Although I have PhD in Geography, my graduate work was focused on cartography. For many years, I thought I knew something about maps, map databases, GIS, navigation and a host of related topics. Indeed, I was so sure of myself that I taught undergraduate and graduate level courses at the State University of New York at Albany espousing my views on maps and mapping. Having grown even more certain that what I had learned about maps was true, I accepted a position at Rand McNally & Company and was their Chief Cartographer for thirteen years. Eventually, I decided to go solo and opened TeleMapics, my consultancy. I have spent most of the last decade working with clients who are interested in using spatial data for maps, navigation, LBS and a variety of practical applications.

What I learned about map databases during my career is that making them is a data driven process. Without accurate data, your application cannot communicate the information that will resolve the spatial question that had caused the user to refer to your database in the first place. While a large number of top-down processes are applied to make map data useful, such as simplification, symbolization, classification and other aspects of a process that cartographers call map generalization, all of these manipulations, in the end, are constrained by the quality of map data.

From my perspective, creating maps and map databases are examples of a data driven or a bottom-up process. From a logical point of view, if the data do not allow an inference, it would be incorrect to assume one. For instance the road overlay on the Google map of Providence, does not match their imagery. At some point in his travels the driver must enter into an ASM (Arnold Schwarzenegger Maneuver), accelerating the car to 162.615 miles per hour to leap the intervening quarter of mile where the imagery shows no connecting road.

Yep, I know, I am being too harsh. After all, somebody is going to write the mother of all algorithms that will pick, pack, prep, collect, coordinate, conform, mish, mash and manipulate all of these diverse data sources into a cohesive, spatially accurate map database. Sorry people, but it’s not going to happen. There are fundamental data collection problems in the world of spatial data that still are not resolved. For example, where can you find a definitive, authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive database of all occupied residences in the United States? While the US Bureau of the Census might have one, they can’t give it to you due to Title 13 restrictions on privacy. Hmmm. Is there an alternative? If you suggested the USPS, you need to do some homework. Do you know that even if you could find this database publicly available (and you cannot), you could not find the map data on which you could display all of the streets for all of the addresses contained in the data.

Apparently, it doesn’t seem to bother consumers that the map databases provided by the major map database producers are incomplete, out of date and otherwise erroneous. Maybe if you just keep slathering on the eye-candy everyone will forget that you can’t use these maps to get from here to there and sometimes you can’t even find “here”.

Conversely, map producers know that map database creation and updating is a game of Whack-A-Mole that they can never win. Even utilizing crowdsourcing, data collection vans instrumented with inertial systems, lidar and who knows what else, they have been unable to keep their databases accurate or up-to-date in a uniform and comprehensive manner. In fact, there may not be enough money in the world to create an up-to-date, accurate and comprehensive street map of, say, the United States. Of course, this raise the question of what accuracy and comprehensiveness actually mean in the world of mapping. From a practical perspective the answer is unappealing, but since you asked, the “commercial” answer is, “What’s good enough.”

Really? Yep. Commercial mapmakers don’t actually know how good or how bad their data are at any point in time, because they have no effective way to test their completed database. Yes, they have quality control and quality assurance procedures and yes, they may be ISO certified, but that does not stop them from distributing data that are clearly erroneous.

It is sad that modern routing engines and the databases they use are prime examples of this contention. I have read numerous articles where the reporter has indicated that they previously used Google for their mapping and routing needs, but stopped doing so when Google decided to become the poster child for bad map-making practices. However, I am sure that all of these folks would tell you that they are not satisfied with the mapping and routing service they presently use, but that this is the one that gets them where they need to go more often than the others they have used.

In fact, the notion of the incompetence of the routes that you get from your online or mobile provider has become a glamorous component of the “war stories” most travelers unroll during an unexpected flight delay. Have you heard this one – “So it told me to take a right out of the driveway, took me through 23 other maneuvers (for some reason it’s never an even number) and eventually navigated me to a place within a block of where I started, although the route covered two miles.” Been there, heard that.

Well, then fixing these errors must be an important task and a priority issue for the companies involved. So, what exotic technologies do these companies use to find and fix the data that are erroneous? The embarrassing truth is that the best indicator of update priorities is customers who tell them what’s wrong with the data and these companies don’t even have to ask. What a great business model, huh?

Conversely, If no one complains about the map data quality, there is little chance that bad data gets fixed. It is sort of like the map database version of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. Common sources of error correction for customer input includes email, phone calls, customer sales calls and the more modern correction systems like the online map error reporting websites of NAVTEQ or Tele Atlas and the crowd-sourced error correction applications like TomTom’s MapShare. Yep, no knowledgeable humans on the map database vendor side of the equation – only a simple “Just the facts, Ma’am”, Jack Webb type of interrogation.

But wait, let’s get back to that “What’s good enough” issue. What does that mean? Well, it means that the map data are “good enough” to satisfy the needs of the companies willing to license the data. Yes, the clients will complain about errors that are found by their internal product development teams or convey the errors that are sent to them by their customers, but, by and large, the customers of the leading map database providers are a captive audience. If you need a national database to assist in creating your spatially based services, “who ya gonna call,” other than NAVTEQ, Tele Atlas or someone who packages their data?

How can this be?

In the big leagues, map updating is carried out as a two-tier process. Customer complaints drive topical updating where egregious errors are prioritized, researched and corrected. In addition, mapping companies systematically review their entire database on a more or less set schedule, but some areas of the database may not be “touched” for years (if they are rural, remote and unpopulated) while other major urban areas may receive attention that is more frequent.

The word “review” is the fly in the ointment here. The reality is that map databases are updated by comparing them to sources (including field observation) thought to be more current or more authoritative than what you already have in your database. If found to be more current, reliable or accurate than what is in the database, the new data (depending on the type and authority of the source) are either added to the database or used to focus further research for updating. If the sources are not better than what you have, they are tossed. When you have collected what you believe to be the best data for a specific location, you are not going to look at this area again until someone complains, or you discover what may be a more up-to-data or authoritative source during your systematic update process. It is for this reason that map databases contain numerous errors waiting to be discovered by unsuspecting users.

The most valid source for gathering street map data is reality or some method of memorializing its complete details, at least the ones of relevance to mapping (as Google does with its Street View service). Compiling from existing maps or spatial databases means that you have bought into the method induced compilation errors inherent in the procedures used by whoever produced the data you are examining. Unfortunately, you are usually not going to discover the competency of the data or the data gatherers from metadata. So, what’s a body to do?

