Asian e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba has paid $294 million for a 28 percent stake in AutoNavi, a location, GPS, and mapping company based in Beijing. The end goal, the companies said, is a combination of the two entities’ areas of expertise: physical location and online retail.

In a press release, AutoNavi states it plans “to share certain data, including AutoNavi’s map data and location-related information of the merchants on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms. … AutoNavi and Alibaba will also cooperate in the areas of map engine, location search, navigation, and cloud computing services and will cross-promote their respective products and services, with a goal of developing new location-based business models.”

The deal itself is structured so that one of Alibaba Group’s wholly owned subsidiaries will purchase 28 percent of AutoNavi’s fully diluted outstanding shares. Alibaba executive vice chair Joseph C. Tsai and Eddie Wu, Alibaba’s mobile product president, will both gain seats on AutoNavi’s board of directors. The deal should close soon pending regulatory approval.

In a statement, Alibaba chief Jack Ma said, “This new alliance reflects our vision for the future of the mobile Internet.”

“With Alibaba’s support, AutoNavi will be able to establish a massive platform of points of interest (POIs) related to the kinds of services our users seek every day,” said AutoNavi CEO Congwu Cheng.

“The alliance will also enable us to create an innovative monetization model by providing consumers with a one-stop service application that integrates merchant information with POIs search, data mining, payment, and other e-commerce activities.”

AutoNavi was founded in 2001 and currently employs 2,000 people. The company had its $100 million IPO in the United States in 2010.

Image credit: fcasadei/Flickr

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

“The world around you is not what it seems,” says Ingress, the virtual game that uses the real world as its gamespace. And, perhaps, when Google’s semi-independent division Niantic Labs is finished with its mission, we humans won’t be, either.

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and usable. Note carefully that Google says nothing about the Internet in that statement.

In the last few eye-blinks of human history, we’ve created virtual worlds: cyberspace, virtual reality, the World Wide Web … places that exist in our devices, on our computers, in our servers, on the internet, and in our heads. But there’s also a space in which we live and walk and eat and breathe. Realspace. Meatspace. IRL. The real world, so we say, that we can touch and taste and smell.

Google’s trying to bring those world together, partly through the work of Niantic Labs.

Augmented reality is nothing new, of course, with marketing-focused companies like Layar building connections between physical and virtual reality and Ikea’s most-downloaded branded app of 2012 doing similar things. Other startups have explored AR capabilities as well, such as Caterina Fake’s Findery, which invites people to leave geo-tied notes that others can discover and read.

But when a company with the resources of a Google tackles the problem, and has a tool in Google Glass that seems destined for significant developer (and probably user) penetration that can actually create interconnections between the real and the virtual perhaps more efficiently than any other previous product, you’ve got something interesting. And potentially huge.

So a couple of weeks ago, I chatted with the man who’s leading that effort.

John Hanke: the missionary of mapping

John Hanke is vice president of product for Niantic Labs, the year-old Google-but-not-Google division of just a few dozen engineers that brought us Field Trip, the app to explore the world around us with a virtual docent. And, of course, the virtual/real game Ingress.

Source: LinkedIn

John Hanke

Before Niantic, Hanke ran Google Maps, Google Earth, and other geo areas, and before Google, he was the cofounder and CEO of Keyhole, the innovative geo-mapping and visualization company. Google bought Keyhole in 2004, which brought Hanke in the search engine’s fold to lead the its maps, earth, street view, and local divisions.

Now, he told me, rather than let him leave to scratch his entrepreneurial itch yet again and do another startup, Google gave him a semi-autonomous group to, as his LinkedIn profile suggests, experiment at the “intersection of mobility, real world, and the Internet.”

“We set up Niantic as a group that could explore new types of mobile apps with ubiquitous always-on features,” Hanke said. “And we’re set up to act like a start-up.”

Virtual + physical = field trip

Field Trip was one of Niantic’s first creations, and while on the surface it’s an app that helps you find cool stuff, ultimately it’s a tool to merge metadata and data and then present them together. While you’re in the physical world, Field Trip pulls data about that experience from digital sources, feeding you that information, and changing — deepening, enriching — your experience of place. Layering with with history, perhaps, or science, or culture.

Because, after all, one rock is very much like another rock, but if this is the precise rock where Geronimo attacked Mexican soldiers armed with only a knife and his courage, that changes our experience of this particular place. And the merging/melding/layering of virtual and physical makes it more real, in a sense — hyperreal.

Source: John Koetsier

Google’s Field Trip app helps you explore “reality.”

Enabling that, of course, requires extensive virtual enhancement of the what-you-see-is-what-you-get world.

“One of the things that we’re trying to evangelize is the concept of geo-tagging everything,” Hanke told me. “I would have expected eight years ago that it would be ubiquitous now, but it’s still not. But I think we’ll get there.”

Geotagging everything digital is a key intersection point between virtual and real. If this blog post is written here, and not there, that adds flavor and nuance to the information. And if a particular historical fact is geotagged to a specific mapped location, that adds depth and dimension to our experience of that place.

“We’re applying some of the same techniques we currently use in standard web search, and the same kind of discipline, to pull really interesting, really good places up from everything else,” Hanke says. “The model is that you’re walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood, but with a friend who is telling you the best things around you. You enjoy it just like before, but you’re a little more informed.”

AR + MMO + IRL

Depth and dimension are definitely core components of Ingress, another Niantic Labs app/experiment/game. Ingress is a — take a deep breath — augmented reality massively multiplayer online video game.

The real world is real, but it’s fought over virtually by two shadowy groups: the Enlightened and the Resistance. Niantic has filled the Earth with virtual portals, usually coincident with actual physical landmarks or monuments, that players need to capture in order to gain territory. Capture territory with large numbers of people (aka “mind units”) and your faction gets more powerful.

Clearly, the massive integration of Google mapping technology with a sophisticated gaming engine is required. And the result is another intersection between the real and the virtual.

“Ingress is a massively multiplayer online game designed for mobile, with real location-based connections,” Hanke told me.

You play with everyone in your faction, and you might meet up with other players in real life, or you may just know them virtually as team members in another area. Along the way, Google learns an awful lot about how you use your mobile devices, about mapping physical locations, and about overlaying cyberspace on meatspace.

Source: Google

Ingress’ field of play is the world, layered with virtual data.

All of that knowledge is going to come in very handy with Google Glass.

Endgame: Google Glass?

