Google versus Microsoft

My previous post "Google gets it right" generated a bit of discussion on the relative merits of Microsoft and Google in the mapping space. I just wanted to say that I am relatively neutral on that score at the moment - I think that each has strengths relative to the other, and we are in the early stages of what will be a major battle between the two of them (and perhaps others, such as Yahoo), over the next few years. Google built up some good momentum ahead of Microsoft, first with Google Earth and then with Google Maps, and I think that their relatively recent announcement that they are indexing all KML files on the web gives them another advantage, because of their leadership in search. However, as I wrote about in GeoWorld a little while ago, Microsoft has a strong track record of being a "fast follower" and gaining market leadership after initially falling behind - as it did to Apple with Windows, and to Netscape with Internet Explorer.

The most obvious area where Microsoft has a significant technical advantage over Google is in its 3D building models and the techniques and technology it acquired from Vexcel to enable it to automatically build these from accurate photogrammetric data. I don't see how Google's current approach of allowing the community to upload models will come anywhere near the accuracy or completeness of what Microsoft is doing there. It requires a major investment to match what Microsoft is doing in this area (Microsoft say they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on this). A related area where Microsoft has an advantage also is in the "Birds Eye" oblique imagery data that it offers, which Google doesn't. I think that Microsoft seems a little more focused on pushing Virtual Earth as an application development platform in the business world, though admittedly that's subjective - and both of them really need some work on their licensing arrangements for commercial use. As discussed in the comments on my earlier post, in some areas Microsoft has better imagery than Google (such as the village of Cropston in the UK, where I am at the moment), but the reverse is true in other cases - it's hard to draw any clear conclusion there without a lot more analysis. Other related technologies of interest that Microsoft has include SQL Server Spatial (coming next year), and Photosynth, which is one of the coolest new technologies I have seen for a while, which has a lot of potential for being integrated with Virtual Earth.

But having said all this, Google still seems to have the mindshare and momentum in the online hacker community, where people are developing lots of cool things, and in the blogosphere. KML has great momentum as a format for publishing geospatial data. But both companies clearly see the mapping / geospatial area as a major battleground and are investing significantly to try to get the upper hand, which can only be good for the industry.

Tele Atlas use Inrix to model traffic flows

An interesting story at Technology Review (via gizmodo) on how Tele Atlas is using software and data from Inrix to better predict traffic flows, by making extensive use of historical traffic flow data.

Google gets it right

You have to hand it to Google, they do a lot of things very well. I am in the UK and was just testing my various BlackBerry 8800 mapping applications as I took a short train ride. BlackBerry Maps actually did best this time - I have found that it has a pretty nice real time tracking mode, which shows you your speed and bearing as well as a dynamically scrolling map. Telenav gave me a lat-long but never managed to download any map data, just gave a "loading" message (while great in North America, it hasn't been any use to me in the UK so far). Spot didn't manage to download a map either, MGMaps still isn't recognizing my internal GPS and Google Maps didn't support GPS when I was on the train.

However, I am just waiting for someone to collect me from the station and thought I'd quickly surf the web on my BlackBerry. My home page is Google Mobile. Right there on the front page, with just a handful of other links, is a link saying "download google maps mobile with GPS support". I click on that, and have a page which says "download google maps with GPS for the BlackBerry 8800" (so it obviously recognized my device automatically). It told me that it was a 200k download in advance, so I know it wouldn't break the bank despite the fact that I'm paying by the kB here. It takes about a minute or so to download, and now I have a very nice Google Map (either a street map or a satellite image) centered on my current location, accurate to 3m. And I can blog about it while I'm still waiting to be collected!

I wish that all my software installations and upgrades were that simple! (Though now I think about it, I'm a little surprised my existing Google Maps Mobile didn't tell me that there was an update available - so still room for improvement!) I'm still planning to provide more details on various new BlackBerry location applications shortly, as mentioned in previous posts.



Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

Intergraph integrates with Google Maps and Virtual Earth

Intergraph has announced at its Intergraph 2007 conference a new capability for its GeoMedia WebMap product to be able to produce mashups with Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth, without requiring any programming. This will be available in GeoMedia WebMap 6.1 later this year. I think this is potentially a very significant announcement - I have been saying for some time that the traditional GIS vendors need to leverage what Google, Microsoft et al are doing and not try to compete with it, and had been pushing this in my time at Intergraph. But it's a big culture change to do this as it starts to take these vendors down a path where they have less control in their customer base than they have done in the past. ESRI in particular seems reluctant to go down this path - they have nothing comparable to this new offering from Intergraph at the moment, it is left to third parties to provide software like Arc2Earth.

