Bing Maps gets Nokia Brand and Possibly the Boot

January 19, 2012 3 Comments

The Microsoft/Nokia relationship gets a little confusing these days.  According to Pocket-Lint:

Nokia CEO, Stephen Elop, has told Pocket-lint that we shall soon be seeing the Nokia brand name within other devices and not just the company’s own phones.

“You’ll starting seeing the word ‘Nokia’ on a map that you get from Microsoft properties over a period of time,” Elop explained to Pocket-lint in an interview behind closed doors at CES in Las Vegas. “Even if you are on a BlackBerry device, who recently said they were going to start using Bing Maps.”

 Interesting isn’t it?  Nokia Maps on other devices.  Here is the kicker…
“Part of the relationship we established with Microsoft is that we are clearly placing a bet on the Windows Phone platform. [In return] they are placing a bet on our location-based platform: mapping, navigation and so forth,” said Elop.
Thus it appears, at least in Nokia’s mind, that Bing Maps might eventually be replaced with Nokia Maps.  Clearly Nokia believes that they bring navigation and location to the partnership.  I’m sure though, as with everything Microsoft related, this is going to be much more complicated than it should be.  In a perfect world, Microsoft and Nokia would agree that Bing Maps should be replaced by Nokia Maps and get it done quickly and with minimal fuss.  The reality is that there will probably be three mapping platforms.  The old Bing Maps, the old Nokia Maps and this new hybrid Nokia Maps (powered by Bing?) that blends the two services.
Ugh, right?  Check with Pocket-link tomorrow to see the full interview with Elop and hopefully more detail into what this means.  Almost a year ago I talked a little bit about this scenario, maybe it is finally time.

Filed under Bing Maps, Microsoft, Nokia, Nokia Maps Tagged with , , , , ,

Bing Maps Has New Routing Engine

January 6, 2012 4 Comments

Being self-aware is always best.  From the announcement of the New Bing Maps Routing Engine:

Did you happen to notice the new routing engine we implemented on Bing Maps? No?

Yea, I can’t recall the last time I used Bing Maps.  I’m just so used to using Google’s services, it feels unnatural to not type google.com into my browser.  Also I’ve chosen to use Waze for navigation on my iPhone leaving them to handle routing and navigation while I’m out and about. So yea, its been some time since I’ve used Bing Maps.  But I guess that’s water under the bridge.

Coupled with the bizarre patent that tells you not to go down a dark street alone without a shotgun, Microsoft seems interested in mapping again after what seems like years of not caring about Bing Maps.  I suppose Windows Mobile devices use Bing Maps for routing, but who else uses them these days?  It does sound like Microsoft has a cool algorithm going on the backend and I wish them the best of luck.

How many versions of Microsoft Maps will it take for them to be successful?

Filed under Bing Maps, GIS, Microsoft Tagged with , ,

Users Demand Google Maps or They’ll Leave Your Service

December 5, 2011 1 Comment

I’m sure there were good reasons for Garmin to use Bing over Google Maps, but their users weren’t sold on it.

…a year later, Garmin acted. Users may now select which of the two providers to use. It’s a bit of a cop-out fix, likely due to the positive things some users said about Bing. Or, perhaps it is based on an agreement with Microsoft, as many forum posters wondered.

As ProgrammableWeb points out, this has to be expensive to offer both Google and Bing.

Most likely, Garmin is now paying twice for its mistake. Both Google and Microsoft have enterprise versions and Garmin is likely not eligible to use the free versions.

For consumer applications, clearly Google Maps is the only choice you can offer.  Even with pricing changes, companies will continue to have to offer Google Maps otherwise they’ll face unhappy users.

A little pepper spray removes that Bing Maps from your apps.

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Bing Maps to be Powered by Nokia – Huh?

May 16, 2011 Leave a Comment

Update: A birdie told me that there is nothing new here that we didn’t know about before.  Move along…

Anytime a blogger uses the word vague “above the fold” on their blog, you pretty much can be assured they don’t know anything about anything[ref]I’m thinking of watermarking my blog with “vague”[/ref].  Greg Sterling sat down with someone close to Nokia and says:

However my lunch companion argued unequivocally that Nokia Maps would effectively replace almost everything that Microsoft had developed over the past several years in terms of the Bing Maps infrastructure. This was shocking because Microsoft has invested hundreds of millions of dollars (if not billions) in creating a viable competitor to Google Maps. Most recently the company has been promoting its roll out of new hi-resolution aerial imagery on a global basis.

