Nokia Keeps Quietly Mapping The World

LucidBeast writes "Mapping the world isn't easy as our friends in Cupertino have found out. Google's maps seem ubiquitous, but there is a less known real heavyweight still mapping the world. Nokia acquired Navteq in 2007, and five years later they are still reading fleet data and scanning cities with LIDAR and 360 degree cameras."

Comments

Re:Feel the hate, my hateful friends!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it Apple fandom that's become a mindless religion?

Don't you think perhaps that's why sane people mock you the way we mock scientology and other douchbaggery?

Re:Not the only respectable ones

[evilviper]

It's easy to say a bunch of non-sense when you don't actually understand the domain and the finer detailers.

I've worked for one of the biggest industry names, with the top products in maps/navigation, for several years... I've clearly been far deeper down in the implementation details than you have. Multiple search systems, POI providers, maps providers, geocoding and reverse geocoding systems, working out continually rotating bugs with each release of the map data, layers not lining up, and far, far, more. Hell, those "GIS frameworks" you used are likely to have included one I put together.

The problem isn't as simple as "it's apple's fault." It's actually a combination of missing/bad data and poorly implemented search.

The "search" part is directly Apple's fault. The "data" part is at least partially Apple's fault, and more to the point, seems to have nothing to do with TeleAtlas, as sources say they're getting their POI from Yelp.

Most mapping systems don't use the POI info from NAVTEQ/TeleAtlas, as it's quite incomplete. At the very least, it needs to be aggregated with another separate source of (BETTER!) POI data. If Apple was depending on TeleAtlas (or NAVTEQ) POI, they'd be idiots for doing it. And again, indications are that they are using Yelp, anyhow.

It just sounds to me like you're excusing their incompetence because you're at about that same level, yourself.