Perspectives

Be it Wikimapia or keyhole or any one of those innumerable sites that have geographic information, the community has painstakingly marked those bus stops and milk booths and restaurants and even houses. Probably for personal satisfaction. Or maybe to help those lost and stranded. With a billion helpful minds behind, India suddenly seems too small. And now it is payback time.

Starting today, Yahoo! India Maps will cut across the web so that the best of location intelligence is available to you behind one text box at http://in.maps.yahoo.com. Try “Mumbai cst” or “metro, Delhi” or “garuda mall, Bangalore” and you will know what we are talking about. Looking for ATMs near Forum mall? Try “ATMs near forum mall, Bangalore”. Or maybe you are on that Motorbike drive across Chennai, “Shell petrol pumps in Chennai” will come in handy. These are locations that we have captured from various locations around the internet, wherever they exist.

And it does not stop with just that. Combine the mighty power of users with our unique Indian driving directions and suddenly, it seems like you may never be required to pull over and ask the pan-wallah for directions ever again. Yes, we know that many roads don’t have names and when they do, they probably don’t have sign boards indicating them. So, We thought landmarks and turns in your route instruction will help make it easier for you. Now, we have also added information about localities, towns, villages and cities along your route so that you know what you are leaving behind and what you are entering when you are on your journey.

Print it out or Send yourself an SMS and get going, because, getting lost is not so easy now.

- Says Yahoo! India Maps.

This is probably a right time to sit down and write about how mapping services are going to change your life, especially if you are living in developing or going to develop countries. In a few years, hopefully, this post wont have much relevance. GIS, GPS and LBS would probably already be a part of your life. This post is an Indian outlook to it.

Like I mentioned before, Local seems to be the buzz word in Indian internet industry. People have saturated or will saturate entertainment needs of the indian internet/mobile user. Wallpapers, ringtones, call tunes etc are already the biggest revenue generators for many companies and telcos.

Now infotainment is the in thing. And Maps will be an integral part of this industry. We already know onyomo does maps. Next, there are folks like routeguru and tolmolbol. While Tolmolbol will probably source their maps from Google, Routeguru, which gets it’s local and GIS data from Eicher, will probably use Eicher for rendering their maps as well. Routeguru is a very interesting routing service in that they use landmarks along the way to give you routes. Now, that is how Indians are used to driving directions. Burrp is another neatly done local’s site, and maps+burrp will be even better. Ilaaka doesnt deserve to be in this list, but what the heck, they show you a map too..from wikimapia.

The folks next in line are property services, of the likes of indiaproperty, 99acres etc. It will be a wonderful addon and a great service to folks looking to rent/buy real estate.

Certain other holiday/travel based sites show you maps too. Check out holidayiq for instance. Cleartrip is almost there with their “small world” service. The map is just too important there to be missing.

What do you think? GIS are here to stay? Or is it still too early to talk about it?