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GIS Monitor June 14, 2001 CONTENTS -Microsoft MapPoint 2002 Review Departments: Points of Interest, Letter, New List, Week in Review, Back Issues, Advertise, Contact, Subscribe/Unsubscribe ***** I first saw MapPoint at Comdex in 1998, several months before it was launched. Everyone in “real GIS” companies was concerned, even if they didn’t let on. I was one of them. Though I spent my time listing what MapPoint couldn’t do, I was impressed. MapPoint has since matured. The data included with the product has grown and now rivals that delivered with packages that cost significantly more. The product still fits in that home/small business/business space where the main goal is making maps. MapPoint will run on Windows 98 or later and requires 410 MB free space for a basic install and 1.1 GB for a full install including all data. The basic install runs fine and accesses data from a CD. MapPoint has a MSRP of $249, up substantially from its original launch price of $109 a few years ago. Let me start off with the bad news: The most exciting feature discussed in the MapPoint 2002 press interviews was the ability to import ESRI shape files and MapInfo data. That was just too good to be true. “It is not an out-of-the-box feature but an example of how MapPoint can grow into many additional areas of functionally,” notes BJ Holtgrewe, MapPoint Senior Product Manager and Technical Evangelist (from a newsgroup post dated June 10, 2001, and referenced at NAVGLOBE below). What will be available, he goes on to explain, is sample code: “The compiled sample can be used by non-programming end-users or the code freely extended by MapPoint VB developers as desired.” The code and an article describing its approach, benefits and limitations is expected “in a very short time.” Now, the good news. This is a nice product. Drawing tools familiar to Microsoft Office applications are laid out along the bottom edge of the program window. A large map area provides plenty of graphics room. Best of all, I managed to do everything I wanted without consulting the help. Not even once! I started out by testing the new territory creation tools. Territories are built from existing data or by simply drawing on the map to collect units - from states down to census tracts - into groups. The wizard was easy to understand and even provided tips on selecting candidate areas. Once selected, it did take some time for the software to process the territories, but not an unreasonable amount. I used the data mapping wizard to make a thematic map. To its credit, Microsoft, doesn’t use that terminology. The first step indicates symbol style to use (shaded, symbol, pie chart, column, push pin), the second, which data to use (from MapPoint’s library or an outside source), and the third, what unit to use (country, state, county, down to census tract). Symbol colors are easily changeable, as are ranges. MapPoint will create an Excel spreadsheet of the data for use elsewhere. I don’t think it could get much easier to get directions from MapPoint. Tell it where to start and where to end. A few whirs of the CD later, and a map and detailed, MapQuest-type directions appear. If the highway construction data is out of date, one click will update it from an on-line repository. There are tools to do scheduling and multi-stop trips, track costs based on gas prices and even predict when you’ll need to stop to fill up. I don’t think the directions are necessarily better than those available online or from packages like AAA Map’n Go. But Microsoft had to include routing since “what about routing?” was the question heard most often in early demos. Of the new features, creating a drive time zone was painless. But, the results seemed a bit optimistic. Yes, one can drive from Boston to New Hampshire in an hour, but Boston to New Britain, CT? I think not. To Microsoft’s credit, they do explain that zones are approximate and vary based on weather and other factors. Creating a new symbol from a BMP file was painless and took only a few seconds to appear in the symbol picker for immediate use. I found a single, minor limitation. The background maps keep their same colors and can’t be changed. Only “freshly mapped” data, that is, data added on top of the base map, can be resymbolized. There are a few more things to note about MapPoint and the new Office XP suite, which I do not yet have. Microsoft has removed the old “Microsoft Map” tool that lives in Excel (and is built on MapInfo technology) from Excel XP. There are suggestions that this may “force” lightweight map producers, to purchase MapPoint. On the plus side, Word 2002 and Excel 2002 include a type of geoparsing. That is, if you are in Word, MapPoint will recognize a location word, say “Boston,” and offer to insert a map of the location or built a route to or from that location. Conversely, you can “send” the information out to MapPoint to be mapped. I attempted to map a few contacts from Outlook 2000 and MapPoint did well, even mapping the location of a former colleague in Denmark. Despite the integration, MapPoint is not included in any Office Suite. All in all, MapPoint continues to impress me. At the price, this is a program no school, business, or many homes, should do without. Still, be aware that the strengths here are the available background data and the thematic capabilities. For routing and trip planning, other less expensive packages may be more appropriate. If you’d like to run your own evaluation, Microsoft is providing 60-day