Der High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital und SpaceTec Capital Partners beteiligen sich gemeinsam an der United Maps GmbH aus München. United Maps füllt „die Löcher zwischen Straßennetzen“ mit Gebäuden, Fußwegen, Nahverkehrsinformationen und relevanten, qualitätsgesicherten Inhalten und thematischen Informationslayern.

United Maps produziert voll routingfähige, hoch detaillierte und multimodale Vektorkartografie einer neuen Generation. Die aus der KfZ- Navigation bekannten Basiskarten führender Hersteller wie Navteq, Tele Atlas oder AND werden mit professionell recherchierten zusätzlichen kartografischen Informationen algorithmisch zu neuen Kartenwerken verdichtet.


Continue reading "High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern Kapital und..." »

United Maps „fills the gaps in road networks“ adding building footprints, pedestrians paths, mass transit information and relevant topical layers.

United Maps GmbH has announced today strategic investments from three organizations: High-Tech Grunderfonds, Bayern Kapital, and SpaceTec Capital Partners. United Maps did not disclose the magnitude of the investments, but said the new funding will support United Map’s effort to produce a new generation of fully routable, highly detailled and multimodal vector maps. -- >>deutsche Version<<

United Maps strategy is to take basemaps - from vehicle navigation market leaders like Navteq, Tele Atlas or AND – and algorithmically match them with value-added cartographic data and relevant information layers thereby conflated into new data products.

Digital cartography and webmapping by Google Earth, Yahoo! Maps or Windows Live Search Maps are fast-growing segments of online usage worldwide. “With the support and funding of our investors, we deploy a disruptive technology and deliver unique map products timed to ride the wave of geodata, geolocation and GPS-based solutions," said Stefan Knecht, CIO and one of the three founders of United Maps. “Our aggregation of diverse datasets is highly automated and delivers more than 90 percent correct matches. Processes and workflows are optimized for international markets and products.“   Continue reading "We're funded. High-Tech Gründerfonds, Bayern..." »

via fscklog:

Die Vorstellung eines GPS-fähigen iPhones lässt bei mindestens einem Hersteller von GPS-Navigationsgeräten angeblich unkontrollierte Furcht aufkommen:

«I recently sat down with the president of a GPS navigation system manufacturer to ask him how he felt about the prospect of a GPS-enabled iPhone. "Scared [expletive]-less," he said.»

AppleInsider had a story of a new beta of Apple's iPhone Software v2.0 update released privately to a select group of enterprise partners showing the beginnings of geo-tagging support for the handset's Camera app.

Quote:

Essentially, geo-tagging is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to media files such as latitude and longitude coordinates -- or even names of places -- so that those files can later be referenced, searched, and grouped based on their origin.

See a larger Screenshot at AppleInsider (no intention to violate copyrights).

If Apple does it - everyone will do. Throw another log on the "we-need-better-maps"-campfire.

There's some market predictions that do smell like self-fulfilling prophecies.

You know the phenomenon for sure: the rise and fall of UMTS, the number of mobile users and the quadzillions of advertising millions to be made on the web.

The latest and still perpetuing topic is Location Based Services (LBS), being trumpeted as the next big thing since 1997, the first year of LBS.

Using a search engine you trust, you'll find that 2007 could turn out to be the year of LBS. Or that LBS are finally poised to take off in 2006 and 2007. That 2005 will be a banner year for carrier deployments of LBS. Or that 2003 will mark a turning point for LBS as a market segment.

Groundhog Day? (The german version was "Und ewig grüßt das Murmeltier") A hilarious movie starring Bill Murray who finds himself being stuck in time. His day unfolds in exactly the same way while he is aware of the repetition, everyone else seems to be living February 2 exactly the same way and for the first time.

But this time, hey - for sure: 2008 could be the year of location based services without history repeating (see here, here or here).

