Nokia Announces Map Creator; Its Version of Google’s Map Maker

We’ve just launched Nokia Map Creator, a fun tool on maps.nokia.com that literally lets YOU map out your local neighbourhood! You can also use Map Creator to make small edits and additions to existing maps. The tool is super simple to use. The best thing about it is that your work will be visible to all maps.nokia.com users—immediately! Your Map Creator content will also be shared via regular map-data updates for Nokia Maps on mobile and web, after NAVTEQ validation checks.

Our initial focus with Map Creator is to get more information on previously unmapped countries including: Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania, Angola, Burundi, Sri Lanka, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, and Grenada. But the list of countries will continue growing over the coming months. In those parts of the world, your work will complement and help speed up the continuous work of our dedicated Nokia Maps team.

- Nokai Maps Blog via Google+

My Take on Coast Going to Microsoft

Since Tuesday’s podcast was about the expansion of user input into geodatasets, the news Tuesday afternoon that OpenStreetMap’s founder Steve Coast has joined Microsoft’s Bing Mobile Team seemed serendipitous. But, that was not the only news about OSM: Microsoft will provide imagery to that crowdsourced mapping project.

James Fee was the first out of the gate with this prediction about the future on his blog:

Between the OSM mappers, MapQuest, Microsoft and all the others who are part of the open project; I see no way OSM doesn’t become the dominate [dominant] mapping data source for all users moving forward.  And you know who wins, everyone who wants free and open data. 

That’s bold. And, he may be right. But, I’m not as convinced. Why will Microsoft’s participation in OSM matter so much? First off, what is its participation? For now, per the Bing Maps blog here’s what we know:

As a Principal Architect for Bing Mobile, Steve will help develop better mapping experiences for our customers and partners, and lead efforts to engage with OpenStreetMap and other open source and open data projects.  As a first step in this engagement, we plan to enable access to Bing’s global orthorectified aerial imagery, as a backdrop of OSM editors. Also, Microsoft is working on new tools to better enable contributions to OSM.

Those two first steps are good ones. That imagery can be "traced" by folks anywhere in the world to help fill out and enhance the basemap. And, as many have found, the tools for editing OSM (Potlatch and JOSM) can be cranky. I’ve heard the ArcGIS extension for ArcGIS can be a challenge, for some, too.

But can Microsoft’s efforts activate a larger active community than OpenStreetMap, Cloudmade, and most recently AOL have? Will those individuals have the passion worldwide to do the work that’s been done so well in Germany and the UK (two countries were AOL uses OSM data in MapQuest)? Can Microsoft as a company rally the volunteer troops? Do you recall Microsoft’s last misguided crowdsourced effort? The Windows 7 launch parties? (See The Guardian coverage, but I just recall all the laughs I heard on Buzz Out Loud.) How about its effort to pay users to use Bing as a search tool? No, to date, Microsoft has not inspired the kind of loyalty and devotion and respect as some other players.

While some continue to "hate on" Google for its MapMaker efforts (GPS Business News noted its disapproval this week), others think that the MapMaker data is in fact the source for Google’s US datasets (SlashGeo offered that incorrect assumption). While there are always naysayers about Esri, I continue to be impressed by how many organizations are lining up to fill its Community Maps Program (map of them).

I think one or two more tools are needed for OSM to the coverage and quality required to be useful worldwide. One tool/technology needs to provide passive data capture. A company like waze, for example, that can encourage users to simply switch on their phone and be tracked would be a nice addition. So, too, would a company with a tool to integrate and quickly conflate all the data that come in. The reason that TomTom (Tele Atlas) and Nokia (NAVTEQ) are now "poo-pooed" is simply because their datasets are dated. Why are they dated? Because they are vetted, which takes time. The company that can provide that quick but "good enough" filter to to pull the mix of data from its various sources and pump it back out to users will win. I don’t think OSM has all the data inputs needed, nor the paid and unpaid staff needed, nor the smart software needed to win this competition. Not yet anyway, but clearly their backers are slowly adding to their dowry.

