stuff works with your stuff and I don’t care how the *&^$ it happens.”

- Carl Reed, CTO of OGC, paraphrasing an Australian government official, defining interoperability

“The biggest question we still get is about moving CAD data into GIS.”

- Don Murray of Safe Software commenting on interoperability challenges.

“The number of Java developers and the number of .Net developers of MapPoint are equal.”

“At this point I’d give the industry a C/C- on interoperability. If we are not up to a B+ in a year or two years, shame on us.”

Steve Lombardi of Microsoft

“The barriers to adoption of open source technology in geospatial are mental.”

Gary Lang, Autodesk

LI 2006 First Thought

Today at LI we are hosting workshops by the big and no big players in LI/geospatial. The buzz seems to be about the upgrade of Google Maps API from version 1 to 2. Alongside that is a slight change in licensing titled “Friendlier Terms” by Brett Taylor in the Official Google Maps API blog. Google has “upped” the magic number of transactions beyond which one much “contact them” to 500,000 and promises to give 90 days notice before ads appear.

These are two issues which come up from time to time for developers, so it’ll be interesting to see if these changes appease them. If not, there are quite a few other players here who want to talk about terms of use and licensing.