Leave aside the professional trumpeters: there is noteable difference to all those years before. (BTW and credit, when credit is due: portions of this posting are derived and expanded from Rainer Simon's post.)

• the technological model is changing: functionality is moving out of the network
• number, type and adoption of location-aware devices is accelerating on a faster path than ever: Nokia alone pushes more GPS-enabled models on worldwide markets in 2008 than in all the recent years combined
• vehicle navigation is becoming a standard feature of new cars
• navigation jumps onto mobile, connected devices

Will location based services take off by the end of the year? Rainer Simon argues "the average LBS will never be able to reach a mass audience."

Ooops.

Should we cease operations at United Maps?

Think again.

The mass audience argument is a thing of the past. There is no more masses out there. As mass media are about to atomize themselves "mass as you know it" is an overcome concept. Not today, not tomorrow but on a foreseeable horizont. Not for all product types, markets, usecases. Fast moving consumer goods are there to stay - so don't get that wrong.

The question never was if LBS are to "reach a mass audience" because location based services inherently target an audience of one. You. Me. The guy trying to find out where to go. The tourist orienting herself in a city she has never been to. So stop thinking "mass", start understanding "long tail". Yes, the sexy little long tail thing that not too many people are able to put into ancient marketing models.

Utimately, we're not talking about a niche market (as opposed to "mass") but millions of niches.

Switching back to our shameless self-promotion: whoever does location based services needs better mapping, more detailed, more integrated and more navigational modes.

So we push on ... good by mass markets, welcome long tail!

Here's part 3 of our little series "playing with numbers", offering some random datapoints mainly from mobile devices, PNDs and the usual suspects. Somehow focused on Germany ('cause this is where we are as you might have guessed already from our brutal use of Denglisch).

Don't blame the messenger on missing numbers - we harvested what is out there (pretty much, by the way).

No extrapolations, no nothing: if a number is missing, we don't have or need it. Everything future is guessstimated by the original sources.

#	(million units)	2005	2006	2007	2008	2011	2012	source
1	Mobile phone subscriptions 2006 in EU-27		520,09					[191]
2	Mobile phone subscriptions 2006 in DE		85,70					[189]
3	Mobile phone subscriptions 2006 in AT		9,26					[176]
4	Worldwide PND units in 2007			50				[332]
5	Navigation-enabled mobile phones sold worldwide			20				[332]
6	Dedicated PNDs sold worldwide (est)			30			220	[332]
7	Sales of PND units in Europe (est)		9	15			31	[15, 235]
8	Sales of PND units in U.S. (est)		2,8		9,5		22	[14, 234]
9	Worldwide GPS-equipped mobile handset shipments (est)		109,6			444		[257]
10	Navigational devices, Germany Q1 (Y-Y)		1,0	3				[28]
11	Mobile phones sold in Germany			32,6				[19]
12	Mobile navigational devices sold in Germany, 2005-2007	1,00	2	3,2				[23, 28, 30]
13	Total GPS-enabled LBS-subscribers (est)		12			315		[04]
14	Mobile navigation systems sold in Europe (est)		11,8					[07]
15	Mobile navigation systems sold in Germany (est)		2					[11]
16	Subscribers to navigation services for mobile phones U.S.			3				[12]

Even if some of the estimates are completely exaggerated or an analysts' wet dreams: something is going on out there.

And this brings us back to our shameless self promotion: how will people navigate on the small screens of those mobile device they'll all be carrying around? Using maps made for vehicles ...?

BTW: if you missed out part 1 and part 2 - please follow the links.

Here it is - Metacarta's revamped Geosearch News - a chip pass to all regional, local and hyperlocal content dealers offering news search by geography. Via Adena Schutzberg from AllPoints Blog, quote:

MetaCarta's "demo" provides what may be the best geographic search tool for the largest changing digital data database of unstructured content on the planet.

Play around with it - drilling deeper into the feeds gives a crisp foretaste on how location based media could work.