Crowdsourcing is one response. Although I am a great proponent of crowd sourcing and believe it to be one of the most promising methods of creating up-to-date maps, I am not sure that it will produce a reliable, accurate, comprehensive seamless street level database, over an extent as large as, say, the United States, or maybe even a small region such as the Delmarva Peninsula.

While the OSM product might be of sufficient quality in a number of cities, it is less likely to be of uniform quality across large physical extents with variable population densities. In addition, I suspect that it might not be of very good quality in areas of low income, high crime and other socioeconomic attributes that would convince many data gatherers to avoid these locations. Yes, OSM does use public data sources when available, but here again, you face the issue of adopting potentially erroneous procedures that plagued the original data compilation process.

My greatest concern about active crowdsourcing (active participation – not probes which I regard as passive participation) is that I am not sure it is sustainable over long periods. I realize that its present supporters might be willing to dedicate their time to this effort, but what happens in five or ten years? Will willing replacement data gatherers be found or will OSM become a collection of floating point data sources? Alternatively, might OSM collapse from neglect? Or, might OSM become a series of local data collection tribes. Hmmm. NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas have been around for approximately twenty-five years (since the mid-1980s); will we be able to say the same thing of OSM in 2030?

I have to admit a bias here. I like the concept of crowdsourcing, but think that in the long run it will prove inferior to the ability of for profit firms to sustain quality driven, map database updating using traditional field, research and crowdsourcing techniques (as Google does today, but inefficiently). On the other hand, I am not sure that international map database producers like NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas can compete in local markets with local companies or for-profit groups that are prepared to compile a map based on local sources.

Let’s talk about how that may happen next time. In order to do so , we will need to discuss why many important markets for map data may be, inherently, local.

I will be at the ESRI UC in San Diego for at least a couple of days next week to see what’s up. I’ll let you know what I find. If you see me there, let’s talk.

I have been spending a lot of time in my office working on various client requests for TeleMapics and other business interests that I service. I have become something of a shut-in recently as I continue trying to get ahead of the workload, but without great success. Yesterday, I broke off for a lunch at Baja Fish Tacos with a business associate.

You know, Orange County can really be beautiful and the weather is often fabulous. Yesterday was one of those perfect days. Yet, as I drove along a beautiful stretch of road, almost everyone I saw was ignoring reality and looking at the screens of their cell phones, yep, even the drivers. People on the street were walking while staring at screens. As I drove into the parking lot, I had to be more cautious than usual, as most pedestrians were going to or from their cars staring into those tiny screens. Even my buddy was sitting in front of the restaurant, staring in to his screen. What are we looking for in there?

Obviously, this focus on the small screen has significance for evolution and the development of humped backs, increases in the population of beady-eyed people, and smaller, longer fingers, as well as the possibility of 360 degrees of movement in our thumb knuckle joints. But I don’t care about that. Inquiring minds are asking, “What are we looking for in there?”

Recently, when I was killing some time between appointments, I peered into the screen of my mobile and saw this article, “Yahoo Looking To Blow AOL’s Patch Out Of The Water”. Good for them. Who knew? Who cares? Have some patience; AOL will blow itself out of the water, just as it has done so many times before. Do you know how you spell AOL? Yep, that’s right “i-r-r-e-l-e-v-a-n-t.”

Next, I saw an article titled “Yahoo buys Koprol”. My initial reaction was “Save us, cut the electric grid now and dismantle the wireless towers.” Do you know how you spell Yahoo? Yep, that’s right “c-o-u-l-d-b-e-i-r-r-e-l-e-v-a-n-t-s-o-o-n.” Is this really the stuff we are looking to find in our phones? Or is our interest in what our recently found 3392 best friends have just posted on Facebook about their day? I’m not sure.

When I next stared into that small screen, I found out that Nokia and Yahoo seem to think we are looking for access to email, maps, messaging and local information. Hmm. Could this Nokia/Yahoo thing be important? And, in retrospect, could the two announcements above be important?

I thought that a Reuters report on the deal between these two titans seemed to have it right in that it downplayed the significance of the worldwide, strategic alliance between the companies. I reasoned that there has to be more to this partnership than meeting the consumer needs for mundane things like maps and email, but Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo, quashed my intuition by indicating that the relationship with Nokia is not an advertising-based partnership.

In addition, Bartz stated, “Yahoo lost its focus on maps a couple of years ago” and seemed to be using this as the motivation for switching to OVI Maps. I’ve got some bad news for Carol. Yahoo Maps may be better designed and more useable than the OVI maps that will replace them. The functionality in OVI maps is buggy (although I do like their 3D view), the service is slow and the maps appear even more out of date than the Yahoo maps, as they show a 2009 copyright (both use NAVTEQ data). In addition, the traffic warnings shown on the OVI maps are not as current as the traffic conditions shown for the same areas on the NAVTEQ website (same day, same time). (The combination of Nokia’s MetaCarta and Yahoo’s WhereOnEarth properties may be quite interesting – but not directly related to my interests here, so we will move on.)

Of course, the problems with serving and functionality mentioned above can be fixed, but I am not sure that Nokia or NAVTEQ are the companies to make these fixes, since the maps on the websites of both companies do not load as fast as the maps on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, MapQuest or even Yahoo for that matter. Next, as I noted previously, the maps on OVI Maps and NAVTEQ’s website are not derived from NAVTEQ’s latest database release. Maybe they should take lessons from MapQuest who appears to be using NAVTEQ’s latest data!

On the other hand, perhaps Nokia and NAVTEQ need some deCarta? Maybe they need to purchase deCarta?

So, I think that we should conclude that “better” mapping is not the issue that sealed the deal. Free maps for Yahoo and free email access of Nokia users, now that might be more persuasive, but no financial information was released about the cross-licensing of maps, navigation, messaging or email functionality.

In order to appreciate this deal, I think you need to look under the covers, so I did a little research. During the press conference, the following image was shown and it contains some compelling information.

(Click here to download a larger PDF version of this image.)

Although there may be some side-benefits from the deal to help Nokia with the unfamiliarity of the OVI brand in North America and with Nokia’s abysmal position in the North American phone market, I think this deal needs to be evaluated by its significance outside of North America and Western Europe.