Hanke is cautious when speaking about Google Glass, as is the PR handler who is copiloting our conversation. Even already public information is a question mark as we chat: Google is definitely being Apple-like in the control and distribution of Glass and its future.

But something tantalizing tidbits do come out.

“We definitely kinda had Google Glass in mind when we started work on apps at Niantic,” Hanke says. “We need mobile devices that are less intrusive than the phone is.”

Source: Google

A model demonstrates Google’s new Project Glass technology.

And we need devices with different input/output modalities, he says. After all, it’s not easy to play Ingress running around holding an expensive and fragile device in front of you like a window ripped from its frame. And yet you need that portal from the physical to the virtual. For instance, while Field Trip is great to open the doors on human context for the world around us, it threatens to detract from our experience of the world by redirecting our eyes from the ultimate big screen of reality to the small screen of our mobile device.

Google Glass, on the other hand, sits unobtrusively on our foreheads, leaving our hands free and providing data as an overlay on top of the physical world rather than an alternative to the physical world. That model of layering, mixing, and intersecting is top-of-mind for Hanke.

“It just can’t be the case that people are walking around heads down tapping on a screen,” he says. “That just can’t be the future of the human race.”

Cyborg me now

Which, of course, is exactly what’s at issue: the future of the human race. Or, at least how we ingest, consume, and reconstitute digital data. And analog data. And meld the two into one harmonious whole of knowing.

That’s perhaps a little metaphysical for a small division of Google that focuses on maps and games and apps.

But the web has rewired our brains in a decade or so of virtually ubiquitous Internet access, and the smartphone has rewired our behavior in five years, taking us from creatures who look up to to see others to beings that look down at any opportunity to see small bits of plastic and glass and metal in our hands.

So is it really too much to expect from a transformation that brings us from clear divisions between what is real and what is virtual to an elegant blend of the two?

“This is not psychosis or some cognitive break, but an actual takeover of the mind,” Google’s introductory video for the Ingress game says ominously.

Art imitates life, I suppose, and life, in turn, imitates art.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The quality of online maps has been increased significantly in the past few years. So much, in fact, that the CEO of the popular Waze mapping app believes Apple’s maligned Maps app would have been well-liked if it had been released only two years ago.

“Two years ago, [Apple Maps] would have been an amazing product,” Waze CEO Noam Bardin said today on stage at the D: Dive into Mobile event in New York City. “There’s a certain quality bar, and that bar is only going up. You have to pour more and more money into it.”

Waze serves 44 million people in the U.S., South America, Europe, and other locations with apps for iOS and Android. Rumors whisper that Waze provide Apple Maps with data to improve it, but Bardin would not confirm that.

Waze’s biggest competitor for serving directors to drivers is Google. But instead of hiring employees to map the world like Google does, Waze uses volunteers.

“Google is out there creating a standard of quality,” Bardin said. “We feel like we’re the only real competition. Rumors say it is $1 billion to $2 billion spent by Google a year.”

When asked what Waze’s biggest strength is over Google, Bardin said the company does “real time much better.”

Bardin said the U.S. is the largest market for Waze, but it has the largest advantage over Google in South America, where he claims Waze’s maps are better.

The biggest challenge on Waze’s plate? Advertising, something that Google does very well. An audience member that uses Waze frequently complained that the ads Waze serves are actually “annoying” and often only show Taco Bell locations.

Bardin responded by saying the company could do better. “Our job is to make them less annoying or not annoying,” he said.

Noam Bardin photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

No more unauthorized lock screen access for you!

Apple has released iOS 6.1.3, an update to its mobile operating system that squashes a nasty lock screen bug that could allow unauthorized access to your iPhone, and improves Apple’s much-maligned Maps app.

The lock screen, which is supposed to increase security, was hit with two recent bugs that could allow people in possession of your phone access to your contacts, voicemail, and photos. The first was fairly complicated and the second was simpler, but both involved initiating an emergency call and then canceling it.

In any case, both should be impossible now (I’m sure Apple engineers have their fingers crossed).

Apple also updated its Maps app via the system update, saying that the app would now be better in Japan. That’s a little strange, as most improvements to Maps recently have been server-side, not requiring an app update — and certainly not requiring an operating-system-level update.

In the past few months, Apple has been feverishly updating Maps with new flyovers in 30 global cities including Berlin, London, and Rome, new 3-D building imagery for Milan, Barcelona, Dublin, and nine other cities, and new Chinese maps.

Updating the iPhone’s mapping capability via a system software update, however, suggests that Apple is tying Maps deeper into the base operating system itself. Apple’s Map Kit Framework Reference already enables embedding maps directly into third-party apps, as well as supporting annotations, overlays, and reverse-geocoding lookups.

Perhaps this update will precipitate a few new capabilities for app developers.

The update is available immediately, and was only 18.2 MB for me.

We’ve seen a great deal of speculation in the past week about Apple buying a company to help it solve its nagging mapping headache. The big rumor, both started and squashed by TechCrunch, was Waze, the crowdsourced mapping and traffic app.

The only problem with that theory? Waze would only slow Apple down.

At least, according to Skobbler’s Marcus Thielking. He’s the cofounder of Skobbler, a spinoff from Navigon that sells one of the top mapping solutions in the world: GPS Navigation 2. It’s got a No. 1 sales ranking in app stores in 20 countries and has sold more than three million copies. It’s also based on OpenStreetMap, the crowdsourced “Wikipedia of maps.”

“There are only two companies that could possibly make sense for Apple to buy,” Thielking said this morning from Europe. “There’s Garmin, which doesn’t use TomTom, on which Apple Maps is built, and there’s TomTom itself. TomTom would be my bet.”

The problem that Apple faces? Buying just any mapping company is not a solution. Apple needs a quick fix — something on the order of months, not years — and buying a company with an incompatible dataset or base technology would ensure a long, painful integration process.

“Purchasing a company that has the talent but does not necessarily solve their issues right away … it could be feasible, but it would probably take a two-year time frame … and that’s not what Apple is looking for,” he told me.

And the core mapping technology is not even what Waze is focused on anymore, according to Thielking, who sees Waze as having pivoted from its initial vision of mapping toward traffic solutions for drivers. That’s significant, because the hard part of mapping is not necessarily the basic grid of the roads: It’s the details in navigation and the richness of local data.

