Month: March 2006

Categories
GIS Thoughts

MapQuest API – a different business model ?

As James at Spatially Adjusted points out MapQuest joins GMY with it’s mapping API. Beyond the “Me too” aspects what is interesting here is that MapQuests’ business model is already very well established as an application service provider.

So here the free API is almost a demo for its commerical services, as the T&C’s state..

“The MapQuest OpenAPI is available free of charge for non-commercial use within the stated transaction levels of 50,000 combined maps and geocodes and 5,000 routes per day. If your needs fall outside of OpenAPI’s terms please refer to MapQuest Business Solutions for additional options.”

It’s easy to forget with all the hype around google local and local live, that MapQuest is still the most used web mapping engine.

Categories
GIS OGC

Open Geospatial TC meeting in Rocketville

Marshall Institute

It is not often you get driving instructions which use Rockets as landmarks, but picking up my hire car I was told to turn of the highway when I went passed the Saturn V !

Huntsville is very much a town with technology at it’s heart, home to the Marshall Space Centre, and numerous defence companies including from the world of GI, Intergraph.

Yesterday was the first day of the Technical Committee meeting of the OGC, I try to attend at least one a year, although the OS is always represented. For the newcomer the consensus approach of a standards organisation can appear to be mind-numbing, with formal processes and much intense study of detailed technical documentation. From this intense work however has come the key standards for geospatial interoperability, the Web Map and Feature Services and Geographic Mark-up Language.

It can be argued that OGC standards are less relevant with the emergence of GMY’s popular and proprietary mapping applications. However the counter argument to this is that all this applications are really only as good as the data in them, and once you start wanting to obtain more local information from 3rd party sources, interoperability will become a real issue, and Google are attending their first OGC meeting here in Huntsville.

The real challenge for the OGC will be to see our quickly it can adopt a rapidly developing standard that is emerging from the blogosphere GeoRSS – more details later this week – watch this space !

Written and submitted from The Marriott Hotel, Huntsville, using the hotel in-room internet connection.

Categories
GIS Thoughts

edparsons.com.. one year on

Today is the first birthday of my blog, one year ago today I wrote my first blog entry and a lot has happened since!

In the industry we have seen the Web 2.0 meets mapping developments of GMY (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo), Google Earth and the announcement of ESRI”s ArcGIS Explorer a very important product for Redlands.

In the UK the creation of Address databases continues to be a complete minefield for all involved (just don’t ask me talk about address databases!!) and the debate around the funding of National Geospatial data continues, while community spatial databases like openstreetmap become a reality.

Increasing people are looking to blogs as a valid source of information as an alternative to more traditional media outlets which are often slower and increasingly lack any journalistic value just becoming repeaters of corporate PR.

There is a danger than many blogs may go that way also, I hope not – where blogs really add value is in allowing authors opinions to be expressed without restriction and this is particularly powerfully when combined with “insider” information.

I know I would be lost without my daily fix of All-Points, Spatially Adjusted with James Fee, Very Spatial, The Tao of Mac, Adam Curry Podcast.

Over the past year I have posted 157 entries on edparsons.com which have generated nearly 200,000 discrete site visits and over 600,000 page impressions.

I’m just on my way to the OGC meeting in Huntville, more details next week.

Written and submitted from Heathrow Airport, using the free internet connection in the BA lounge.