It is my opinion that “infrastructure” may be an important reason behind the deal. Many countries around the world lack a well-developed wireline infrastructure either for their telephone systems or for their Internet services. In numerous “developing countries”, cellular phones are the device of choice for accessing the Internet and using email. In addition, it is my belief that, in these countries the focus of the use of messaging, email, Internet and maps is more likely to be local (as opposed to regional or national) than in the more “developed” economies. As a consequence, the users may gravitate to the platform that will advantaged them by providing access to quality local information (see, those first two news items mentioned at the start of this blog actually may be key to the success of this deal).

In other words, the Nokia/Yahoo deal is an example of the paradox that as the economies of the world become interlinked and globalized, societies seem to be becoming more “tribal” and tribal equates with local. The advent of Local-Social networking is a prime example of these trends and reflects the obvious interest that all of us have in knowing “what’s around me.”

It appears Yahoo could become a valid alternative to Google. Before this deal, Yahoo lacked the DISTRIBUTION to get its product to the masses. Similarly, while Nokia had distribution in the parts of the world coveted by Yahoo, it did not have an Internet presence that the masses would find relevant to their interests.

Perhaps the Nokia/Yahoo deal will work out to be significant. However, to “make it so” Nokia will have to show more flexibility and less “Finland-vision” than it appears to have been able to muster in the past. This deal is really about the balkanization of information and global publishing. While it is good to have companies like Reuters and AP, they are not where I turn when I want to find news about Laguna Hills or Orange country. I think the rest of the world will vote the same way and now Nokia and Yahoo may have forged a strategy that give them an opportunity to compete with Google around the world by providing local information or relevance to local populations.

Now for the real, but unpublished, news in the deal

As a side note, I was slightly surprised that it was OVI Maps that was mentioned in the deal and not NAVTEQ. Is Navteq on its way to being absorbed by the Borg of the north? Clearly, NAVTEQ is not a consumer-facing brand, so that may be the reason they are in the backseat on this one. However, they may be a significant beneficiary of the deal. What? How could that be?

Well, all of you (that’s all five of you) who use OVI Maps might be interested to know, at least according to my sources, that the 3.1 software license you signed with OVI sends probe data back to … Nokia and the amount of probe data may be on the verge of expanding exponentially with the Yahoo deal. Now OVI will be able to fix their traffic guidance and NAVTEQ will have another tool to use in its competition with Tele Atlas. How about that? Maybe that’s the kind of thing I am trying to find when I stare into that small screen.

For those of you in the U.S., I hope you have a terrific Memorial Day Weekend.

I had a conversation last week with Mark Friend, whose acquaintance I made quite some time ago when he was working for Vicinity Corporation (acquired by Microsoft). Later Mark and I were both employed at go2 Systems, an early entrant into the mobile LBS market. Mark was an executive in sales and I was the CTO and EVP of engineering for the company. I had lost track of Mark until he called me recently, telling me he was onboard at Maponics.

Maponics, with a staff of approximately 30 (up from 12 two-years ago) and sales divulged at “less than $10 million” is known as a provider of polygon data identifying neighborhoods. The neighborhood data created by Maponics are used by Google (search filtering – not mapping), Trulia, ReMax, Redfin, eNeighborhoods. infoUSA, Citysearch, Yellowbook, DexKnows, NAVTEQ, Twitter and others.

The neighborhood data is comprised of non-overlapping boundaries complimented by neighborhood “use type” (e.g. retirement community, commercial, industrial, subdivision, etc). While the neighborhood boundary business is an interesting one, Mark had called to introduce me to a new product that shows what an inventive, small business can do to open new markets.

Maponics’s new product is a spatial database containing school attendance zone boundaries. These are the areas around public schools that define the households that attend them. In addition to locally sourced public school attendance zone (SAZ) boundaries for covered metro areas, the product dataset includes nationwide coverage of school district boundaries, as well as private and public school locations and profiles. (Private school attendance zones are widespread, not nested within formal school district boundaries and discontinuous due to the elective nature of their attendance. Consequently, Maponics will provide the location of private schools, but not a representation of their attendance zones.

The first product release of the data will include granular school attendance zone-level coverage for over 20 percent of the K-12 U.S. student population and 100 percent at the school district level. Maponics is poised for significant expansion of its attendance zone coverage over the next several months, with at least 20 percent increases in student population coverage per quarter.

Maponics believes that its School Attendance Zone Boundaries dataset will become a “must have” in the real estate market, since the dataset allows parents thinking about relocating to determine which schools serve the areas surrounding houses they are considering for purchase. In addition, these data should be of interest to direct marketers who could use the database to target households by school attendance zone boundaries.

While the U.S. Census Bureau provides a School District Review Program that includes mapping, it is restricted to the “school district” and does not provide the granularity of the school-oriented attendance zone boundary data provided by Maponics. For this reason the company to believe that the SAZ data might be of use to government analysts and policy makers. In addition, Maponics speculates that there may be some play for these data in social networking applications. It is possible that the SAZ may represent a spatial representation of a “neighborhood” that is familiar to kids attending a specific school, while more commonly used definitions of neighborhood may not be on their mental map.

The procedures that Maponics uses to identify the school zones are laborious and involve significant manual work that, at present, may be the only way to capture SAZ information. The company uses “rooftop” geocoding to determine the location of the schools and works with contacts at individual school districts to determine the “attendance” boundaries of the schools included in the districts.

Mark told me that the source data are typified by a substantial change rate. My translation is that the tasks of capturing and maintaining the data are an ongoing and expensive obligation for the company and probably the reason behind the staged release of the product.

The initial release will cover 20% of the U.S. school aged population with additional 20% increments being added each quarter until the database is completed in early 2011. Mark noted that the company believes that the coverage of the databases will plateau between 90 and 95% due to the improbability of capturing all SAZ data everywhere or gaining the cooperation of all school districts. I queried Mark about the potential use of UGC for this effort and he indicated that it was something they were exploring, but had not yet concluded that it would be more effective than their current place-based data collection.

It is my thought that initially, not all school districts may want to cooperate with Maponics and this situation may provoke difficulties in reaching the saturation coverage required to make the product useful. However, if the introductory database is welcomed by the market (especially by policy makers and those in real estate), then school districts may proactively want their schools represented in the Maponics database.

I am sure that many of you reading about Maponics’ efforts in this area, must be scratching your head and thinking, “That’s a tough and expensive way to make money.” I agree. The one truism I have learned in my years of working with geographic data is that few customers understand or appreciate the value of spatial data or the cost to create a spatial database that is comprehensive, current and accurate. Fewer still understand the cost to maintain these data over time. Whether the future is good to Maponics will depend on whether or not the markets find value in leveraging the School Attendance Zone database into their applications.