That hard part is why Skobbler uses OpenStreetMap data. With more than a million contributions as of today or tomorrow, the dataset is unsurpassed in some regions — especially in hyperlocal data — and growing quickly in many others. But Apple can’t use OpenStreetMap, according to Thielking, since as a global company it cannot simply focus on the areas where OSM has good data — it needs a global solution with a fairly high global level of quality.

And it needs that solution quickly.

“Owning a digital map these days and especially in the future is an incredibly valuable resource. It’s very hard to copy and very fundamental to everything, particularly in an era of mobile solutions and mobile data,” Thielking says. “That is why Google is doing what they’re doing … and it’s one of the reasons why Apple is in this space.”

Apple wanted to trump Google’s mapping product, but blew it in terms of recognizing the massive complexity of any mapping product, Thielking told me.

All of which means that if there’s any company that Apple might or should be looking to acquire, it would be TomTom.

photo credit: Dunechaser via photopin cc

Well, perhaps neither.

Often forgotten in the great Map war of 2012 is another challenger — a platform that is far more suited for the ever-evolving needs of developers and the services they’re building, or one day hope to build.

That platform, OpenStreetMap, is known as the “Wikipedia of maps.” It makes location data editable, more detailed, interactive and, importantly, open for everyone. Apple (hey now), Wikipedia (of course), and Foursquare have recently integrated OSM into their services, and it’s a trend that will only continue with Google charging high-volume users of its Maps APIs (Google has walked this back a bit, though, hoping to preclude defections). OpenStreetMap is, as they say, the future.

Of course, this is a very utopian view. Everyone touts open and collaborative data as a democratizing force, but if you’re a developer or startup considering incorporating OpenStreetMap into your offering, the perceptible benefits need to be clearer and much more explicit.

For that reason, here are three simple yet powerful reasons OpenStreetMap boasts over 750,000 users:

1. On-The-Ground Granularity. OpenStreetMap is the only globally crowdsourced map available today, making its potential for unrivalled quality a key differentiator. With hundreds of thousands of contributors, the data dynamically and constantly evolves — just as places do. Locations are rarely fixed or stable. They change and progress over time. No other service or platform can immediately provide developers with the real-time, on-the-ground granularity of OpenStreetMap.

Also important is firsthand influence. Mappers who edit the data have often had personal interactions with a place or locale. They know locations intimately, making their contributions detailed, rich, and hyperlocal. This means more accurate, “fresh” maps for users and an enhanced experience, which is critical for successful services. Plus, when you consider that more and more startups and services are focused on providing hyperlocal functionality and features, having hyperlocal data is a necessity. Only OpenStreetMap’s army of contributors can provide that. Traditional corporate map providers TeleAtlas (TomTom) and Navteq (Nokia) are painfully aware of this.

2. It’s Flexible & Customizable. Google owns Google Maps. Unsurprisingly, this has an impact on what you can and cannot do with Google Maps. Google can constrain the way you visually render and showcase its mapping technology. Needless to say, this is suffocating for those interested in building their own services. This is what makes OpenStreetMap such a significant development for developers interested in offering location-based/aware features. Do with OpenStreetMap what you will both visually and design-wise — there are absolutely no limitations. Every map can be unique and rendered differently. This also speaks to the flexibility of OpenStreetMap more generally.

Beyond design, OpenStreetMap’s map attributes are infinite, making it possible for an endless number of special interest maps. Users can channel the data to build completely new maps that cater to a specific theme or concept, creating “thematic” maps for different uses, such as walking, hiking, bicycling, routes for those with disabilities, and more.

3. Ownership & Affordability. This, of course, cannot be overstated. OpenStreetMap is not Apple’s or Google’s. This means they can’t tell you how to use their APIs. But, importantly, it also means you don’t have to pay for it at all — whether you’re a heavy user or not. From Sonar to Yelp, use of the map will cost you nothing. Money is not a barrier to entry. In the end, your service will create value from the map (and not the other way around). Everyone talks about democratizing data — well, to the dismay of Google and Apple, this is it.

Some in the mapping space say otherwise, though. TomTom, keeping its own commercial interests in mind, recently criticized OpenStreetMap, claiming that the open-sourced nature of the platform makes it “wide open” to vandalism that can corrupt the data. However, the community that supports OpenStreetMap quickly called TomTom out on the falsities of its claims (talk about real-time collaboration).

OpenStreetMap isn’t perfect, of course. No map is. But, when you consider its strengths and potential, Apple and Google need to be less worried about each other and more worried about the owners of OpenStreetMap — you and me.

Marcus Thielking is co-founder of Skobbler, a leading provider of mobile map-based solutions that uses OpenStreetMap. Prior to founding Skobbler in 2008, he worked for navigation systems specialist Navigon AG (recently acquired by Garmin), where he ultimately became head of corporate development. 

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google’s Street View is back on iPhone, with the help of the Web.

Street View is a product that has puzzled me for a long time. It’s technologically an impressive feat, but why do people actually care about it? What are the use cases?

Generally the only time I use it with any regularity is when I’m looking for an apartment. It’s a quick and easy way to get a feel for the neighborhoods that I’m considering. It certainly beats driving around in San Francisco traffic. But looking for apartments is not something I do frequently.

I asked followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook how they use Street View. It turns out that house hunting is one of the more common use cases.

Here’s what people are using Street View for:

“I’ve used it to evaluate neighborhoods I’ve moved to. Result: signing a lease having never visited the place,” wrote Christopher Mims.

“When looking for hotels and when meeting people in unfamiliar settings. Mostly it’s not a daily utility,” wrote Greg Sterling.

“Not often — only to see my house. and I saw my mom standing in front of it – LOLd for a bit,” wrote @m_Keef.

Others used it to plan out their driving trips.

“Whenever I am driving to a new address, I like to “look” at the house or business so it’s easier for me to spot when I get there,” wrote Sriram Chatrathi.

“I use it mostly to confirm destinations,” wrote Jason Hart. “I also use it occasionally to “visit” places I used to live or places I’m planning to go. I use satellite view less but for the same purposes. Also, I’ll use it to figure out where parking lot entrances and exits are.”

“I use it to determine which way the metro station exit faces when mapping out directions. I hate getting off the escalator and not knowing which way to start walking,” wrote a friend on Facebook.

Despite being popularized by Google, other companies had Street View-like functionality earlier. Before Google existed as a company, I was working for a newspaper in Minneapolis. We discovered that a local company had driven every street in Minneapolis, taking pictures of every house. We incorporated that data into our real estate search product. Amazon’s A9 search engine had Block View in 2005. I was talking to a Google engineer at the time of the A9 launch, and he thought Block View was ridiculous because driving cars around cities to capture the imagery would never scale. Not only has Google driven cars around cities, it’s also taken to bicycles, trikes, and snowmobiles.