So what does this mean?  Well first Microsoft already uses Nokia/Navteq for most of their mapping, no big change there.  Microsoft has already what might be the best aerial photography in the business, so why would you replace something that is awesome with something that isn’t?  What about their API?  Could be, I’ve never been a fan of the Bing Maps APIs, so maybe this is Microsoft taking their aerials and Bird’s Eye to the Nokia Maps API and branding it as Bing Maps.  That would be a good mix because Nokia Maps is actually a good API, just one that doesn’t get used by anyone.  Problem solved!

But wait right?!?!?!  Nokia Maps?  Wasn’t that called Ovi?  Not anymore, the marketing team at Nokia has gotten their sanity back and killed the Ovi[ref]What does Ovi mean in Finnish? So Ovi means door in Finnish.  Replace door with Windows, awesome marketing guys![/ref] name.  This means that Nokia has decided their name actually has value and they’ll use it in their products.  Now if Microsoft would just realize that Bing means zip and brand their stuff as Microsoft, everything will be back to normal.  Or better  yet, they could just rename the product “Not Google Maps” which is really how most people know it anyway.

Bottom line is that Microsoft loves drama, feeds on drama and wouldn’t know what to do unless there was drama.  Thus Bing Maps powered by Nokia is just something to get us through the next 3 months until the marketing dorks in Redmond get crazy again and start thinking of new ideas to waste time and money on.

Cartoon by: Hugh MacLeod

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If Microsoft Bought Nokia, What Would That Mean For NAVTEQ?

December 31, 2010 3 Comments

So there is some of that goofy year end speculation that always happens this time of the year, but it got me thinking.  What would happen to NAVTEQ if Microsoft did buy Nokia?

With location and mapping so important in 2011, wouldn’t Microsoft love to have NAVTEQ in their back pocket? And with NAVTEQ being a well placed government contractor, it would only enhance Microsoft’s battle against Google (and to a lesser extent in our space, Esri).

Bing Maps already uses NAVTEQ, Microsoft isn’t abandoning NAVTEQ even though it is a huge OSM supporter and Google already has their own map data. Seems like a good fit to me.

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New Bing Tile Layer Type in OpenLayers

December 20, 2010 Leave a Comment

So this was some really great news for those of us using OpenLayers; Bing Tiles for OpenLayers:

As of today, OpenLayers has a new layer type: OpenLayers.Layer.Bing. “Why that” you may ask, “there is OpenLayers.Layer.VirtualEarth already”. So why is this new layer type so special? It is the first time that we access tiles from a commercial service directly. Others (e.g. Google Maps) do not provide direct access to their tiles, but Microsoft does through the Bing Maps Web Services.

Yea direct tile access is pretty awesome.  Bing Bang!

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Bing Updates Their New Map Style

December 15, 2010 3 Comments

I love the new look for Bing Maps.  I think they have made their background map perfect for basemaps.  Nice and subtle.  But their new look had some drawbacks.  Well Microsoft has addressed some of those and has a new version up and running.

We’ve updated our map style to reflect user feedback so it’s even easier for people to find where to go, how to get there, and what to expect along the way. Key changes are:

A. Increased city density while preserving a clean, visually appealing map
B. Clearer differentiation between major and minor city streets
C. Greater color contrast at the city-level so streets “pop” out more
D. Altered font sizes and contrast for crisper, less cluttered map labels
E. Improved highway shields for US and added new shields for 7 countries

Two thoughts come to mind here.  First off the changes all seem to really improve Bing Maps for the better and the second is my amazement at how agile Microsoft Bing Maps team is.  Could 2011 be the year of Bing Maps?

Bing it baby!

Update: Justin has a great overview of what’s new.

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What Steve Coast’s Move to Bing Really Means

November 23, 2010 33 Comments

OK, sure — there is a rush to blog the news. Steve Coast joined Bing. But leaving it at just that news misses the whole point of what Bing/Microsoft wants and why Steve would go join the Bing Maps team.

One benevolent dictator for life welcomes another to his domain.

Microsoft and OpenStreetMap

Remember this news a couple months ago?  It was cute right?  Nothing earth shattering, just another layer to do your Bing Maps mashups over (assuming you are one of the 5 people who have ever done that).  But deeper something else was going on.  See Google broke the detente that the vendors had with the data providers. (can you believe that was barely a year ago?)  In doing so it put a ton of pressure on the other mapping API vendors to change how they did business.  Despite the problems with Google Maps, the one thing it had going for it was that it could be updated.  Microsoft was stuck with the old model.  Navteq is authoritative1 and that means it takes months to update the data.  Google’s navigation might have been totally borked, but at least they controlled it.  Microsoft and MapQuest didn’t have the luxury.

Time to Bail!

