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Start-Ups Try to Plot A Complete Picture
He hired the housing mash-up pioneer and encouraged other developers to create more elaborate applications.
In June, Google launched Google Earth, a downloadable application that gives people access to high-resolution satellite images. A month later, Microsoft introduced Virtual Earth, its own digital depiction of the world. AOL's MapQuest began posting satellite images with driving directions.
  David Rensin of Reality Mobile in Herndon holds a cellphone, which transmits real-time video to a screen behind him. (By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post) |
Microsoft and Google recently took their applications to a new level. This month, Microsoft released Virtual Earth 3D, lifelike models of about 18 cities. Google's three-dimensional version, SketchUp, lets people compile photos to create architectural models.
Google has counted more than 30,000 mash-ups of its maps. Microsoft said thousands of commercial customers are using Virtual Earth on their Web sites. Every day, about a dozen blogs catalogue new mash-ups.
A few mash-ups are already earning money. Platial, a Portland, Ore., start-up, received venture-capital investment to launch a socially networked mapping site, where people can plot and share maps of their favorite places around the world. Zillow.com stitches together Google's satellite maps to show property values across the country and has received $32 million in financing.
A Dublin-based mash-up tracks the real-time paths of commuter trains. One in Chicago catalogues crime statistics, and another in Los Angeles records the location of celebrity sightings.
As companies continue to experiment, the mapping technologies may change how people search online, drive around town and buy homes. "This is a local advertiser's dream," said Donna L. Hoffman, co-director of eLab 2.0, a research center at the University of California at Riverside that studies online consumer behavior.
Mash-ups will really take off, she said, when companies find a way to deliver the data instantly to mobile devices. "People will pay to have that kind of control over the content," she said.
That's what Herndon-based Reality Mobile is trying to do. The company overlays live video feeds on top of satellite images -- often using Google Maps -- and transmits the information to dozens of cellphones at once.
The FBI used Reality Mobile's technology to strengthen security at the Super Bowl in Detroit, and the Los Angeles Police Department is experimenting with it. The technology tracks objects, such as a suspect or vehicle, as they move across the map, so officers can secure buildings or keep an eye on specific street corners from anywhere on the ground.
"People want to know where the data we are collecting and watching exist in the world," said David Rensin, Reality Mobile's chief executive.
