Gjermund Weisz Talks About SportSim and ArcWeb Services
note - see post update below
I had a great opportunity to sit down with Gjermund Weisz of Sportsim at the ESRI 2005 User Conference and talk to him about his product and how ESRI ArcWeb Services is working for him. Sportsim is a free product that users can upload their GPS tracks from their workouts and view them over maps and satellite imagery. They only charge for downloading maps out of their product and as of right now Gjermund said about 10% of their users take advantage of their product. One of the great concerns for Sportsim is the lack of high resolution satellite imagery for the world. With Google Map and Google Earth, users expect and want great satellite imagery under their GPS tracks. Right now Sportsim is limited to basically Landsat and when you view a race such as the ESRI 5k run/walk you really see how bad the imagery is.
The business model of Sportsim is really interesting, they give away the program allowing you to use it without any restrictions. They way the make money is by charging users to download maps. Of course as I said above people really want high detailed satellite imagery so without ArcWeb Services providing these satellite imagery people won’t pay Sportsim. Take a look below at the ArcWeb Services satellite image vs Google Maps.
Current Sportsim Satellite Image (Landsat)
Current DigitalGlobe Satellite Image (From Google Maps)
You can totally see how people would gladly pay Sportsim for that kind of high quality imagery. For Sportsim to be profitable, they need to provide services that people want so unfortunately unless ArcWeb Services can provide imagery that Sportsim needs, they will have to go somewhere else. No one is currently providing this service (at least at a price a small company like Sportsim can afford) so there is a huge opportunity for ESRI and ArcWeb Services to totally shake up the market.
Update - Andrea Rosso reminds us that ArcWeb does have high quality imagery, but not for areas such as Japan (or am I missing something). I used the ESRI 5k run just as an example (I could have used any event in Japan or Europe), but Sportsim does have very high quality coverage for San Diego. It is the worldwide stuff that has Gjermund worried. Andrea, beyond the descriptions on the ArcWeb website, is there a “coverage” map people can look at to see where different services are available?
ArcWeb includes the GlobeXplorer Premium datasources which have a resolution of up to 6″. If you zoom into the San Diego area you get more detailed imagery than in Google Maps. They cost a little more than 1 credit but if they are only used when downloaded then the cost should be minimal.
Yea, I guess San Diego was a bad example, I should have used a worldwide area such as Japan, which I know ArcWeb doesn’t have. I’ll update the post to reflect this.
You’d be suprised what you’ll find using the GlobeXplorer Premium imagery outside of the US (especially in large Urban areas).
Also, we are releasing new datasets constantly so as soon as we have new imagery it’ll be quickly available.
The coverage map is a good idea and I’ll put it in as a suggestion for version 2005. The issue is visualizing it properly.
James,
and then there is always the legal side of things. Check into http://www.google.com/help/terms_local.html and read the photographic imagery section. Essentially you’ll have to enter a license agreement with google in order to use the imagery data. Well at least that’s the way that I read it….
Within the US there is always the USGS data brought to you by TerraServer and that data is public domain.
Yea, but I’d assume if ArcWeb Services (or a similar service) offered this imagery that you’d be covered.