And, one final thought. I’ve seen many very smart, successful and well-known geospatial practitioners join big important companies with big plans and big ideas. And, I’ve seen them work hard, bang their heads against the wall, and ultimately leave for the next opportunity. And, I’ve seen other very smart geospatial practitioners do their work at small companies, have some sway in those companies, and have impacts on our industry that many of us cannot even identify.  I do wish Steve Coast, as I did the many to whom I refer here, the best of luck in his new position.

Podcast: What Will Nokia do with MetaCarta?

Late last week Nokia announced it acquired MetaCarta, a company that could organize unstructured text by teasing out location information within. MetaCarta served government, oil and gas and media clients, so what exactly will mobile services and hardware provider Nokia do with it?

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Podcast: With Geodata, Developers, not Consumers Rule

If consumers think of geodata as a commodity, what does that say for its future? What are the key data relationships? And what, if anything, will differentiate one offering from another? Our editors ponder these questions in light of evidence that consumers know and care little about who makes, manages and updates basemaps. 

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My Thoughts on Google Navigation Beta

Last I looked there some 300 news articles about Google announcement yesterday of the beta of Google Navigation for the Android (and perhaps other) platforms. Stocks of PND players like TomTom and Garmin were down (though there were other reasons for the slipping stock prices, too). Mostly, though the sentiment was “Google will be killing off another industry.” Perhaps.

After a day of watching I have just a few thoughts.

Back when Tele Atlas and NAVTEQ were acquired by TomTom and Nokia the general sentiment was that no one could possibly challenge “the big two.” Why? Collecting and confirming mapping datasets for the large areas they already cover (with very good, if not perfect, accuracy) was too hard and costly and they had such a big headstart. Smaller players, like AND and Germany’s United Maps, have toughed it out, working to state their differentiations (better licensing for the former and feet on the ground to fill in the holes for the latter). Neither has taken on the big two, but my sense after speaking to senior company reps recently is that they are doing fine, thank you. No, no one seemed to think that Google, the company that wants to organize the world’s information, was going to work to collect and conflate and update geodata. But, apparently, we were not thinking like Google. Sure Google still licenses some data (parcels and imagery and even some road data) but clearly, they’ve taken on the big two, the two that now have no only a headstart with data, but also a headstart in cell phone hardware and navigation, when paired with their larger owners.

My other thought as the errors in Google’s dataset become the butt of James Fee’s jokes and real concern by those in Canton, Ohio, is that most people are doing just fine with the data. I’m one of them. Even though we at Directions Media were the ones to contact Tele Atlas to confirm Google was using its own data in the U.S. a few weeks back, I use Google Maps exactly as I have in the past. In fact, two weeks ago I routed myself to, then printed out Google Maps of key areas in a marathon my friends were running north of Boston. No issues. In fact, until I returned home from the event, it didn’t occur to me that maybe, just maybe that was not such a great choice. For most people, for most things, Google Maps seems to work fine. And, as many are pointing out, online navigation services that use NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas data have errors and sometimes route “oddly.” Google has an edge that will likely get their quirks fixed better and faster: the “report a problem” button. I’ve written time and time again how the Yahoo and MapQuest and Ask.com (and other services) don’t provide direct ways to report errors.  Nor do NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas. Oh, the websites are out there (and TomTom does have MapShare). The number of people using those tools can’t possibly compare to those using Google’s in app “report a problem.” The tools never got the buzz that Google Maps is getting, either.

Finally, on the day Google rolled out the new app NAVTEQ reported on a survey (which I guess it financed, though it was not stated in the press release) that showed that 72% of users of nav tools it powers are “ok” with ads in the apps and some 19% click on the ads. Another 6% actually visit the businesses. So, it seems Google’s business model (advertising) is a good one.