Having been on the bleeding edge of the integration of GPS and GIS via
MapInfo since DOS was a bad-dream, I thought I would visit the emerging
WEB-site of an old friend, John Haller, and his newest effort, NEARME.
What is interesting about this? If I have the story right, MapInfo was the
result of Chrysler providing some "academic" seed money to Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute (RPI) back in the early 80's(?). Chrysler's interest
was to build an "in car" mapping and navigation system.
Four bright young engineers took the assignment and put together a DOS
product that eventually became MapInfo. Back in November of '99 John took
that original vision of a navigation tool out of MapInfo as a spin-off that
MapInfo has invested in.
http://dynamo.mapinfo.com/presscenter/web/view.cfm?releaseid=375
If you want to see how MapXtream can and should be used take a look. Better
yet use it!
http://www.nearme.com/
Its really quite a neat idea on the lines of MapQuest and MapBlast but based
in MapInfo technology. I will also guess that Oracle is in there somewhere
as well. It looks like a natural for a MapXtend PDA GPS design.
How well does it work? To write this I needed to look up the proper
spelling of "Rensselaer". I used a "Home Address" for NearMe at 4 Global
View, Troy, NY 12180, put a 10 mile search radius, and was presented with
600 over possible "education" listings. Many of these were unique phone
listings at Hudson Community College and other schools. I refined my search
to listings only beginning with "R" and there it was, RPI. Cool and FAST!
They are looking for content partners too. Now if I can just get them to
add a spatial photo of every site so I not only know where to go but what to
look for.....
MidNight Mapper
aka Neil
6/11/00
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