3D Walt Disney Tuesday on Google Earth | May 16
By Adena Schutzberg
The map began with eight photographers who canvassed every inch of Disney World for 10 days. Then their images were rendered in 3-D. Click on Space Mountain, for instance, and you can view a video of the ride and get information such as height requirements. Put your mouse on the Grand Floridian and a video of the resort pops up. You

Jane's Puts Global Incident Map Behind Pay Wall | May 16
By Adena Schutzberg
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

Quote of the Week | May 15
By Adena Schutzberg
"Google Maps is evolving from a driving directions and business search tool, to a comprehensive representation of all the world's information, on a map." - An unnamed Google employee quoted on the Google Operating System blog in response to the addition of more options on Google Maps (houses for sale, Wikipedia entries, geotagged photos...). If Google makes more and more

Dangermond on TomTom Acquisition Approval | May 15
By Adena Schutzberg
"The world needs utility companies that create and manage geospatial data," he said. "And these are companies that have fought their way to the top and they're very good: they serve their data and sell their data to our users in the private domain." That's part of an somewhat confusing article from C|net. The approval of the deal part is

Dangermond on TomTom Acquisition Approval | May 15
By Adena Schutzberg
"The world needs utility companies that create and manage geospatial data," he said. "And these are companies that have fought their way to the top and they're very good: they serve their data and sell their data to our users in the private domain." That's part of an somewhat confusing article from C|net. The approval of the deal part is

Google/ESRI Announcement in Plain English | May 14
By Adena Schutzberg
The announcements out of Where 2.0 from John Hanke of Google and Jack Dangermond regarding integrating neogeography with professional GIS (perhaps not the best terms, but I'm confident readers understand) are quite a lot to digest. (Video available here.) But that's ok, both companies are resetting their visions with regard to the other, to data and to services and

Google/ESRI Announcement in Plain English | May 14
By Adena Schutzberg
The announcements out of Where 2.0 from John Hanke of Google and Jack Dangermond regarding integrating neogeography with professional GIS (perhaps not the best terms, but I'm confident readers understand) are quite a lot to digest. (Video available here.) But that's ok, both companies are resetting their visions with regard to the other, to data and to services and

Cell Tower Locating Coming to India Sparking LBS | May 14
By Adena Schutzberg
Apparently the use of cell towers to locate cell phones is still very new in India. LiveMint (part of the Wall Street Journal) reports on Yalup, one of the first players to use the technology and its database of some businesses 150,000 in Bangalore alone to offer local search on cell phones. While the company is anticipating competition from

Update: Google Maps Organizes More of Google's (not the world's) Information | May 13
By Adena Schutzberg
Update 5/13/08: It seems The VentureBeat folks were ahead of the game. This new option is now seemingly more widely available. If you are not finding the option, try searching on Boston. ------- original story 5/9/08 ------- Now there's more to find when searching on Google Maps - including images (Panoramio not Picassa), user generated maps (MyMaps), videos (YouTube). The limitation, reports

Podcast: Four Technologies That May Soon Impact Geospatial...Are You Ready? | May 13
By Adena Schutzberg
The editors look outward to find technologies that will impact how geospatial products and practices will change in the next 12 to 24 months. Some of the suggested technologies are already appearing in cutting edge products, others are not yet implemented in geospatial solutions, but we expect to see them soon. Subscribe to Podcast RSS Listen Now (to download, right

Quote of the Week | May 9
By Adena Schutzberg
"You could say that the city is showing common sense in not trying to take a useless step." Professor Ralph Stein, who tracks Homeland Security issues at Pace University, on New York City's decision not to blur images of the area in Google Maps. He made the comment in yet another Google Maps censorship story this time at WCBS-TV.

Global Wildlife Disease News Map Version 2 | May 9
By Adena Schutzberg
USGS and partners launched Global Wildlife Disease News Map Version 2 back in March; version 1 was out last December. To be clear this is a news map (Google Map mashup), not a map of disease, but a map of news on disease. So, when you "turn on" avian flu, you get a hit in Ohio. Strange, I thought,

Microsoft Offer Citizen Services Platform Free to Municipal Govs; Soon VE templates | May 9
By Adena Schutzberg
The Citizen Services Platform allows local government to create Web-based electronic government services. It's available to local and regional governments without fee, but they need to run"a Microsoft computing environment" for it to work. For now it comes with: E-Councilor template—A Windows Live Agent that allows messenger communication with a virtual government worker to ask questions. Web TV template— Allows government and

Terraserver.com Sues Microsoft over TerraServer-usa.com | May 8
By Adena Schutzberg
PCWorld carries the story. In short: Microsoft's TerraServer-USA satellite imagery project has been slapped with a trademark lawsuit from a small North Carolina company with a confusingly similar name. Terraserver.com filed the suit on Friday in North Carolina federal court, seeking monetary damages and asking that Microsoft be stopped from using the TerraServer name. Like the MapQuest/NavQuest suit (big guy sues

Update 2: Multimap Steps in for Live Maps in UK | May 7
By Adena Schutzberg
Update 5/7/08: This from Matthew Gain, Citizenship and PR Manager, Online Services Group, UK [Business Consultant to Microsoft Limited] We recently announced the integration of Multimap into Live Search in the UK and will start to route users directly to the Multimap service from MSN UK and Live.com from 9th May.