My forecast is that the SAZ data from Maponics will be viewed as an attractive product by realtors and professionals involved in local marketing. Marrying the SAZ data with demographic information by census tract could help to create a compelling product (as well as one that would be fun to model).

I was somewhat concerned that the company was releasing a partial database as its initial entry into the market, even though it is their stated goal to complete the database within the next year. Perhaps their practical approach will win out. After all, who else is producing this data at this level of granularity?” Alternatively, should that question be, “Who else will be intent on producing this type of data once they see the Maponics press release?”

The SAZ database is being developed in a strategic partnership with GreatSchools http://www.greatschools.org/ : whose Great Schools ID will be included in the product. The companies will be making a further announcement regarding the full extent of the relationship within the next month.

Some portions of the material above were garnered during my discussion with Mark Friend, while other information was taken from the Maponics press release on the topic, which you can find here.

Four blogs in the last four days, phew. I need a rest. So do you. Take the rest of the week off. Tell your boss I suggested it.

I have to eat “humble pie”, maybe “bumble” pie, today. I received an email this weekend indicating that NAVTEQ had actually fixed the I-195/I-95 interchange in Providence, Rhode Island in its first quarter 2010 release. The emailer told me that the database was released in January 2010. As you can see on the image below, the section of I-195 now being demolished is no longer represented in the NAVTEQ database and the correct reconfiguration of the highway is shown.

I feel re-assured that NAVTEQ got it right and did so earlier than its competitors (TeleAtlas and Google), as I had assumed that its field operations would have caught this change early and was stumped that NAVTEQ appeared not to have made the correction. Apparently, the problem was that I did not have access to the contents of NAVTEQ’s latest database release and assumed (incorrectly) that what was being show on their corporate website was the best, most up-to-date data that they had. What a silly assumption! Why would a company want to put their best foot forward in an attempt to build a brand and become a customer facing business? Of course, NAVTEQ is in good company, since OVI Maps (Nokia) and Bing Maps are not yet using NAVTEQ’s most recent database release.

Perhaps more curious is the 2010 copyright date shown on the maps displayed on the NAVTEQ website, even though they are, apparently, using 2009 data. (I suppose we should not confuse the copyright date on the maps with the database release date – even if that is what a casual reader would do).

Maybe NAVTEQ should send that press release it issued on the need to have up-to-date maps to itself, Nokia and Microsoft? By the way, it appears that MapQuest (another NAVTEQ user) has ingested and compiled the NAVTEQ January update, as the geometry shown on its map of Providence appears identical to that shown in the NAVTEQ illustration above.

So, I need to give a “half-apology” to NAVTEQ. They got it right sooner than their competitors (Google and TeleAtlas). I feel bad for having beat on them, as this was based on my misunderstanding of the situation. However, I am not really feeling embarassed, since I still cannot figure out how anyone was supposed to know they resolved the problem, given that NAVTEQ did not (and does not) seem inclined to update their own routing application using their current data Maybe its data integration problems. Who knows?

And Something More

I took a closer look at Google Maps and they have figured out parts of the Providence problem, but not all of it, as you can see below. Maybe those 300 people in Kirkland will help solve this problem?

While using OVI Maps I ran into a relatively unusual situation. When I searched for Rhode Island, the site responded with a message that it could not find Rhode Island

Or Providence, Rhode Island

Or New York, New York.

At that point, I thought that maybe the application was only searching the map being displayed. Since the map on the screen was centered on my area, I entered Long Beach, which was shown on the map, but no luck – no Long Beach.

Online mapping, you just gotta love it.

I had thought I would take the weekend off, but the following blog just forced itself out and you can blame Mike Blumenthal.

I presented an online presentation in the Joint Worldwide Universities Network Virtual Seminars in GI Science and Technology in November of 2008 on Neogeography, which was the focus of the fall 2008 program. My topic, “Data Quality and Neogeography” contained, I thought at the time, lots of interesting material for future research. You can find the presentation here.

One of the comments that I made was that even with the benefits of moolah ($$$) major navigation databases were out-of-date, inaccurate, non-comprehensive, of variable quality and too expensive to maintain. The summary of the presentation was twofold. First, I believed that UGC and neogeographers would become an integral part of the process used to build spatial databases. Next, I concluded that hybrid data collection systems using UGC and controlled data, including formal field gathering and measurement, were where geospatial database building efforts were headed.

Near the end of the paper, I asked “Will the winner of the map building competition be established commercial companies that capitalize on UGC to augment their data or new competitors that commercialize UGC and augment these data to compete with established systems?” Since we invent the future as we move towards it, I decided it was going to be fun to see what happened in the industry over the succeeding two to three years.

Since that time, Google has emerged as the leading new competitor commercializing UGC and augmenting it with more traditional data gathering methods (e.g. field activities (Street View),data mining etc.). On several occasions, I have blogged about Google’s map creation efforts and forecast that they would eventually need to hire an army of map compilers if they were serious about being in the navigation and spatial database building businesses. As you can see below, I should consider opening a fortune telling business, or, as least, posting my “Psychic for Hire” sign. (On the other hand, isn’t that what consultants do anyway? Wait, that includes me! Ugh.)

Late last night (see, there is an advantage to being a night owl), I received a note from Mike of Blumenthal’s blog who was passing on a note from one of his contacts (Chris Silver Smith) with a link to an article in TechFlash titled “Google hiring 300 workers to pinpoint bugs in Google Maps.” This appears to be another of those comedy pitches that are hard to find anywhere other than in the world of mapping.

What, Google needs to hire people to pinpoint the bugs in their maps? I thought that was the reason behind Google’s use of UGC and the map-feedback-loop? However, I have some advice for Google, “Use your maps and you too will be able to find the errors in them.” Oh, wait a minute. You do use your maps to support your local advertising system. And what did you find out? Oh, that bad?

The article from TechFlash starts “Google is hiring an army of 300 temporary workers in Kirkland as part of a yearlong campaign to improve the accuracy of Google Maps. The search giant is working with temp staffing agencies to find “computer geeks” familiar with geographic information systems and mapping software.”

I suppose there must be a couple of million “computer geeks” familiar with GIS and mapping software living in Kirkland, Washington (presumably these are the same people who used to work with the GIS giant Costco in Kirkland). Later in the article, it gets even better when the author of the piece (who seems to have done his homework), indicated that the two search firms helping to fill these position are looking “…to find 300 ‘visual data specialists’ to improve the product.” Jordan Newman, attributed as a “Google spokesman” in the article, apparently said “…much of the work will focus on data management.” The article goes on to indicate that data management includes “…keeping current on new business listings and the latest information on things like bike trails.” Whew, that’s a relief.