I also discovered some creative uses for Street View among my friends.

“I just used it to confirm my last US address for my election ballot request,” wrote a friend who moved to Canada. “I wasn’t sure of the address, but I punched in what I remembered and located my old house. Faster than digging up old documents.”

“It’s sometimes refreshing to judge old acquaintances (bullies, etc.) by their images on Street View,” wrote the same friend who was scoping Metro escalators. “(Don’t tell me you’ve never done this — I’ll call you a liar.)”

Interested in more on mapping? Tune in to NPR’s Science Friday today at 3 Eastern, noon Pacific to hear me talk about the state of online maps.

After trading numerous blows with apartment mapping service PadMapper, popular classifieds site Craigslist has started to roll out its own “map view” of apartments listed on its site.

In June, Craigslist blocked PadMapper from scraping its apartment rental listings and placing them on top of Google Maps. Then in July, when PadMapper found a “legally kosher” way to access Craigslist postings using data collection service 3taps, Craiglist sued PadMapper and 3taps. Recently, 3taps countersued Craiglist “to save the Internet.”

Now Craigslist has decided to do mapping on its own, most likely prompted by the many folks around the web that were ticked off at losing access to PadMapper’s Craiglist listings. The new service works similarly to PadMapper, but it is powered by Leaflet’s JavaScript tool and uses information from OpenStreetMap.

Craigslist’s map view can be used in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Ann Arbor, MI. The service works decently well, although it can be a little buggy at times. We hope Craigslist expands the service to many other metropolitan areas shortly.

We’ve sent a note to Craigslist to find out more about the mapping service.

h/t The Next Web

Photo via Craigslist

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

I put iOS 6′s new turn-by-turn directions to the test over the weekend, often alongside Android’s turn-by-turn directions. I gave it some hard tests, such as routes involving ferries, obscure country roads, and out-of-the way destinations. (No, that image above isn’t an error in Apple’s iOS maps. That’s Apple correctly showing the ferry that I was on.)

I was in rural Washington state, but it’s important to note that commercial database providers, such as those that Apple uses, generally do a good job of covering the United States.

I tried to look for problems that likely fall into patterns as opposed to one-off data errors. No database as large as those used in mapping (including Google’s) will be error-free. There is just too much data that change too frequently. In addition to the weekend’s testing, this analysis is based on more than a decade working in the local space, including some time I spent working on in-car systems.

Neither Google nor iOS met my benchmarks for the ideal navigation app (I have very high standards), but Google was clearly better. There were a couple of ways in which I consider iOS to be better. I also found several ways in which Apple could significantly improve the iOS experience in the short term.

The best designed navigation systems gives you the right information at the right time, without distracting you with unnecessary information.

Problems generally fall into three categories: user interface, algorithm, and data. UI problems are generally the easiest ones to fix. The data is in the system, the system is finding it correctly, and the app just has to change the presentation. With algorithm problems, the data exist but are accessed in a way that the best data aren’t surfaced. Data problems are the hardest — they require either collecting or fixing the data. With mapping in particular, this can be a human-intensive task.

Points of Interest. Navigation systems generally have a hard time with non-commercial places and complex venues. For example, I searched for the Grand Ridge trailhead. iOS couldn’t find it. Google Maps gave me several results in Olympic National Park, but not the actual trailhead. A search for Olympic National Park Visitors Center on iOS brought me to the visitor’s center at the base of the mountain; the same search on Android brought me to another visitor’s center at the top of the mountain, a windy 17 miles away. I consider both wrong and incomplete; I would’ve preferred to see both options.

Coming down the mountain after our hike, we wanted pizza. A few miles out, Android showed several pizza places in Port Angeles. At roughly the same point, iOS only showed one. As we got closer, the search on iOS revealed the other pizza places. This was an algorithm problem — Apple had the right data, it just didn’t search out far enough. One approach to resolving this is to keep expanding the search until you have a certain number of results or reach a distance like 25 miles.

We also wanted to go to a cidery. We searched for Finnriver. iOS got us to the road leading up to the cidery. Android took us the additional 1/3 of a mile to the entrance of the cidery. The place was well signed, so iOS wasn’t a failure; but Google’s directions were better. This is a problem that can be solved with user-generated data. If you see that every one who searched for the cidery goes another 1/3 of a mile, you can then add that road segment.

I like that iOS provides names and locations of nearby points of interest as you drive. You can see that there’s a gas station, cafe, or hotel up ahead. Android doesn’t do that. (It’s my long-term hope that navigation systems will end the visual blight of highway billboards.)

Road names. The biggest category of problems I found with iOS’s app is the road names it chooses to speak. Many roads have multiple names. One of the roads I frequently drove was Washington State Route 20. But iOS kept calling it “Sims Way.” (The iOS visuals showed both Sims Way and Washington 20.) Android spoke it as “State Route 20″. Most of the signage along the route referred to State Route 20. In another case, the road was identified by iOS as “Natl Forest Develop Road 2600 RD” but the sign said “Country Meadow Road”. Google had that correct.

If you watch the visuals of the map closely on iOS, you’ll get to the right place. But the best navigation systems will match the audible and visual directions to what’s on the road signs. The best way to do this is to actually drive the roads. But Google also had its issues: In one place, I was told to turn right onto 101 West, but the road sign only offered North and South as options. (iOS just told me to turn right onto 101.)

Audio cues. I found iOS to be way too chatty. In one span of less than a mile, it generated at least five prompts that were all some variant of “take I-5 north.” Such verbosity is only necessary when there are a lot of tricky maneuvers, not following a standard ramp with a lot of signage. iOS would also generate cues that included directions on what to do 10 miles or more out. When you’re that far out, the purpose of the cue is to tell the driver “keep going, don’t worry about listening to me for a while.” Asking the driver to remember what to do that far out is unnecessarily increasing the driver’s cognitive load. (Especially because the system will give the cues closer in.) It makes sense to give the left or right heads up a mile or two out so the driver can change lanes, if necessary.

In other cases, iOS didn’t give any audio cues at confusing intersections. I generally followed the path that most closely resembled straight ahead. Android was much better at this.

