Over the past couple of days Urban Mapping has put out press releases saying that it now has neighborhood maps/boundaries for “40,000 neighborhoods in 2,000 U.S. cities and towns. This is in addition to 10,000 neighborhoods in Canada and Europe.” It also has detailed data for 53 transit systems across the US. (Here’s more discussion/explanation on the Urban Mapping blog.)
This is tons and tons of data. Google Transit covers a somewhat smaller area of the US but has more international coverage.
Urban Mapping CEO Ian White articulated “the keyword conspiracy” in his remarks on the monetization panel at Where 2.0.
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Disclosure: I am an advisor to the company.
May 16, 2008 at 5:06 am |
Greg,
As an advisor to the company, perhaps you could tell us a bit more about the methods UMI uses to obtain the “tons and tons of data” you mention above. I’ve heard a rumour that UMI gets neighborhood and transit data through PRA/FOIL requests (http://www.onnyturf.com/articles/read.php?article_id=662)…is this true? What happens when an agency has a service change?
It seems odd to announce a “product” without even a demo. What cities are available and when can we expect an application that uses this data?
JP
May 16, 2008 at 6:56 am |
When was the last time you saw Navteq or InfoUSA demo a product? ‘Data don’t demo’–it exists to make application developers look good. Urban Mapping does offer a technical demo of the neighborhood db and it’s available for all to see at developer.urbanmapping.com. Our mass transit API is under development and will offer some great solution ideas, but unless you are technically-minded, this is probably of little interest.
Not sure why Greg would know about UMI’s data collection methods–that’s probably best left for managers, not advisers, to explain. I believe your question about service changes has to do with how UMI maintains data currency. It’s an important piece of our product and process. There is no single way to normalize and aggregate such a vast pool of data so we employ a variety of techniques and sources, similar to Navteq, TeleAtlas, Experian, etc, etc..
May 16, 2008 at 12:26 pm |
UMI is a better source than I for this information.