Chris Pendleton has some interesting comments about Where 2.0, O'Reilly's mapping and local search conference:
...Rant: Let's just go ahead and rename "Where 2.0" to "I Love Google Mapping 2.0." What a joke. Open the brochure Google Maps; the back cover - Google Maps. Unless you were at I Love Google Mapping 2.0 to highlight your own mapping platform, every application was built using Google Maps. Is it because it's better? Is it because it's easier? I guess that's debatable, but you can't tell me that these followers are hoping to score a job with the golden child. How about the platial folks? What a joke - "Google, please buy our crappy web site that I can't even demo without running out of time, is hard coding because it doesn't work and can't navigate because I'm in charge and the site is too complicated." You know who you are. For you posers who are trying to score a job with Google or have them consider buying you - get over yourselves. It ain't gonna happen. Sketchup - now that's a sick little product. The demo was awful. The integration with Google Earth wasn't as graceful as they tried to make it sound, and hey, everyone using Google Earth, "Wouldn't it be cool if YOU built out the cities for us?" Hmmm. Maybe Google will throw you a few web ad clicks for each building you put up. Maybe if you build really cool buildings they'll hire you! Get real. I guess it all comes back to geography - we were 15 minutes from the Googleplex, so I guess we might expect that type of crowd. Whew, it feels good to get that out. I wonder if we'll actually pay to be a diamond sponsor next year . . .
Rave: I spoke with the CEO of Map 24 out of Germany. He showed me his PDA running a mapping client that was pulling vector information in real time and it was F'ing FAST! Unreal. I hesitantly busted out the Virtual Earth Mobile application that Jason Fuller from MS put together (which is pretty sick in its own rite) but this application was like running Windows Live Local on my PC fast; XBox 360 fast. He said he'd send me the application to run on my i600. I'll let you know.
MapQuest: OH MY GOD. This is great. So, the GM of MapQuest gets up in front of everyone for the MapQuest session. He says, "I'm not going to talk to you about how we're innovating." *snicker* "I'm not going to tell you about the thousands of customers we've helped over the last 5 years" *snicker* "I'm going to talk about what we've learned over the last 10 years in this space." Are you FOR REAL?? You're not innovating, your customers are bailing because of it and you have the nerve to tell us what you've learned?? Have you learned not to lay off all of your engineers? Anyway, this is great, he shows MapQuest.com which is leading all mapping sites with something like 50 million uu per month - which is true. Yahoo is second; Google Maps third - no mention of Windows Live Local which I believe is fourth, but point taken. He then queues up this video of some random people using MapQuest.com. Unreal. This girl was like, "Oh, I love MapQuest. I like how everything is all on one page and I don't have to scroll." She's now driving, "Oh, I didn't even know this road was here. Because of MapQuest I now have a short cut going this way. I never would've known if it wasn't for MQ." I'm dying laughing in the back. Some guy in front of me is surfing Fox Sports, fires up his e-mail and he's some Business Development Manager from MQ - I laugh and snicker a bit louder. The video continues with some tools saying, "MapQuest rules," and "Oh, I like how I can see a map of the location - it makes it real useful." The GM spun this like these commentaries were taken last week when in reality this was clearly a 1997 Marketing video and a pathetic attempt to cover up his real message - MQ ISN'T DOING JACK SH*T to keep up with everyone! Ah, man, it was great - really great.... [1]
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/mappoint_b2b/archive/2006/06/19/636511.aspx