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There are 4 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" WATBlog Spots: First Look at the BIGMaps Interface Thanks to 13B - The FilmIn the summer of 2008, we provided some updates about BIGMaps - the ideology, the team strength and the expected launch date. We also followed it up with the story that talks about the acquisition of Whrrl and how that may catapult BigAdda into the Big League of Mobile Social Networking with the ability to provide location updates, and location based social networking. This went well with the development of Big Maps because that is the mapping interface that the technology would sit on. Well, we have for you, a first look at the Big Maps interface. Just this morning i was browsing through the website of the film 13B (releasing this friday) and found an interesting link - 'The Ghost Locator'. Clicking on the same i was directed to an HTML page that contains a mashup of the BIGMaps interface. The mashup basically has a list of the spookiest locations in India (a good branding synergy because 13B is supposed to be a horror film).13B is a BIGPictures release so that explains it! The BigMaps website says that they are ‘coming soon’.
We had commented earlier saying that the interface may be less than perfect but it is surprisingly good. Locations are marked well, the maps are extremely detailed (for Mumbai atleast) and there are signs of businesses that BIG is looking to get into. Key Pointers: 1) BIG is looking to exploit the public transport route mapper that Google lacks in India. If you zoom into the maps for Mumbai, you will notice that all the bus stops and train stations have been marked to the T. This ensures that BIG is looking to be a total solutions provider in the space - something that Google is for the US.
2) BIG looks like it wants to get into local search as well. All the eateries, banks and ATM's have been clearly marked. The Reliance group also has a directory of local business in a particular area because of the OF cables that they have been laying all over the country for a few years now. They have the GIS data so it only makes sense to couple that with a location mapped local search application by gathering a little more data or phishing data from already existing local search provider. Obviously they could also have a partnership with a local search provider but they seem like they would be more comfortable building their own service - whatever it takes.
3) With the local search capabilities, social networking via BigAdda and the ability to provide social recommendations based on where you are (Whrrl technology), BIG is virtually looking at a Burrp meets Google Latitude kind of application with the ability to chat with your friends. Well it all depends on the Network Effects that they are able to bring about. With me, comes a network of my friends and their friends etc. Currently, these predictions look exciting. BIG clearly is looking at itself as a core social + networking service provider (just like Google/ Facebook/ MSN) as opposed to a peripheral service provider (Twitter/ Yahoo Answers). How long will it take before we see BIG Maps Live? Last year, our sources had confirmed a 2 year time period. While the product has taken shape, i think it will still be atleast another year before the service goes live. Reason, if you zoom into the smaller cities, then the Maps are not up to date. You cannot zoom beyond a certain level.
With the amount of detail that BIG is looking to achieve with their maps, one can safely say that there is *some* time before the same amount of precision that we see on the Mumbai maps is replicated nationally. Till then, go watch 13B! :p Related Posts Also Check Out: TRAI To Now Ensure Broadband Speeds At Your Home & OfficeAs reported earlier in January 2009, broadband subscriber base grew to 5.65 million, compared to 5.45 million a month earlier and recorded 74.12% growth during the last year.Not yet affected by recession broadband penetration is still growing though at a slower pace when compared to the stellar mobile subscriptions. It is well known fact that Broadband subcriptions usually quoting data rates greater than or equal to 256Kbps are not quite near to it most of the time, this is because of the un-restricted contention ratios and Internet Service Providers offering service at a contention ratio of 80:1 to 100:1.If you don’t know the contention ratio is the ratio of the potential maximum demand to the actual bandwidth. The higher the contention ratio, the greater the number of users that may be trying to use the actual bandwidth at any one time and, therefore, the lower the effective bandwidth offered, especially at peak times.The higher contention ratio’s maintained by the operators thus always resulted in poor Quality of service. Reportedly TRAI has now issued guidelines to ensure that ISP’s and telecom operators provide the minimum required broadband speed to their customer and has restricted the Contention ratio to 50:1 for residential connections and 30:1 for business. This move of TRAI will now alleviate the quality of service for the broadband subscriptions,but might also result in increased tariffs,as now operators can not accomodate their subcribers in the available spectrum and will have to buy more spectrum. Apparently even at the existing contention ratio consumers will not get more than 64 kbps speeds. Which means atleast half an hour to download a 5 minute song! Related PostsAlso Check Out: Exclusive WATShow With Matt Mullenweg - Founder Of WordpressWe caught up with Matt Mullenweg and questioned him about Wordcamp, Wordpress Business Model, Future Of Wordpress & India Experience. Check out the exclusive WATShow below:
For more such exclusive interviews log on to WATShow.com Related PostsAlso Check Out: Facebook opens its doors to public for their governing processesFor quite some time now, there has been considerable debate about the "terms of use" for Facebook users. What’s the issue? Facebook claims that whatever your write is theirs. You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute any User Content you post. The reasons for protests ranged from how could Facebook claim to be free when in fact it retains the right to your material? Also, what about your stuff when you deleted your account? So, Mark Zuckerberg hosted a press conference where he revealed that Facebook always wanted to make its processes transparent and that should apply to the terms of use as well. In a blog post that followed on the facebook blog he said "Our main goal at Facebook is to help make the world more open and transparent. We believe that if we want to lead the world in this direction, then we must set an example by running our service in this way." So what happens now? Facebook recently released two documents, The Facebook principles and the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. The first document will serve as the guiding framework behind any policy in the future and defines the rights of the FB users where as the second document will replace the terms of use. The Facebook Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (formerly the “Terms of Service”), now clearly states that Facebook does not claim ownership of user content, although the act of using Facebook does grant the company non-exclusive rights to do what it wants with the content. However, you can end that agreement by deleting items or leaving Facebook: “This license ends when you delete your content or your account,” the Statement says. Zuckerberg is urging users to join the two groups and give feedback on how to improve these two initiatives of FB. He is also saying that he wants to make the terms of use easily comprehendible so that there is no ambiguity of any sorts since terms of usage are generally known to contain language that is quite formal. People will be urged to vote on the topics beto gauge their response to the new guidelines. Most Commented PostsAlso Check Out: More Recent Articles
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