Digital and Societal Transformation ideas-expertise-proces

The site trendwatching.com has published a list of business ideas to get inspired by. Some geolinked ideas are: Trend 5: Hyperlocal: GPS simplifies local search and involvement and check out the complete list  here.

Tele Atlas announced that Google™ has signed a long term license agreement with the company that gives Google access to Tele Atlas maps and dynamic content in more than 200 countries around the world. The agreement spans Google’s current and future map-based services and navigation offerings across mobile, online and desktop environments. These include the Google Maps™ and Google Earth™ services and mobile applications such as Google Maps for Mobile™. The agreement also gives Tele Atlas access to edits for its maps from Google’s community of users, whose suggested changes can help the company further increase the quality and richness of Tele Atlas maps. “This agreement is important too because it gives us access to input from a significant online community of map users, whose feedback can help us keep our maps fresh and accurate.” said Bill Henry, CEO of Tele Atlas Source: http://www.teleatlas.com/WhyTeleAtlas/Pressroom/PressReleases/TA_CT018846

Google has created an online service called mapmaker. With mapmaker you can contribute to the Google maps, at this time in selected areas in the world.  On top of the satellite images that are provided, users may annotate directions, add names of roads, local stores, and other point of interest.  This is than moderated and can be included in the Google community.   By using this system, Google goes to a next level in what can describe teh 'crowd sourcing' model: using local knowledge and capitalising on it.  

The Tomtom Mapshare technology is one of the most practical aspects related to theTeleatlas-Tomtom merger. For reminder the mapshare technology enables users to indicate road changes; at the same time GPS routes of the users are collected in anonymous way. The daily data collected on GPS routes would amount in Western Europe over three times the kilometers of all the roads in Western Europe; in the US the GPS routes are equal to all the miles of all the roads in the US once every two days. (source: speech Teleatlas at GentBC launch ) The updated suggestions and GPS tracks are being used as of Q 4 2008 for updates of maps of the partners of TeleAtlas. These updates and real accuracy are important as the market of GPS is moving mainstream. Before, GPS was a high end consumer market wit a gadget and high fault tolerance approach; this moved to a mass market that is requesting a fault free tool that delivers on its promise and this for a fair price. Link datanews article