This solution lets you do anything you can do with GeoMedia WebMap in terms of sophisticated visualization and server-based geospatial analysis, and overlay that in Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth. The press release isn't specific on this point, but my understanding is that the GeoMedia maps can be created "on the fly", or they can be published as tiles in advance, for very high performance like that achieved with Google Maps and Virtual Earth. Intergraph has not done a great job historically in promoting the full capabilities of GeoMedia WebMap, which has had comprehensive server-based geospatial analysis and visualization capabilities since long before ESRI brought out ArcGIS Server.

So I think this has great potential technically - a key question in terms of how successful it will be in the bigger scheme of things is whether Intergraph will get more creative in the way it markets and licenses GeoMedia Webmap to get greater uptake in the market.

Short update on BlackBerry 8800 GPS software

I have multiple connection challenges at the moment - am in England and only have access to a PC with dial up connection, and a slow GPRS connection on my BlackBerry (compared to EDGE back home) which I have to pay for by the kB rather than having unlimited bandwidth. So just a short update on my previous BlackBerry 8800 posts for now. I have found out that Telenav, the navigation software which I really like as I've said previously, only does road navigation in the US and Canada. At the same time I had a comment on my earlier posting which suggested I should also try Wisepilot, and they happen to offer a 5 day free trial with European data, so I'll give that a try later this week and report back. In addition to navigation capabilities, they also offer functionality which warns you when you are approaching a speed camera (in Europe) ... not that I will have any need to use that, I hasten to add, in case there are any traffic police reading this!

The second piece of news is that Skylab Mobilesystems, who produce the Spot for BlackBerry software which I reviewed previously, have announced a new product called MobileTracker for BlackBerry, which creates GPS tracklogs in the background, which was one of the top things I was after. It saves these in KML so you can directly display them in Google Earth and Maps (and elsewhere). The software I have been using to geocode photos, RoboGeo, expects a GPX file as input rather than a KML file I think, so may need to mess around a little bit to overcome that, but I'm sure I can work around that.

And finally for now, the technical support team at Mobile GMaps, which I also mentioned in my previous post, tell me that they have an update which they think will enable the use of the BlackBerry 8800 GPS, which didn't work for me before - again, haven't had a chance to try that yet but will do so soon. Also, I did try the "phone positioning" used by the underlying Navizon software, which uses some sort of signal triangulation, on my travels, and that did locate me in Chicago airport, though not in Calgary or in the UK.

So some promising indications, will report back as I am able to try each of these out.

Intergraph 2007 next week

This is my first attempt to post via email from my blackberry, let's see if it works ...

Next week is the Intergraph 2007 show in Nashville. I won't be there, but plan to blog a little (remotely - will be in the UK in fact) about some of the interesting new things my friend Mark Doherty will be talking about in the technology keynote, which he has taken over from me.

I believe that registration is looking good, and wish Mark and the rest of the gang all the best for a good conference.

Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

SQL Server spatial

There have been various comments floating around about Microsoft's announcement of spatial support for SQL Server, ranging from great excitement to extreme skepticism. I have known about this for a while under NDA, and I think it is an important step for the industry. While Oracle Spatial has been out for 12 years so Microsoft has quite a bit of catching up to do, many of the recent Oracle developments have been focused beyond pure "spatial database" functionality, and more into functionality that was previously the domain of the GIS vendors, such as spatial analysis and mapping - I think that Microsoft should be able to provide core database functionality relatively quickly. It will be good for the industry for Oracle to have some more serious competition within the commercial database world, in regard to spatial. It really reinforces the trend that everyone has been talking about of geospatial data becoming mainstream, now that the top two commercial database vendors will both support spatial. The fact that Microsoft has an offering both in the space of the new disruptive online mapping offerings, with extensive packaged data (like Google and Microsoft) and in the database (like Oracle, which does not have an offering in the former space), opens up some interesting possibilities for them to offer solutions leveraging both aspects. I think that geospatial technology has much higher visibility at high levels in Microsoft than at Oracle (driven by Virtual Earth) - I talked more about this in an article at Geoplace.

So Microsoft will need to follow through on the announcement, and has plenty to do to catch up with Oracle and the various open source spatial database offerings, but it's another important step in terms of geospatial really being a major area for Microsoft.