I also found iOS pronunciation of “W A 20″ annoying. W A 20 should be expanded to “Washington 20″ when spoken. (Abbreviation expansion is relatively easy, although in one navigation system I used, all of Washington’s roads were pronounced as “Western Australia” when I changed it to the sexy Australian voice.)

One thing I preferred in iOS over Android: in relatively urban areas, iOS gave me the next maneuver at 1/2 mile out instead of the 1/4 mile heads up that Android gave me.

Airports. Complex venues like airports have long been a challenge for navigation systems. Relying on iOS cost me about 15 minutes on my way to drop off my rental car at Sea-Tac Airport. Apparently, iOS routed me to what it considers the center of the town of SeaTac, instead of the airport. (If I weren’t testing, I would have just followed the signs on the freeway once I got near the airport.) My ideal navigation system would identify any query that looked like it might be an airport and then display a prompt asking if I wanted to go to arrivals, departures, or rental car return. My Android device wasn’t working on the trip to the airport, so I can’t offer a direct comparison. But I know Google has invested a lot of effort in making sure its airport data are correct.

It’s important to get airports right because so many users search for them, and bad directions can cause a missed flight. It’s also a relatively easy data challenge because it is a constrained problem set.

Ferries. My trip involved taking a ferry from Edmonds to Kingston. Both iOS and Android knew the ferry route existed, saving me the effort of driving around the bay. Neither won the available extra credit by telling me when the next ferry was departing. My ideal system would know ferry departure times and would calculate the optimal route based on my distance to the ferry and expected wait time at each dock. Heck, even a link to the WSDOT ferry schedule within the directions would have been very helpful. In my route, there were two different ferries I could have used; I manually calculated that I would miss the closer ferry and drove to the next one instead of waiting.

Visuals. I generally preferred iOS’s visuals to Android’s. Apple puts a lot less unnecessary information on the screen. The skeuomorphic design shows street names on street signs and generally looks cleaner than Google’s. Apple also did a better job of visually indicating the next step when multiple maneuvers were close together.

A subtle but important touch: Apple uses icons that correspond to road signage. In Washington, state route numbers are superimposed on a profile of George Washington. Apple displayed that; Google used an oval.

Speech. Android seems to make much more extensive use of concatenated speech; iOS uses much more synthesized speech. With concatenated speech, many short recordings of a human speaker are strung together and played back. With synthesized speech, a computer generates the audio. Concatenated speech is typically easier for humans to understand and creates less cognitive load on the driver.

Night mode. iOS lacks a night mode, which has been common in navigation systems for years. In night mode, the background of the map is dark and the screen emits a lot less light. The result is a display that is less distracting when driving at night. Although iOS does automatically dim the display based on ambient light, it’s not as effective as a real night mode. Android has this. This should be a very easy fix.

Miscellaneous. iOS doesn’t let you pan the map while navigating. I prefer having the option to see what else might be along my route. (Android allows this.) I would also love it if iOS paused my podcast when it gave a navigation instruction; as chatty as it is, I missed a lot of Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.

Turn by turn directions are an important addition to iOS. It’s great that Apple has finally made free directions available as part of the OS. Unfortunately, they still need a lot of work. Maybe Apple can use this post as a roadmap.

For more on mapping apps, tune in to NPR Science Friday this week, where I’ll be discussing these issues.

Just as Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized for the dismal state of Apple Maps today, Google has updated its Maps application with even more high-res and satellite imagery.

Apple has taken much flak for getting rid of Google Maps on its latest mobile operating system, iOS 6, and replacing it with its undercooked Apple Maps app. Cook admitted that Apple “fell short” on providing the best experience and even suggested using alternatives like Bing’s pretty decent iOS app.

Google isn’t letting this rare moment of Apple apologizing go to waste and wants to make sure iOS 6 users miss Google even more. It has added 45-degree views in 37 U.S. and 14 international cities, and added new high-res aerial and satellite images in 17 cities and 112 countries/regions. To get an idea of what 45-degree images look like in Maps, check out the Leaning Tower of Pisa as an example.

We expect Google will release a native Maps app that will be downloadable through the App Store before the end of the year. If you absolutely can’t live without Google Maps on iOS 6, you can create an icon on your home screen to Google’s web-based mobile application.

Here’s a full list of cities that have been updated with new imagery:

Cities with new high-resolution 45° imagery:
United States: Ames, IA; Anderson, IN; Billings, MT; Bloomington, IL; Carmel Valley, CA; Cedar Rapids, IA; Coeur d’Alene, ID; Corvallis, OR; Danville, IL; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Dubuque, IA; Elizabethtown, KY; Enid, OK; Florence, SC; Grand Forks, ND; Great Falls, MT; Gulfport, MS; Hartford, CT; Kankakee, IL; Kenosha, WI; Lafayette, IN; Lancaster, CA; Lansing, MI; Lewiston, ID; Los Banos, CA; Madison, WI; Medford, OR; Michigan City, IN; Olympia, WA; Pocatello, ID; Sheboygan, WI; Sioux City, IA; Sioux Falls, SD; South Bend, IN; Terre Haute, IN; Utica, NY.

International: Angers, France; Clermont-Ferrand, France; Coimbra, Portugal; Dijon, France; Grenoble, France; Livorno, Italy; Lyon, France; Newcastle, United Kingdom; Oberhausen, Germany; Palermo, Italy; Pisa, Italy; Toulouse, France; Troyes, France; Winnipeg, Canada.

Areas with new high-resolution aerial updates:
Florence OR, Kellogg ID, Casper WY, North Platte NE, Concordia KS, Alva OK, Austin TX, Nevada MO, Chilicothe MO, Toulouse FR, Clermont-Ferrand FR, Angers FR, Nantes FR, Troyes FR, Lille FR, Thun CH, Lucca IT

Areas with new high-resolution satellite updates:
Canada, United States, Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Antarctica, South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Zambia, Angola, Malawi, Tanzania, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Benin, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali, The Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Turkey, Iran, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Finland, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzebekistan, Turkmenistan, China, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

With so much animosity toward Apple Maps, Microsoft would like to take this opportunity to remind you that its Bing app for iOS includes Maps and it’s a pretty decent app all around.

The company writes in a lighthearted blog post today:

It’s the time of year when new phones are hitting the market. You may be holding a brand-new smartphone and wondering which apps have the essential search and mapping functionality you need. Well, you’re in luck, because Bing has you covered. For years we’ve put a lot of work into helping people find what they need so they can get more done. With the Bing App for iPhone, we can help you find what you need and help you get there –- whether it’s down the street, on the other side of the world, or somewhere in between.