So, let’s be sure that we have this straight. Google apparently needs “computer geeks” familiar with GIS and mapping, who are “visual data specialists” and knowledgeable about data management topics such as keeping current on new business listings and the latest information on things like bike trails. You know, in all of my years in maps and mapping, I don’t remember ever meeting a person who had all of those skills, much less finding them in someone applying for a “temporary” job.

Get a realistic strategy, Google! Improving the quality of your maps is not a temporary need. The whole concept of “keeping current” is not an effort you can do in a year and then abandon because you decided a year earlier that this effort could be accomplished in twelve-months.

I realize that the emphasis here is that Google apparently believes it needs to hire a temporary work force to eliminate the map errors they did not catch in the original compilation process used to create the Google Base. However, my belief is that they will find out that research conducted by a professional team of map compilers could be of significant benefit to them. However, Google has a history of not liking solutions that are non-algorithmic. Imagine that, having to hire humans. Time will tell.

The fly in ointment in respect to Google’ approach to navigable map database building is that you cannot build a database of the quality needed for navigation, based on conflating data from public domain sources. In addition, you cannot build a navigation quality database sourced only from User Generated Content. Google, go back and read the slides from the presentation noted above – you need an integrated hybrid approach and a part of that activity is to have talented, professional map compilers who know GEOGRAPHY and how to find “source” on all thing geographic.

To be honest, talented map compilers are hard to find. In fact, you do not find them. Nope, you find people who have the talents and then you train them, because there is no public educational program (university-based or trade school) that trains competent map compilation experts focused on building navigable map databases. The talented map compilers who do exist in the world are classic data geeks, but ones who are interested in geography.

While I do not think it likely that the group being hired by Google will have strong map compilation skills, I do agree that they will be able to help Google build a GIS database with reasonable, but not exceptional quality levels. Building a navigation quality database that provides legal routes and route guidance capabilities, along with accurate address records, well, that’s not something Google is going to get to without different people and different tools.

However, one has to wonder who at Google has the experience that NAVTEQ and Tele Atlas have gained over the last twenty-five years of compiling navigation quality databases? In other words, who at Google is going to train this new, but temporary group of map compilers? Who at Google really understands the map compilation process enough to teach others how to do it at a professional level? Who at Google has experience with field data compilation for building navigation databases? In short, this is not a technology transfer program that can be accomplished in a year. Google needs to build a map compilation branch and the duration of that effort will last as long as Google wants to be in the mapping business.

I suppose many might think it is a “cheap shot” to ask the questions posed above. However, if Google had the answers to these questions before they built the Google Base, they would not be hiring 300 “crack” map compilers after releasing it for public use. After all, as noted in one of the comments to the TechFlash article, Google is the company who brought you Randolph, Vermont the popular city, apparently located at the bottom of Lake Champlain.

Now, once again bringing out my ESP capabilities, I predict that Google has yet to feel the real pain of being a quality cartographic provider (maybe, because the company does not yet merit that title). Just the other day, I saw a note indicating that the government of Vietnam had complained about Google’s depiction of the Vietnam/China border. I wonder who is going to research that question and others like it for Google?

In a similar vein, I wonder how UGC, the use of imagery and Street View are going to help Google answer questions about geographic features that are not visible, like boundaries. Guess that means greater reliance on data mining. Guess that, also, means greater reliance on authoritative sources. Guess that means more reliance on metadata? Google? Metadata? Do the two go together? Hmmmm.

I usually write this blog on Thursday, but yesterday was my birthday and I took the day off. In fact, I am taking today off as well, so I am not going to write about anything complex and that usually means I am going to pick on someone. I did not go to bed until 0330 this morning, so I am not sure that I have any complex ideas in me anyway (no comments please). However, I checked my email before retiring this morning and found a link to a press release from one of my favorite companies – NAVTEQ (as in the Providence, Rhode Island NAVTEQs). Well, we will get back to NAVTEQ in a minute.

Earlier this week, I noticed another press release indicating that Nokia had reorganized its top management (again). However, inside of the release was a little nugget and here it is:

“Nokia has also appointed Rich Green to the position of Chief Technology Officer, assuming responsibility for driving common technology architecture across Nokia. Green brings a wealth of experience from his time in Silicon Valley, including a number of years at Sun Microsystems.”

This may not be of significance to you, but Rich did his M.A. in geography with me and was also my assistant when I was teaching at the State University of New York at Albany. Before accepting the position at Nokia, Rich was VP of JAVA at Sun and their EVP for software (he left prior to the announcement of the Oracle deal).

The notice about Nokia started me thinking about all of the great students that I met during my residence at SUNYA. Dr. Terry Slocum, who preceded Rich as my assistant and Master’s student, went on to the University of Kansas and made a career of it, recently stepping down as department chair. Dr. Matt McGranaghan, my assistant and M.A., student following Rich Green, did his PhD at Buffalo and then headed to the University of Hawaii, where, after many years of service, he recently stepped down as chairman. These three were just a few of the terrific students that I was “gifted” with at Albany. Many others are now working in industry or government service and focused on important issues in mapping, GIS and technology. While I have had some measure of success as a professional, the feeling of, perhaps, having helped my students on their way to accomplishing meaningful goals (for themselves and society) is one of the most important of the “rewards that I have garnered in my career. So, to my former “students” – I am proud of all of you and thanks for taking the challenge.

Now back to NAVTEQ

You know, I hate to do this, but finding comedy material in mapping, like that provided recently by NAVTEQ, is rare. I suspect that Jay Leno is starting to think about doing one-liners on the mapping community, as NAVTEQ’s most recent press release is like having George Bush as president again.)

Below is a selection of paragraphs from the NAVTEQ press release, although you can find the whole thing here if you want to see it without my snide comments (which are shown with italics) .

“NAVTEQ Reminds Consumers of the Importance of GPS Map Updates during the Summer Driving Season
Map Updates Now Available for In-Vehicle Systems and Garmin GPS Devices at Amazon.com, Best Buy, BestBuy.com, Costco.com, Garmin.com and NAVTEQ.com” (Is this the longest press release title ever?)

“Chicago, IL – May 12, 2010 – NAVTEQ, the leading global provider of maps, traffic and location data enabling navigation, location-based services and mobile advertising around the world, reminds drivers to update the maps in their GPS devices in order to save time, money and gas during this summer’s driving season.” (Unless you will be driving in Providence and other select locations.)

