[Geowanking] RE: TeleAtlas Car

[Jed Rice]

When Skyhook was in its infancy, we looked at user-contributed/open source
Wi-Fi location data such as Wigle.net and peer-based collection models like
Navizon but found that in both cases, you simply have no quality control.
When you start with data that is collected using dozens of different methods
by hundreds of different contributors who are left to randomnly define their
own collection process you can't possibly build a reliable system or
application on top of it.  Organizations like PlaceLabs and Microsoft's
LocateMe have discovered it the hard way - while it may work some of the
times in some of the places and be 'good enough', you can't then expect
commercial organizations who are relying on a solution for their own
business/service/offering to use it.
 
Fortune took kind of interesting spin on it a few weeks ago when they
profiled one of our drivers -
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/07/24/8381745/.
 
Its not easy being in the business of managing a fleet of 200+ people
driving every street, road and highway but its an investment you have to
make if you want to deliver a service that offers accuracy and availability
that rivals - and in some cases beats - GPS.  Even more so if you then
expect large commercial enterprises to pay good money for that system.
 
 
 
Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2006 07:19:13 -0600

From: Bill Thoen <bthoen at gisnet.com>

Subject: [Geowanking] Maintaining Open Spatial Data Sets (was

TeleAtlas Car)

To: geowanking at lists.burri.to

Message-ID: <20060818131913.GB14775 at www.gisnet.com>

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Fri, Aug 18, 2006 at 08:39:09AM -0400, B.K. DeLong wrote:

>

> And, in theory, with an open source, community-contributed dataset 

> there'd be more people to fix mistakes and keep it more updated due 

> to various construction and repair activities.

> 

I imagine that a community effort to maintain a data set that represents a

road network would operate in a way similar to a wiki, but how do you

ensure that additions and "fixes" are done with the appropriate precision

and accuracy (and who decides?) Who interprets road classifications and

other attributes that mean different things to different people? Finnally,

what sorts of legal issues are involved in producing a data source that

might be used in public safety applications? Can a community effort

"certify" a certain level of accuracy for use in such applications?

Nevertheless, the idea of "open source" spatial data sets sounds pretty

interesting to me.

- Bill Thoen

.............................................. 
Jed Rice 
VP, Market Development 
Skyhook Wireless 
jrice at skyhookwireless.com
|o: 617.820.5121
|m: 774.991.0255|Skype: JedRice89
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://geowanking.org/pipermail/geowanking_geowanking.org/attachments/20060818/db2b0a9c/attachment-0003.html>