So MapQuest went first and in a big way.  Not only did they announce they were breaking with their data vendor, but they were also going to donate money and time back to OSM to help further the project along.  Already MapQuest’s Open website is running and those at least in the UK are happy as clams.  But despite all those German OSM mappers doing great work in the middle of Europe, for OSM to be viable it needs to have a workable/routable map in the good old USA.  This was the whole concept behind those Cloudmade ambassadors.  The idea was they could have succeeded if they had the map right.  Well the reality of the scope of the project killed Cloudmade’s efforts and the USA has lagged behind.  What the OSM project needed was some company that could do the heavy lifting and move the project forward in the USA and other parts of the world where it needed help.

Enter the 500 lb Gorilla

So here we are.  Microsoft needs to get involved with OpenStreetMap to continue to be relevant in the web mapping space and OSM needs Microsoft, their aerial images, their big pocketbook and their need to dominate all spaces they exist to join up.  Simple as pie, right?  Oh, but wait — the minute Microsoft enters the community, they’ll be a huge backlash.  I mean the goal of Microsoft is to put a proprietary OS on everyone’s desktop (at least that is the feeling I got from an OSMer at WhereCamp5280).  Ah, but remember this wonderful news?  Who better to represent Microsoft with OSM than one of the founder’s of OSM!

The Way Forward

So what does this mean, really?  Short term, not too much.  The OSM data in the USA is still not good enough to route with2.  But the better aerials will improve the USA greatly and quickly.  If there is one thing that Microsoft has done well, it is the aerial imagery in the greatest democracy south of Canada, north of Mexico; OSM-US <added link to OSM-US>.  Plus rather than investing in their technology to route with Navteq, they’ll push those efforts toward OSM routing and BOOM; we’ll have a working, routable OSM map that everyone can use.

Makes you wonder about Google’s choice to roll their own now doesn’t it?  How quickly Google’s map looks like it will be a drag on their innovation.  Between the OSM mappers, MapQuest, Microsoft and all the others who are part of the open project; I see no way OSM doesn’t dominate the market as the choice for mapping data moving forward.  And you know who wins, everyone who wants free and open data.  That’s the take away — congratulations to Steve Coast because he sure deserves success, but the real winners here are you and I.

1. By authoritative I mean busted and old business model.

2. Flame away guys, but you’d be wrong to think otherwise!

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The Need of a Good Basemap

September 14, 2010 9 Comments

I found this blog post on basemaps over at the 41Latitude blog (if you aren’t following this blog you need to start right now) to resonate with me.

perhaps, in trying to make a basemap that’s optimized for everything, we’re actually creating one that’s optimized for nothing.

We all see it quite a bit these days.  Some data overlaid on a default Google Map and you can’t read a darn thing.  Working for the GNOCDC, we picked the Terrain map as our basemap (even though there is no “terrain” in NOLA) because it was the least cluttered basemap.

gnocdc-terrain.jpg

Over in the ESRI world, I’ve had a couple people ask me to put their data on the Esri Topographic web map servicebecause it looks so good.  Now I do agree, it is a beautiful basemap, but it isn’t one that lends itself to being a basemap.  Esri should be offering a muted basemap and allow for the most important part of the data, the information being overlaid, to stand out.

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MapQuest Does Street Level Imagery

December 14, 2009 16 Comments

So yea, not a surprise.

As the name implies, 360° view provides fantastic panoramic views (360° horizontally and 160° vertically) of any given image within the 360 View coverage area (initially 30 cities and 15 suburbs across the United States with more to come). We have studied our industry, gleaning tidbits here and there, and polled our customer base in creating a simple, easy-to-use interface that fits seamlessly into the MapQuest mapping experience you have come to know and understand. Best of all, MapQuest 360 View “just works” without requiring any 3rd party player downloads.

Take that Bing Maps and your 3rd party player download.  MapQuest works without any Silverlight player to get in your way… except of course it uses a 3rd party player called Flash.  I suppose this plays into Adobe’s assertion that their 3rd party player download is included by default in many browsers by default.  Still it looks good and appears to have been taken sometime last year (the light rail line isn’t running yet in Phoenix and most stations haven’t been built yet.

 

A view of University of Phoenix Stadium where youll be seeing the true national championship; TCU vs BSU.

A view of University of Phoenix Stadium where you'll be seeing the true national championship; TCU vs BSU.

Now before you start going off an claiming this doesn’t matter, remember the real traffic numbers for the four main mapping sites:

Yep, Bing and Yahoo don’t add up to MapQuest’s reach.  I think it is critical to get this functionality into their API before more companies abandon it for Google While traffic numbers trend down over the last 6 months, I’m not sure it is losing to Bing or Yahoo.

Carry on MapQuest!

Kansas, a band so great a state was named after them.

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