“While money spent on fuel is likely to increase, NAVTEQ offers a simple way to save gas, money and time by purchasing a map update for GPS navigaton systems. Map updates are important so that an in-dash navigation system or portable navigation device has the most up-to-date information it needs in order to work most efficiently. A 2009 NAVTEQ Study* has shown that vehicles with regularly used GPS navigation systems use 12% less fuel than those that do not which can lead to out-of-pocket savings of over $250.00.” (Of course, it appears that using NAVTEQ data in Providence could lead to heaps of frustration. (By the way, I copied and pasted the text from the original release and the spelling errors were in the published text. Duane – notice “navigaton” in the first sentence of this paragraph – apparently I am not the only one who needs a copy editor.))

“Map updates help the “shortest“ and “fastest“ route functions work most efficently, minimizing extra miles driven and time on the road. Updates also save drivers time by providing the closest gas stations, restaurants, hotels and other important points of interest.” (Except, of course, in Providence and other selected areas where NAVTEQ’s lack of map updating” may maximize miles driven and time on the road. Of course, you might be able to get to your destination if you opted to eliminate travel on freeways and interstates. Indeed, truck drivers tell me that the cross-country by surface street route is growing in popularity with NT customers.)

“With today’s economic realities and busy lifestyles, drivers can’t afford to waste gas driving around with outdated maps,” said Lonnie Arima, VP North America Channel Sales Development, NAVTEQ. “A map update provides the most accurate, up-to-date road and points of interest information so drivers can efficiently reach their destinations.” (Did he really say “outdated maps”? Did he infer the NAVTEQ maps are up-to-date? I love marketing-speak.)

Now, you know what’s coming next, don’t you?

The image above was taken around 0930 AM PDT this morning, May 14, 2010. I have to thank NAVTEQ for extending the fun that started with my birthday and continued today, thanks to their press release. You know, the image above looks a lot like the one I captured and posted here on February 25, 2010, except that this one shows traffic flowing across the new I-195 (which is labeled India Street on the NAVTEQ map and they must be wondering why all that traffic is flowing across such a small arterial).

Unfortunately, when I requested a route from an address in East Providence, Rhode Island to Cranston, Rhode Island, the suggested path took me across the loop that is being razed and no longer connects I-195 with I-95 (see my last blog for a photo). I sure hope that all those people who saw the NAVTEQ release and bought the update are pleased with the result (which they might be, if they do not drive in Rhode Island or other select areas).

Next week (probably Tuesday), I will delay my intended blog topic, because I have some information to share from Maponics that I think you might find interesting. In addition, and unrelated to Maponics, have you noticed all this stuff about parcels going on out there? Interesting.

Well, Mr. Swanson never called back, so the world will have to wait to see whether Foxboro attempts to start the ball rolling on the road “clearinghouse” concept in Massachusetts. I guess I will have to go it alone on that topic.

The basic premise, carried forward from my last blog, is that a local jurisdiction “should” know more about the streets and roads for which it is responsible than the governmental unit that contains it. So, the city of Laguna Hills should know more about its streets, than agencies representing Orange County, or those of the state of California, or the federal government of the United States. Now, there are obviously some exceptions. For example, counties should know more about county roads than any other jurisdiction (even the city governments through which these roads pass) and states should know more details about state roads than any other level of government. In addition, states may be uniquely qualified to know more details about interstates in their jurisdiction than the federal government, since states are often responsible for the construction and the spend that creates additions and augmentations to these roadways.

Let’s not get confused by the fact that various jurisdictions may create maps or databases that may include some streets and roads, which they know little about. State highway departments often fall into this class, as they provide online maps of the state that faithfully report state highways and interstates, but often have egregious errors when representing local streets and roads. Perhaps this distance decay in reporting is an offshoot of Tobler’s First Law of Geography that “Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related to each other.” If municipalities have verified change information about their street and road infrastructure, what better source would exist to propagate that information to mapping companies and others who create, update and manage spatial databases, particularly those used for navigation?

It goes without saying that these “local” jurisdictions should know more details about the streets and roads for which they have governmental responsibility and know of these changes that alter their transportation network sooner than, say, that knowledge is discovered by NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas, Google or OSM. In fact, since most roadwork depends on budgets and budgets must be approved and publicly represented, it is likely that many road and street changes are knowable far in advance of the construction that alters their physical structure. I bring out this issue, because field operations are those designed to monitor what is, not what will be. Consequently, databases based on observations, such as OSM, are often limited by what people can observe, rather than what they could know if they looked in the right place.

Wait a minute – if all this local knowledge stuff is true, why not just build a roads database based on the contributions of these administrative units? Well, I think that strategy is, in part, what GDT was attempting to accomplish in the 1990s when it was creating its geodatabase of the United States (Dynamap). GDT, for example, merged its existing database with the first version of TIGER and then exhibited a preference for the use of data mining, rather than field research to enhance Dynamap.

I suspect that GDT learned that: 1) many jurisdictions don’t do a good job of inventorying their streets and roads, 2) information representing the same street segment may vary between agencies within a jurisdiction, 3) numerous jurisdictions are not computerized, and 4) others jurisdictions simply cannot afford to update their spatial or information databases in a timely manner. When GDT later contemplated offering a navigation capable database, as opposed to a simple geospatial database, I think the company’s management began to realize that independent “eyes on the road” and field measurement were a required part of map updating, at least if you want to build a navigation-grade spatial database.

So, it is my opinion that building a navigation database requires a variety of redundant inputs; a database built solely on reports from interested municipalities could not be used to create a viable navigable database. Today, inputs from states and municipalities are being used by Google, NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas and others as part of the normal update process. Unfortunately, what seems to be lacking is that navigation database provider’s do not have a perspective on what is going to happen to the transportation network and when the alteration actually happens. While these types of changes can be discovered in due time through field operations or UGC-based systems, it just seems to take too long for these groups to discover, describe and integrate these changes into their databases.

Our recent series on the problem in Providence, Rhode Island, although good for a laugh, is a textbook example of how the lags in the map updating system can provide data that is not fit for the intended purpose. Below is a photo of the now infamous I-195 realignment in Providence that was snapped by a friend on Tuesday of this week, as his airplane began its descent into Boston. Look – there are cars on the new segment and the old one no longer connects to I -95 on the west. Below that is view of the same intersection on NAVTEQ’s website as of 1735 (PDT) today (May 6, 2010) and I am sure we are all glad to note that, at least on the map, traffic is flowing at normal speeds on the roadbed that is being deconstructed. Notice that traffic is moving at normal speeds even where the roadbed no longer exists. (I have wanted one of those vehicles ever since I saw George Jetson sporting about in one many years ago).

