In the mashup ecosystem, let’s get one thing straight. The data owner is ultimately in control, because a mashup developer is reliant on data owners to keep the supply of data flowing.
Sure the presentation is important, but if you rely on data sources you don’t have control over you run the risk of losing out. Better to get permission from your sources before you are blocked from getting the data. One should never base your business model on free data unless you have secured access to it.
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Excellent point and something that needs to be considered. Funny, just yesterday I bounced a similar question off an exec at GlobeXplorer.. here’s what he replied… “Most mashups are using web service image and street data that is licensed for personal and/or internal business use only, and not for resale. Aside from that, all our customers pay for the premium data services we provide, even sites that appear to end users as “free”. Much like TeleAtlas and Navteq data supplied from various web services into other sites, including mashups. We’ve been doing this for seven years now, and growing very fast”. Food for thought… Glenn (GISuser.com)
I thought you were going to say, “what is called a mashup has long been known as ‘doin GIS”
I like your point though too…
James,
Spot on.. there is no such thing as “free” data somebody is covering the costs of the content somewhere is the mash-up chain, and this may or may not be sustainable !
ed
Since I don’t have a nickel for every great “mashup” idea someone came to me with, I’ve had to improvise by repeating the mantra to would-be spatial capitalists “the devil is in the data.”
A real world example of this:
Yahoo recently decided to roll back their geocoding support on their API considerably, which had a negative impact on my batch geocoding tool (which is a mashup of sorts.)
Luckily I figured out a workaround which so my service was not disabled, though its not quite as sweet as it once was.
My advice to anyone who’s venturing into mashups: tread lightly and always have a backup plan.
-Phillip
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