Microsoft actually has a point. Apple Maps isn’t getting much better any time soon, and a native Google Maps app isn’t coming for a least a few months, so Bing Maps is a decent solution. It’s especially good if you need public transit directions, something that has irked the many city-dwellers running iOS 6.

While the Bing app isn’t as exhaustive as Google Maps, it could be a lifesaver if you’re one of the many who have been given bad directions or don’t want to use separate mapping and public transit apps.

Microsoft has not updated the Bing app for the iPhone since April 30, and the company has indicated it has no immediate plans to update it further. The latest version of the app has an average of 4 stars from 382 ratings.

Let us know what you think of the app in the comments below.

Google just unveiled underwater “street views” of the world’s most popular undersea destinations: the Great Barrier Reef, Hawaii’s Hanauma Bay, and Apo Island in the Philippines. And the amazing views are available in glorious 1080P high-definition.

Here’s a quick peek:

To get the images, Google partnered with the Caitlin Seaview Survey, which used a specialized SVII camera to capture the images. Every three seconds while traveling at about 2.5 miles/hour, the camera captures a 360-degree panorama with geolocation information and a compass heading. Only two of the cameras are in existence worldwide.

Google recently added more building interior views and views of the Amazon. This latest release, coming on the heels of allegations that Apple’s mapping woes stem from a lack of data, is not likely to be well-received at One Infinite Loop. But let’s face facts: Google has been mapping the world for years.

This is not something Apple can catch up on overnight.

Image credit: Google

If you live in San Francisco and work at a tech company in Silicon Valley, you probably take a shuttle to work.

A fantastic new map by design company Stamen Design shows just how extensive these shuttle services are.

Google, Yahoo, Apple, Facebook, eBay, and Electronic Arts all operate shuttles that go up and down the San Francisco Peninsula every workday. It’s a substantial employee benefit: You can live in culturally-rich San Francisco, surrounded by young, well-off techies like yourself; you get to work in the heart of Silicon Valley where the biggest and best-paying companies are located; and instead of spending hours a day driving, you pass the time in air-conditioned comfort.

Companies win, too: With Wi-Fi on these buses, employees can start working the instant they hop on the bus instead of waiting until they walk in the door an hour later.

Stamen estimates that the number of people taking these shuttles is huge: over 14,000 people per day, or 35 percent as many as train service Caltrain, which also runs between San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

That could be a sign that something is not working with public transit. If so many companies are forced to pay buses to carry workers to and fro, it’s probably a safe bet the existing train systems aren’t convenient enough.

On the other hand, at least those 14,000 people aren’t driving their own cars up and down 101 and 280, adding to traffic congestion and pollution.

The story of how Stamen assembled this visualization is pretty cool. Its researchers used a site (and open-source project) that Stamen created called Dotspotting to collect information about the locations of shuttle stops around the city (using information from Foursquare to help it ID locations). Then it sent field workers out into the city, riding bicycles and armed with data-collection forms created using another Stamen site, Field Papers, which simplifies getting field notes in the proper geographic locations. Then the notes were scanned (or camera-phoned) and imported into a database.

Finally, Stamen designers assembled and massaged the data until they had a good sense of the main shuttle routes and the volume of passengers on each.

The resulting visualization is on display at the ZERO1 Biennial Exhibition, “Seeking Silicon Valley,” in San Jose, through December 8.

Via Waxy.org and All Things D

Image: Stamen Design

Related articles

• Joined at the hip with San Francisco, Silicon Valley has not lost its mojo (venturebeat.com)
• Visualising the hidden networks of Silicon Valley (newscientist.com)
• Silicon Valley community Hacker Dojo finds a savior in YouWeb incubator (venturebeat.com)

 
Update: Nokia has confirmed that it has licensed its location platform for maps and geocoding to Amazon for its maps program.

Amazon has opened a new Maps API so Kindle Fire app developers can ditch Google Maps and instead integrateAmazon’s mapping tech.

“When we announced Kindle Fire HD, we also made the Amazon Maps API available to our developer community,” Amazon wrote in a blog post announcing the Maps API. “The Amazon Maps API makes it easy for you to integrate mapping functionality into apps that run on the all-new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD. These new devices will also support location-based services through the android.location API.”

Amazon’s Maps API provides a migration path for developers using Google Maps for Android. It offers two major features:

• Interactive maps: Developers can embed a “Map View” in an app so users can pan and zoom across the globe. There is also an option for displaying current location, satellite view, and standard view.
• Custom overlays: Display locations of “businesses, landmarks, and other points of interest” with customized markers and pins.

Amazon purchased 3D mapping company UpNext in early July, so it likely is using that tech here.

This move also closely follows Apple’s decision to get rid of Google Maps in iOS 6.

Developers can apply now to get access to the beta release of Amazon’s Maps API.

Maps photo via Fotografiche/Shutterstock

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Foursquare ditched its corporate overlords and showed some love to a little startup this week. After Google raised the price on its Maps API, Foursquare began looking for new options. It liked OpenStreetMaps, a sort of Wikipedia for geography, but couldn’t translate that to actual map images. Luckily, a little startup called MapBox was working on that problem, and with their help Foursquare left Google behind this week and joined the OpenStreetMaps movement.

The Facebook status of Google and Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley? It’s complicated. The search giant bought his first startup, Dodgeball, but Crowley left after feeling Google wasn’t supporting his project. Google eventually killed the product but has gone on try similar things with HotPot, which was later folded into Places. Foursquare has also poached a healthy number of Google employees over the last few years.

A blog post from Foursquare lays out a few reasons it chose to switch, beyond the pricing:

• It’s based on OpenStreetMap data, so it’ll continually get better.
• They give us a ton of design flexibility. We can alter things like colors and fonts, so we can match our own aesthetic. And we’ll keep tweaking the look to make it better.
• It also allows us to use the open source Leaflet javascript library to power the maps. We look forward to contributing to that project and being part of that community.

Foursquare isn’t the only big service to recently make the switch. Real estate portal StreetEasy also jumped from Google to OpenStreetMaps, after calculating that it would cost them around $300,000 a year to stick with Google’s new API terms.

Both Foursquare and StreetEasy also pointed out that with OpenStreetMaps, they can customize the look and feel of the map to fit their business aesthetic. This is technically possible with Google, but costs extra money. StreetEasy’s Sebastian Delmont said the search giant’s new API usage rates are a bridge too far.