evaluations for $9.95. ***** Companies pushing location-based services (LBS) and telematics (LBS for your car) seem to be avoiding a key question: why do consumers need two services and two sets of hardware for this purpose? One could ideally travel with a single unit all the time, both on foot and in the car. Johnson Controls is working on a solutions to allow Palm Pilots, phones and other mobile devices to plug into a car, retain user “preferences” and act just like the appliance does at home or at the office. The company notes three reasons for not having “duplicates” in the car: updating telematics technology is not easy, services provided in the car may duplicate those already available on cell phones and an in-vehicle phone can add yet another phone number to consumers crowded brains. AAA is thinking along the same lines: they are working on a pilot program using a hardware add-on that connects to standard cell phone. The services offered include “location-based emergency notification, AAA roadside assistance and travel counseling; including points of interest referral,” said Airbiquity President and CEO, Dan Allen. Note the ORDER of those things – safety first, then later, “fun” services. True car-based telematics offers a host of additional options. Remote diagnosis, remote unlocking, and other remote “touch” services for the car itself are possible. Some telematics services issue an automatic notification when air bags deploy. Many car manufacturers hope these services will help them have a stronger relationship with consumers and their cars. The ability to suggest services to telematics subscribers (“It’s time to get your oil changed”) is particularly enticing. Law enforcement has an interest in telematics too: agencies can track a stolen car. All of these services require a dedicated hardware and service contract, not “just” a cell phone. ***** I received quite a bit of mail from readers (some below) regarding my statements about GIS services. Many stated simply that their company (or their vendor) does provide GIS services. Letters included names like SRC and their demographicsnow.com, CADTEL’s SpatialGateway, and EmapSite’s hosting. So far as I know, these are all GIS hosting or pay for service (maps or other data are delivered over the web) type operations. And, for now, as I suggested, these may be the state of the art. What I hoped to highlight was that the apparent lack of services for programmers to use to build Internet-based apps. Enter Microsoft’s .NET initiative, and other distributed computing ideas from Sun and IBM. The premise is that services (little bits of code that do one or a few small things) from all over the world can be linked together as needed to build a solution. Said another way, this new type of “software program” “lives” on several or several hundred computers worldwide. Here’s a concrete example from GIS: Microsoft is turning TerraServer, the site which provides a variety of imagery from a server that end-users interact with, into a service, that will be available to distributed software in the .Net arena. The vision, according to Richard F. Rashid, the head of research at Microsoft, is that topographic maps, weather, and other geospatial data will be available to all .Net programs. ***** -Mentor Software’s coordinate transformation tools are now available through Rockware.com. This is a good move for the small company. Don’t worry, Norm still writes the code and provides tech support. -The remaining big free Internet service providers this week merged: Juno and NetZero are now one. Will this be like tying two rocks so they will float? Both companies were pushing, and likely will continue to push for, pay services. -We all know about prepaid phone cards, now how about prepaid Internet access on a CD? That’s the new model offered by Slingshot.com, a company that hopes that those without a credit card and those increasingly worried about the free ISPs going away will buy $10 CDs. ***** A GIS Monitor reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote in response to my comments on GIS services on the Web. “Just thought I'd comment on the GIS web hosting services. Having some experience with these I'd have to say that a GIS professional should be very cautious before choosing a web-based service, especially one dependent on a product not originally designed for the multi-user, heavily loaded, web-based model (ESRI ArcIMS). Many, many problems need to be worked out before these services become practical, if ever, though Blue Marble's has a very "let's keep it simple and inexpensive" approach that has given the company a big lead out the gates. To be successful, I think these companies will have to focus on the mapping functionality, not on fancy, spiffy web graphics, like some seem to do. With one service, I've seen web screens for composing the map and defining groups that probably appeal to graphic designers, however when it came time to view the map, it didn't work or you couldn't do something as simple as setting the background color. We shouldn't lose focus, it's about maps, right? “I think companies who base their web hosting on a 3rd party solution will have a difficult time making any money. To cover the costs of purchasing the required licenses, even at a discount, companies will have to set pricing beyond what budget conscious local governments and small/medium-sized businesses may be willing to pay and I believe these are the primary market for web hosting services.”
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