Salesforce.com: User Interface as a Service? | May 7
By Adena Schutzberg
That's it's latest offering. Mashable explores it and it's a bit more than that - more like Yahoo! Pipes to me. If you want a map on your app you add a single tag to create it an pop it onto the dashboard. Most interesting is Adam Ostrow's take on Salesforce.com, an actual company that makes actual money, in contrast

GeoGraffiti - annotate locations with voice messages | May 7
By Adena Schutzberg
Mashable introduces the startup GeoGraffiti which offers a now free tool to post a "voice mail" and associate it with a location (ZIP Code or lat/lon). It's accessible via the Web (Google Map) of phone. Bottom line from the "review": not sure what it's good for, but that's what we thought of Twitter. If we could get the accuracy

Podcast: Using NAVTEQ & DigitalGlobe Data with Oracle Spatial | May 7
By joe francica
In podcast we invite you to learn how NAVTEQ’s vector map data and DigitalGlobe’s worldwide image data have been specially formatted for the Oracle Database, and how it can be used to enhance customers' business intelligence and enterprise applications. We will hear from Steve Lytle, a Senior Account Manager NAVTEQ and Jim Beckley, Director of Business Development for DigitalGlobe, as

Realtor Buys out Mashup Technologists | May 6
By Adena Schutzberg
The Realtor is John L. Scott Real Estate, one of the early implementers of Microsoft Virtual Earth for its business. (The company originally used ESRI and Google technology for its mapping.) Scott acquired nine person Real Tech, the consultancy that did the implementation work this week (press release, pdf, including Word markup...). Real Tech will become part of the

Podcast: Why is it so Hard to Sell Geospatial Technology to the Enterprise? | May 6
By Adena Schutzberg

Senior executives from leading technology companies, speaking at our Location Intelligence Conference last week shared that the entire value proposition for spatial enablement is a "push" to the market rather than a "pull" or demand for the technology. Our editors ask: Are we doing an adequate job of selling the technology to more of the people that will eventually implement

Podcast: Why is it so Hard to Sell Geospatial Technology to the Enterprise? | May 6
By Adena Schutzberg

Senior executives from leading technology companies, speaking at our Location Intelligence Conference last week shared that the entire value proposition for spatial enablement is a "push" to the market rather than a "pull" or demand for the technology. Our editors ask: Are we doing an adequate job of selling the technology to more of the people that will eventually implement

Podcast: Why is it so Hard to Sell Geospatial Technology to the Enterprise? | May 6
By Adena Schutzberg

Senior executives from leading technology companies, speaking at our Location Intelligence Conference last week shared that the entire value proposition for spatial enablement is a "push" to the market rather than a "pull" or demand for the technology. Our editors ask: Are we doing an adequate job of selling the technology to more of the people that will eventually implement

Podcast: Why is it so Hard to Sell Geospatial Technology to the Enterprise? | May 6
By Adena Schutzberg

Senior executives from leading technology companies, speaking at our Location Intelligence Conference last week shared that the entire value proposition for spatial enablement is a "push" to the market rather than a "pull" or demand for the technology. Our editors ask: Are we doing an adequate job of selling the technology to more of the people that will eventually implement

No Map Dance for Microsoft, Yahoo | May 5
By joe francica
It's over for now between Microsoft and Yahoo (Microsoft abandoned their takeover attempt for Yahoo today), and while you won't see either company's mapping technology mentioned in the reports about the takeover attempt, location technology lurked in the background. Why? Well, the bid for Yahoo by Microsoft was all about strengthening the online presence of Mr. Softy. It's all about

No Map Dance for Microsoft, Yahoo | May 5
By joe francica
It's over for now between Microsoft and Yahoo (Microsoft abandoned their takeover attempt for Yahoo today), and while you won't see either company's mapping technology mentioned in the reports about the takeover attempt, location technology lurked in the background. Why? Well, the bid for Yahoo by Microsoft was all about strengthening the online presence of Mr. Softy. It's all about