So, if municipalities knew of road and street changes in their jurisdiction that would influence navigation and navigation systems and communicated those to an official clearinghouse, these data could be available, often in advance of the change, to any interested party. The repository of change information, would in all likelihood not be of the quality to allow any commercial creator of navigation databases to adapt it without further research and processing. However, it could and would provide more rapid map updating than is available today.

Maybe this stuff is not of interest to NAVTEQ, since their business model seems to be built on in-car systems whose owners rarely buy new updated navigation media after they have purchased their car. TomTom on the other hand, should be interested in this method, since its PNDs are updated more often by its users and it is now making some inroads with Renault and car companies in outfitting vehicles with TomTom units that are dash-dockable. On the other hand, TomTom’s actions appear to indicate that it believes that UGC (MapShare + probe vehicles) may be a better answer to map updating than relying on professional field observation. Indeed, they may be convinced that UGC reveals these types of changes more quickly than “authoritative” sources such as local government.

So how would this work? (The short version)

My suggestion is to create a nationwide clearing house that operates a secure, online system provisioned to allow certified sources to check in map data and/or other information about roads changes and proposed road changes in the areas of their jurisdiction. Non-certified parties would not be able to submit or alter information. Any interested party would be able to download these data and use them without limitation.
The data would be proffered without guarantees of accuracy or fitness for a particular use. Instead, the platform would serve as an early warning system, allowing interested parties to focus on road and street changes that they might not become aware of until far in the future.

Those of you still awake will notice that I have proposed a clearinghouse even though some providers of “local” road information are not very good at reporting these changes. Well, that is true, but in this case, something appears to be better than nothing. As to why someone did not suggest a clearinghouse in the past, well, nobody was providing navigable databases on a scale that made a difference. With online routing, PNDS and a surge in popularity of in-car systems, updating maps to reflect current reality has become a much more prominent problem.

What do you think? Let’s have some comments.

By the way, I did not have time to get to my prediction about the ascendency of local mapping firms and may do that next time. However, I have this idea about maps and cyber war that may trump it. In addition, I have been doing a lot of research on addresses and addressing and want to discuss that as well. Tune in next time to see where we end up. Did I mention my iPAD 3G arrived last Friday – more toys!

Today, Google announced that its navigation service in the UK was going live. Imagine the number of accidents that will cause? Of course, since Google announced driving directions were available in an additional 115 countries earlier this month, I have an obligation to advise all of you to avoid buying new cars during the next 12 to 24 months. Junkers should be ok and very practical, now that everyone will be going the wrong direction.

The other day Duane Marble sent me a quote that had appeared on the Directions Magazine website about a problem that the Department of Transportation in Foxboro, MA was having with drivers paying attention to their navigation systems and not paying attention to the layout of the roadway ahead of their cars. See this for the full article from the Sun Chronicle.

In this case, the road described is a dangerous one for residents, since drivers seem not to notice a stop sign at the bottom of a local T-intersection. Instead, for some unknown reason, drivers continue straight through the intersection, driving over a stone wall and colliding with cars parked in the driveway of the house across from the stop sign

Previously Foxboro had problems with Google Maps, as the service had somehow mislocated Gillette Stadium (perhaps that explains the Patriots’ lousy season), although they managed to show the location of Schaefer Stadium, whose name had been changed to Foxboro Stadium in 1982. Unfortunately, Foxboro Stadium was demolished in 2002, when it was replaced by Gilllette Stadium. However, if you search for Foxboro Stadium, you can find its name on Google Maps, next to Gillette Stadium. Of course, if you search for Schaefer Stadium, you can find it at the same location as Gillette Stadium. Perhaps, of more relevance, Google had located Gillette Stadium in the middle of a small subdivision that, on game days, was crushed with traffic headed to the wrong destination.

Getting back to the more recent problem, Foxboro Superintendent of Highways, Robert Swanson said, “We can make the street one-way, but GPS and online/Web driving technologies will still consider it a two-way.” The Superintendent went even further, suggesting that the time may have come to ask the Massachusetts legislature to “determine if some form of law or statewide clearinghouse can be formulated” to require GPS and online traffic services to update their maps soon after towns submit traffic changes. Swanson added, “This appears to be a systematic problem that is not being addressed at the state or federal level.”

I called Mr. Swanson to discuss his idea, but was told he was dealing with his IT group about computer problems – I suppose they had tried to install the McAfee never-ending reboot program (the endless reboots are apparently a new and highly desirable feature among workers looking for an unexpected day off).

I know a lot of you probably find Swanson’s call to action a bad idea. I, on the other hand, think it has merit.

Take Google Maps, as a good example. If you or I think we have found an error, we can go online and submit a correction. If you are an authoritative source, say a municipal highway department, or a State Department of Transportation (remember the Providence, Rhode Island debacle) you can…well, you can get in line just like everyone else and submit a correction to Google. Then, you can submit one to Bing, MapQuest, Yahoo, NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas and one to every other commercial vendor providing navigation services or mapping information used for navigation. Of course, if you go to Garmin with this type of request, they will, as they recently demonstrated, tell you that they are not responsible for the quality of the map data they use and that you should contact the vendor.

It seems curious that the best way to solve this problem, at least in terms of personal satisfaction, is go to OSM and fix it yourself. Hmmm. Good solution, but that Creative Commons license will likely keep it from ever being exposed to enough users to solve the problem we are discussing here.

It seems to me that if you are an authoritative, government source responsible for highways, addresses, or other geographical data and a map error is causing a problem of public safety, there should be a method of remedying those problems faster than the four months our mapping and navigation colleagues have taken to resolve the problem in Providence. As a matter of fact, the expansion in the number of these types of problems is leading me to suspect that local mapping companies are going to spring up to create quality “local mapping” and make the “big boys” look even more inept.

Oops – Just off the press

I have to rescind my comment about the “rapid four-month” solution to the Providence problem. See this image taken this morning of the NAVTEQ website, showing that traffic is slowing to 33mph on the section of I-195 that has been closed since November and is being demolished. Oh please, make this stop – fix this error. You can do it NAVTEQ!