“I think that someone at Google got their pricing wrong by an order of magnitude. Large companies might be willing to pay that kind of licenses, but this is not the CMS market in 1998, where people would pay half a million for a Vignette license and another million for Oracle. There are so many open source options out there that the value of proprietary solutions has come down dramatically. And if Google keeps pushing companies into experimenting with these open source solutions, it’s only going to get better. I think 2012 is going to be the year of the Open Map. And I’m happy to be part of the front lines.”

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Apple has apparently acquired a company called C3 Technologies that has sophisticated processing technology that can build 3D maps.

Here’s why: If there’s one thing Apple hates, it’s having to rely on technology from a competitor. And when you navigate or get directions on Apple iOS devices, such as the iPhone, you’re using an application from Google Maps — because Apple has nothing else.

That’s a big sore spot for Apple. And because it concerns Google, it’s a very big one.

Well, there’s evidence that Apple is secretly building out its own mapping technology, even if it’s not clear right now just how ambitious the effort is.

This acquisition of C3 is just the latest move. The deal looks worth about $240 million. (The terms are a bit confusing: There are reports that it was worth $1 billion, but there were more credible reports that it was less, based on the fact that the company’s biggest shareholder, SAAB AB, had a 57.8 percent stake in the company that was worth $150M). The acquisition was made last year, but it has only now come to light that Apple is the owner.

Here’s what’s interesting: C3′s technology can be used to seamlessly integrate 3D imaging into traditional 2D maps and other photographies. 9to5 Mac has the scoop, with more details.

You can see a video demonstrating the technology at bottom.

The acquisition comes after a string of moves that suggest Apple is building both a back-end mapping system to be able to compete with Google’s GPS offerings as well as a string of other high-tech layers — such as this 3D map offering — that will give it something special. Apple’s move to offer high-powered custom chips (A5, for example) keeps it on the bleeding edge and gives it a leg-up against other manufacturers when it comes to processing-heavy apps like maps. So Apple may be hoping to more than catch up with Google’s superior mapping offerings — it probably wants to surpass them.

In 2009, Apple bought Placebase, a mapping software development company, which appears to be the foundation of Apple’s mapping efforts. Then, last summer, Apple acquired web-based 3D mapping company Poly9.

Another reason Apple must make a move: Even though it licenses Google’s mapping technology for its users, the technology just doesn’t work as seamlessly only Apple’s devices as it does on Google’s Android phones.

Google’s Android supports maps with deeper integration with the phone and offers more bells and whistles. For example, while navigating on Google phones, Google will automatically update your next turn from your current location — in other words, operating like a standalone GPS device. Google’s Android offering also has offline caching of frequently used areas of the map, so you can find your way home if you lose connectivity. You can also more easily view location history, and there’s nice integration with cool features like Latitude and Places — including letting you rate places easily.

Expect to see more from Apple on mapping soon. C3 Technologies CEO Mattias Astrom, CFO Kjell Cederstrand, and lead C3 Technologies Product Manager Ludvig Emgard, as well as most of the former C3 team, all now work within Apple’s iOS division, 9to5 reports. The team is based in Sweden and called “Sputnik.”

“Yep, Sputnik, a clear reference to the “Sputnik crisis” of 1957 when President Eisenhower created NASA in order to catch up to the perceived advantage by the Soviet Union in space. For Apple, this clearly a big deal.”

Map Maker has previously been open to 183 countries and regions around the world. But Google has presumably held off on introducing the tool to the US market — for which there is already a ton of data available in Google Maps — until it had thoroughly tested the add-on.

Using Map Maker, citizens can provide information about their local neighborhoods, businesses, campuses, roads, and lanes, adding collective community knowledge to the Google Maps’ satellite-gathered data. Once reviewed by an editor, the edits are made available for everyone to see within Google Maps.

The tool, which launched in 2008, has been instrumental in marking many of the world’s locations in Google Maps. In a blog post marking the news, the company said 30 percent of the world’s population now has detailed online maps of their neighborhoods, about twice as much as before the tool’s existence.

One of Google’s most used products, Maps is responsible for providing local information and directions to users across many devices and platforms, including the iPhone and Google’s own Android. The company has been continually seeking to increase the amount of available mapping information, having most recently added locations of electric car charging stations.

Contour

The ContourGPS video camera has global positioning system (GPS) navigation built into it. The camera, which comes with goggles attached, is targeted at outdoor enthusiasts who like to take video while they’re on hikes, skydiving, or otherwise doing something that requires they have both of their hands free. Users can share videos online with a community of like-minded adventurers and can share stories about their videos. The site combines video playback with an online map.

The product is a cool gadget that foretells how video and location technology are going to spread in the future. Marc Barros (right), chief executive of Contour, formerly known as VHoldR, said that GPS allows explorers to map their own adventures and discover new places posted by other users. It’s like combining a Flip video camera, the YouTube user-generated video site, and Google Maps together into a single easy-to-use product, Barros said.

Contour GPS captures location once per second with high accuracy. It comes with Contour Storyteller, an application for the Mac or PC that lets you edit and organize your videos. The Seattle company’s web site, Contour.com, will let users watch a ski run down a mountain while tracking its progress, speed and elevation on a map.

“We call this new form of storytelling “Video Mapping” said Barros. “The inclusion of GPS brings a whole new level of context to any video, making location, speed, time, and conditions as important as what you recorded.”

The company is targeting the estimated 100 million outdoor enthusiasts around the world. It’s new camera costs $349 and will be shipping worldwide in the coming days on web sites such as Amazon.com, Helmet Camera Central, and POV Cameras.

Contour started out as VholdR, making cameras for outdoor enthusiasts. It was founded by Barros and another colleague in 2004 as part of an entry into a University of Washington business plan competition. The company won third place and $20,000. It has 35 employees. Rivals include hands-free camera maker GoPro. Barros said the company is profitable and has had a string of successful outdoor cameras. The company raised $1 million at the end of 2007 from angel investors and made it onto the Inc. 500 list this year, at No. 183, by growing revenues 1,500 percent over three years.

Using the iPhone’s GPS and accelerometer, the app lets you track not only your pace, distance, and calories when you go out for runs, but visually maps your run routes on Google Maps, showing you where you went and at which exact points you sprinted or slowed down.

Unlike previous Nike+ iPod offerings, no special sensors or kits are required for the app to function.

