The Scoop on Microsoft and GeoTango
As usual, Adena gets to the bottom of Microsoft buying GeoTango. In her article, she talked to Stephen Lawler who is the Manager for Windows Live Local about what this acquisition means to Live Local. Once you fight though all the buzz words and marketing speak you begin to see what the future of Live Local might be and how Microsoft might use the technology in all their products. As one astute comments pointed out, how the blogosphere has missed such an important announcement as this is baffling. Nothing from Robert Scoble or Chandu Thota shows that even Microsoft has missed this. Kudos to Adena for getting the story!
Good call James. Most news posted on GIS sites is just links to PRs.
I get 100% of my GIS news from All Point Blog and Spatially Adjusted. Anything else is too dated or just marketing blabber.
“As one astute comments pointed out, how the blogosphere has missed such an important announcement as this is baffling.”
slashgeo shared the story on the 5th of January with its readers
http://industry.slashgeo.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/05/1719226
Cheers!
The blogosphere didn’t miss it, All Points had it on Dec. 31.
http://www.allpointsblog.com/archives/976-Microsoft-Acquires-GeoTango.html
I think James’ point was that Adena tracked down the story behind the story, proving that there’s no substitute for good, old-fashioned reporting.
Larry seems to think because portal sites mainly post “PR” and thus are merely listing fluff. FYI, sites like this (including GISuser, directions etc…) provide a valuable service in that they are distributing news in a very timely manner to a large Global audience, often far beyond the reaches of blogs, newslists etc… Blogs serve a purpose although they typically reach the “techie” and the likes. Professionals, upper management etc… don’t have the time to sift through countless websites and blogs in search of every piece of information. So what’s with the hangup on the “blogosphere” do you think because somethign doesn’t hit a blog then it hasn’t been reported on? Finally, Larry, you need to look a bit deeper at some of the “news” sites and you’ll find there’s lots more to them that what appears on the front page. Cheers (I haven’t had my coffee yet so I’m starting to ramble ;0)
oh… I forgot to mention, yes indeed, kudos to Adena for getting into this story. These perspectives definitely hep to determine what the agenda is or may ne… cheers
As I hope everyone realizes, we are in the middle of a new era of publishing and blogs have contributed significantly to ability quickly disseminate new and opinion. Our tiny niche of the technology world has benefited from this growth and blogs will allow us to get the news out to be techies and main stream business process managers alike. Oh, and Glenn, please don’t compare Directions to GISUser. It’s taken us seven years along with four highly experienced geospatial technology editors to become a recognized, quality publication…not just a portal.
Sorry for the typos above; my copy editor would be agast…I’ve had my coffee and it didn’t hep (sic).
Joe, no harm meant as I was touching on the dissemination of news. I agree Directions is a fine, professional publication and never implied (or meant to imply) anything else. Sorry you seem to have been so offended by the comparison! Oh, and an FYI, I’ve been a geospatial web editor writing about Geospatial, LBS and geospatial since 1998 and our team at Spatial Media has more than 60 years (combined) in the arena… finally, agreed that blogs (like this one and many others) have done an outstanding job in getting important news and tips out to the users community… cheers… PS: sorry about Notre Dame this year… maybe next time ;0)
I read blogs because I can get the news sooner than traditional media. But that only goes so far, it takes a reporter to dig deeper and that is what Adena did.
PRs are not news. I don’t mind blogs posting PRs, but they need to comment on them. I can’t tell you how often I’ve read SlashGIS (or whatever its call these days) link to PRs, but call them articles or stories. Adena does a great job (and James here) at giving their spin or some background on why the story is important. That makes their blogs much more valuable.
Larry, you’re absolutly right. slashgeo’s value, like slashdot, is suppose to come from the comments. However, maybe we’re too young (less than 4 months old) but we don’t have enough user comments which adds value. I agree, Adena and her team is doing a *great* job. slashgeo’s trying to do something else, whether we’ll succeed or not remains to be seen…
Personally I hate PRs. In my previous “job” as an “editor” at a online technology “magazine” I used to have to wade through them to find “news” (way too many words in quotes, but hey). I don’t subscribe to any PR news feeds as I’d rather just get the news from others or directly via email or IM.
There isn’t anything wrong with posting a PR IMO, but I just won’t read them myself. As I was saying in my post, there is a big difference between a blog such as this and something such as Directions Magazine. You’ll find news on blogs sooner, but most of them/us never focus on the whole story, just moving on to the next hot news item. That is where journalists come in and their research can really pay off such as this story on GeoTango.
[...] I’m not sure why this “blog” post is getting much traction. I see no reference to where they got that information, I see no information about what this API is going to be (you can already skin AGX). All I see is ESRI Marketing sending a small email to Directions Magazine and they posting it without giving thought to what they are doing. I had thought the whole point of Directions Magazine was that they’ll have higher standards than us bloggers. But APB has really fallen off in the past 6 months to the point it only appears that they post press releases. I remember when APB used to break news on their own. [...]