Perhaps Providence is a good example of the types of errors that concern Mr. Swanson. It is likely that some of the companies providing navigation services that incorporate NAVTEQ data are supplying bad routes through Providence. In fact, if navigation systems users are driving from east to west on I-195, they will think that they need to merge right to connect with I-95 north or south, when they actually need to merge left to connect with I-95 south and keep right for I-95 north, but not on the road segment described by the NAVTEQ data. Since NAVTEQ clearly knows about this error, how can it take them so long to correct it on their own website? Oh, something about how long it take them to compile their data into a runtime version? Hmmm. I thought we had left the Middle Ages centuries ago.

This blog was just to soften you up. Next time I will direct my comments to establishing a road clearing house and why it might be an idea whose time has come. Perhaps, Mr. Swanson will have called back by then, if so, I will let you know what he had to say. In addition, I will spend some time describing my thoughts about local mapping, a market segment that may have a “second-life” after it was killed by online mapping and routing.

Last week the press was full of reports of Nokia acquiring MetaCarta, a privately held company focused on “Geographic Search and Referencing Solutions”. MetaCarta claims that its geosearch and geographic referencing software makes geographic information actionable with geographic text search and content referencing.

The press release issued for the action was uninformative, and looked like this – “Espoo, Finland – Nokia announced today that it has acquired MetaCarta Inc. MetaCarta, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a privately owned company which employs over 30 people and has expertise in geographic intelligence solutions. MetaCarta’s technology will be used in the area of local search in Location and other services.”

The obligatory “About MetaCarta” section of the press release was slightly more informative, indicating in “marketing speak” that, “MetaCarta Inc. provides powerful technology for finding anything written about any place. MetaCarta unique technology combines geosearch and geotagging capabilities allowing users to find content about a location in internal and external data stores. MetaCarta’s products make data and unstructured content “location-aware” and geographically relevant for easier organization and quicker action.”

This modest acquisition caught the attention of Reuters, Information Week the Washington Post and other major new sources, but it appears that no one has a clue about what attracted Nokia to MetaCarta.

Somewhat curiously, one source reporting the acquisition indicated (in error) that MetaCarta was specialized in GPS navigation, which, I am sure, came as a surprise to MetaCarta.

Another curiosity is a reference at the MetaCarta site, under a page titled MetaCarta Research (2005 section) that for some reason cites “Unlocking your Nokia Phone” by Schuyler Erle in Nokia Smartphone Hacks published by O’Reilly.

I have followed MetaCarta since I first heard about them in 2001 and have spoken with the company’s founder John Frank. In addition to hearing him speak about the company at a few conferences, several years ago he and I spent some time discussing MetaCarta and its business model at the NCGIA conference on Digital Gazetteers held by the Geography Department at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Even with the insights provided by John, I was never sure that I saw a sustainable market for their products, which, as noted above, are aimed at making data and unstructured content, which include “geographic” references, spatially aware. I realized that their software might be of use in the intelligence community where thousands of place names in news reports need to be geographically referenced. In addition, I could understand the attraction of the software to energy companies whose legal departments needed to review the “geographical” descriptions of places contained in the exploration and drilling leases they held around the world. But I was not sure that MetaCarta had a model that would allow them to be considered authoritative across a wide spectrum of users in a large marketplace such as local search, where everyone is searching for a unique, sustainable, competitive advantage. And yet, Nokia takes them off the table.

Place name geography is a difficult thing to parse and MetaCarta has been actively exploring this challenge for several years. While Nokia might be content to let MetaCarta continue serving the energy, defense and document industries, these are clearly not of core interest to Nokia, not huge money makers and may be abandoned. So what’s the real interest in MetaCarta?

I guess you could speculate on this for hours and not come to a definite answer on the “why” of the acquisition. While speculating can be interesting and good fun, deals often come down to a simple, but unexciting explanation; corporate big wigs like to “do” deals, as running a business day-to-day is quite boring for most high-powered executives. However, in this case, I think Nokia had a reason. Let’s look.

MetaCarta is a glorified gazetteer. Yep, it has elegant software and algorithms that help it “localize” unstructured text into valid place names associated with a spatial context, but more importantly, under the hood MetaCarta has a authoritative gazetteer. However, since Nokia already owned NAVTEQ, why would they need to add any more location awareness to their local search capabilities?

Oh, that’s easy. OVI maps are available for over 180 countries with car and pedestrian navigation available for 74 countries. Conversely, according the NAVTEQ website, it provides map coverage only in 78 countries.

Let’s see, that means that Nokia has maps for 102 countries not provided by NAVTEQ. It is unlikely that Nokia had the metadata and contextual gazetteers for those 102 countries and without these data the company would likely be hampered in fielding a meaningful local search platform. The answer to solving this problem was to buy MetaCarta, a company that the goods, but in my opinion was failing and could be had for a song.

Why could MetaCarta be had for a song?

Nobody else wanted MetaCarta! Google already has the gazetteer and contextual data, much of it from user generated content and their own search systems deployed in countries around the world. Yahoo purchased WhereOnEarth several years ago and used the assets from the company to develop segments of its location search platforms. Microsoft appears to have similar capabilities that it originally developed for its Expedia offerings and migrated to local search. It’s good to be wanted, even if only by one company. And so it goes.

One More Thing

One of the problems of mobile local search is what I call “farcasting”, which is communicating information about something you intend to do while in transit to your eventual destination. While the GPS coordinates generated by your phone can tell your carrier where you are and provide targeting for advertising, it often lacks the ability to contextually associate an action with a place at which you have not yet arrived. Having guidance on the location of the place to which you intend to travel and your planned activity would allow location based advertisers to up the bid for the geospatially targeted advertising they could serve you. So, if you texted “dinner in laguna hills at 5?” when you were leaving LAX airport, Nokia could parse that message to reveal spatial and behavioral clues that might be very interesting to advertisers. However, thanks to MetaCarta, Nokia can now provide that same service just about anywhere in the world.

Kevin Dennehy from GPS World reached out (from Baghdad) to ask my thoughts about Apple’s recent announcement that it was getting into the mobile advertising business. I think that iADS could be an interesting development in mobile advertising (particularly for LBS). You can find a summary of my comments in Kevin’s article at GPS World.

Just a side note – I pre-ordered the version of the iPAD with WI-FI and 3G. I am not sure I am wild about the platform, but the only way I ever really understand the potential of any device is to use one – not just to sample it in the store or use a friend’s. Sometime in the future (and it may be quite some time before the unit is delivered), I will blog about its potential use in geospatial. As a matter of fact, I am already thinking “product”.