Very interesting article looking at the data sources and future of GMY mapping

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/05/trends_of_onlin.html

ok, and the article looks at Ask too, but I don't consider them as influencial as the big three...

Microsoft's PopFly

http://www.popfly.ms/Overview/

It's a mashup creator that's been compared to Yahoo!'s Pipes. It's an interesting concept: bringing together data sources from a variety of providers and delivery types, manipulating, then delivering in a desired output format. Designed to do this easily enough for non-programmers, but with enough features and flexibility to accomodate programmers as well, this could be very useful. Like most Microsoft releases, this has already been overhyped and has already delivered disappointment (how long until I get the access info email promised at signup?). Sure, it's in "private alpha" still, but I'd expect no positive comments from non-Microsoft paid sources until at least 6 months down the road. I'll be keeping my eye on it though. Along with Yahoo! Pipes and SRC's Alteryx, Microsoft's attempt at creating a visual, simple, powerful way of walking non-experienced users through the stages of creating a mashup could bring out many creative and usefull end products.

Upgraded Yahoo! Maps

Doesn't seem to be anything major. They say they're using their own engine completely now. That's nice.

The one thing I'm taking away from this update is their decision to add building footprints to major markets. This feature is on its way to becoming the norm. Soon map users will expect to see building footprints in urban cores. We should recognize this trend and plan our offerings accordingly.

Racing the big three (GMY) is not fun. Hopefully we can piggyback Google's technology stay current no matter what the next front is in their race to be the best map portal.

Yahoo! Pipes now export in KML

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2007/05/yahoo_pipes_supports.html

The samples are great for understanding the steps and logic involved in taking normal data and getting into a useful kml form.

GeoRSS support from the GYM bunch of online maps

Time to tidy up those old georss experiments i did with some of our data. Anytime the entire GYM does something, they tend to get competitive about it, and everyone else wants to adopt as well.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/06/1448246