A couple of features worth mentioning are voice feedback — which lets you know how you’re doing — and the ability to tap on the map at anytime to see how far you’ve come. Additionally, some will appreciate its integration with the popular PowerSongs feature from other Nike+ apps, which lets you setup and play specific songs for different types of runs.

The app also syncs with Nikeplus.com, Nike’s online community, which has grown to over 3 million members since its debut back in 2006. Using the site, users can set challenges and track and share their progress through Facebook and Twitter.

While designed for the iPhone, users with an iPod Touch and iPad can also use it, albeit without the GPS tracking capabilities. The app is available on Apple’s App Store for $1.99.

We’ve covered a couple of similar applications before. RunKeeper launched an iPhone app that maps runners’ progress back in March of this year. And the San Francisco Country Transit Authority launched something similar for bicyclists in November 2009 called CycleTracks.

And as mobile devices gain more processing power, they’ll be able to access raw data stored in a server and display it in whole new ways.

Mapping technology specialists say that these two developments — the increase of geo-tagged elements and the increased power of mobile devices — mean that browsing a map will increasingly mean moving around in a virtual, three-dimensional world like in the state-of-the-art video games seen on consoles like the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

It won’t be a simple feat to get maps to that stage, though. “Maps are already some of the most demanding web-based applications there are,” says Pasquale DeMaio, a program manager at Microsoft’s Bing Maps. “Video games have the advantage of loading data from a disc, which we don’t have [since online maps have to rely on Internet connectivity issues like bandwidth]. We will always have to slim down our data requirements while still providing an immersive, world-class experience.”

The delivery of rich media in maps is something that all the players in the field are committed to. There are already photos, videos and other sorts of information that can be tied to specific physical locations to add value to maps. The latest fad in location-based services (LBS) is the “check-in”, which many companies like Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah are building entire businesses on.

As people use smartphones and tablets to interact with various social networks, more types of data, and more spatially relevant data — such as displaying tweets and check-ins on a map — will be available. All this data from various sources can weave a far more interesting tapestry than any one source can provide, DeMaio points out.

Integrating data from different sources to maps is something that UpNext, a small developer of 3D maps for mobile and touchscreen devices, is stressing, too. UpNext CEO Danny Moon thinks maps will be the central interface for all location-based data. He believes they’ll take an interactive, 3D form and will use technologies like augmented reality that can layer information onto real world places viewed through a device’s camera.

“Maps as we know them are pretty static at this point,” says Moon. He says that while current maps are tile-based,  consisting of 2D-image tiles that are downloaded from a server to a mobile device, like Google Maps, “next-generation maps can convey real-time data like tweets, check-ins or transit information,” says Moon.

UpNext (which VentureBeat covered at length here) claims that the way to go about making these “next-generation maps” is by building genuine 3D worlds using vector-based maps (see demo video). The three-dimensional views that Google Street View or Bing Maps provide at their closest zoom-in level are 3D images built from two-dimensional photographs that are stitched together, says Moon. This can make for very impressive results, as Microsoft has demoed with PhotoSynth (see Microsoft’s Blaise Agüera y Arcas’ presentation at TED). But Moon wants to see 3D mapping go even further.

Instead of stitching photos together, UpNext’s suggestion is to build virtual 3D models of buildings. The 3D models can then be textured with images and have layers displaying information on the models, such as what businesses are inside a mall. This, claims UpNext co-founder Raj Advani, will change our experience of maps.

“The end result will be a very smooth experience of virtually walking down a city block. Maps need to be more of a first-person-shooter-style game, visually, and that’s where we are moving,” Advani says. Maybe users will be able to see other users’ avatars in the city like in the virtual worlds of Second Life or Habbo, or see things like where the next bus is right now and when it will be at their stop.

Full 3D environments, like virtual worlds in video games, mean that objects like buildings – or trashcans, trees, lamp posts – can be rendered in real-time and viewed from any height and at all angles, rotating them smoothly. UpNext builds models of cities, for instance, the 40,000 buildings of New York’s borough of Manhattan. The company’s compressor converts this mass of polygons into an internet-ready cityscape, using a renderer to display the 3D environment on-screen. Google Maps’ Street View or Bing Maps’ streetside views are still based on the tile-based mentality in the sense that information is downloaded from a server in chunks, Advani explains. That’s why moving on the street in Google Maps or Bing Maps means moving the camera in increments, instead of moving smoothly like video game characters move in virtual cities.

Until recently, cell phones couldn’t have handled such sophisticated maps. But these days they boast so much processing power that they can render raw data from servers and display it the way they like. In a way, there’s Steve Jobs to thank for that. “When the iPhone came along with its 3D acceleration, it created a trend that the other handset manufacturers have decided to follow, thankfully,” Advani says.

Technological innovation in maps has been traditionally done by the big players like Google, MapQuest and Microsoft, because maps were costly and the giants had the resources to go out and photograph every street of every city. Now, the game has changed and will change even more with such phenomena as crowd-sourcing, or the availability of open-source location information, like OpenStreetMap, which provides maps free of charge to developers. This means more opportunities for smaller start-ups to innovate new technology in mapping, like UpNext, who is focused on being a mapping platform, or an engine for 3D maps.

And that new technology may end up being acquired by one of the big companies, or integrated into other products: For example, UpNext doesn’t have the imagery to texture its models, and it could partner with somebody who has that resource. The company – with a team of only four people – has been developing its technology for four years and has been bootstrapped the entire time. Now, UpNext is raising funding, and Advani says this is going to be a big summer for the company. It remains to be seen if the market is as convinced about the direction maps seem to be going as the technology guys.

But the giants are not sleeping, either. Microsoft is enhancing its maps with its Silverlight technology, a rich media application platform similar to Adobe’s Flash. Silverlight is heavily used in Bing Maps to enable things like zooming in smoothly from a top-down satellite image to a streetside view. And, says DeMaio, Microsoft is exploring using all the different technologies, be they tile-based or vector-based. “There are experiences which are better with real-time rendering on the local device and others, where it is better to use pre-processed imagery,” he says, alluding to the the trade-offs imposed by the technology.

“With such a flexible approach to the backdrop, we can layer almost limitless types of data with vastly different visualizations and a myriad of sources,” says DeMaio. “The fun is just beginning.”

[This story is part of a weekly series on location-based services, written by VentureBeat's JP Manninen. If you have an idea for a story you would like to see in this series, drop a line to jp@venturebeat.com]

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