Teleatlas announces 2009-06 map

[mvl]

The new Tele Atlas database also realizes 500,000 edits sourced from community input from more than 30 countries across five features, including one-way traffic flow identified via Map Share technology, one-way traffic flow detected by GPS measurements, the change of a crossing to a roundabout, road gradient measurements and new road geometry.

Digital Mapping & Navigation Press Releases - Tele Atlas

This will be the August Tomtom map (version 835??)

Interesting how they're now capturing rotaries and gradients. My suspicion is Tomtoms won't get the gradients, but will enable the real-time rotary removal that was installed on app 8.350.

Tele Atlas has increased the volume of community input changes tenfold from Q4 2008.

This is good news regarding map quality and hopefully will continue to close the Navteq road-accuracy gap in North America. In my experience, IQroutes has helped me more than the Navteq road reliabilty would have helped, so in my opinion Teleatlas is already ahead of Navteq overall in North America.

 

[dhn]

I presume it's TT which would imbed the map with ALG data, once it gets it from Tele-Atlas?

And who do I have to: ____bribe, ____kill (pick one) to get that info into the next map's Canadian road system?

 

[mvl]

They need to drive a mapping truck for ALG. They don't need a truck for moving roads, just anonymous/mapshare data.

They recently announced that they have an underwhelming 50 mapping trucks worldwide. So don't get your hopes up.

 

[jsnoik]

How they do their updates is curious.

I just bounced my way around until I ended up on TeleAtlas' Map Insight where one can submit changes. I ended up putting in about 30 submissions. Hopefully, most were already in progress.

What blew me away was some streets that they had there that are less than a year old. But the subdivision that has been there for 3 years is not mapped.

Hopefully, they will catch on soon.

 

[mvl]

How they do their updates is curious.

My guess is that they bought really old maps from government / paper sources a few years ago.

Then they started driving their mapping trucks, and used mapshare and the anonymous tomtom data submissions.

So depending on what updates they got (where they drove, who provided anonymous data), they are able to update different pieces of that really old base map.

 

[mvl]

Ahh.. the really old maps.

In 1985, GM announced a new "James-Bond type of innovation" that could render paper maps obsolete. It partnered with a privately held firm name ETAK that was going to create this new "digital map" technology.

Fast forward to 2000, Teleatlas purchased ETAK, thereby gaining the "really old maps".

From there, add the mapping trucks, mapshare, and anonymous data described in the last post.

 

[dhn]

mvl, for Canada, the situation isn't quite like that. The company TT 'purportedly' uses for Canadian maps (you can see it listed in the copyright notice on your unit') actual had its contract cancelled by TeleAtlas over FOUR years ago!!! It is a Canadian company specializing in Canadian maps.

Since then, who knows who and how Canadian roads get updated by TeleAtlas (i.e, TT now).

Scanned AAA Trip-tiks???

 

[mvl]

My suspicion is that the copyright had to remain since the maps were originally sourced from the third party. Then after the contract was cancelled, Tomtom probably had perpetual right to use the old maps. Then it would just drive their trucks, etc for its own updates.

Teleatlas considers Canada a non-partner-sourced country here.

 

[dhn]

Let's put it this way. I was in contact with the Canadian company who were NOT pleased that their name was still listed in the copyright and wanted to know precisely what the wording in the copyright notice said.

Being a good Canadian (eh?), I provided them with the info.

This was about 6 weeks ago. What has transpired since then, I do not know.

 

[Uncle Tom]

Hopefully TT will work the bugs out on this map so it wont crash the Xl series. They told me the current map is on hold for my free download and that the next map release will have the bug fix so I'll be able to download it then.

 

[mvl]

Thanks for the update. FYI. There's nothing wrong with the latest map. It's just too big for the XL.

It appears that Tomtom is just pulling the map update, and will work on shrinking it in the next quarterly release.

 

[canderson]

Looks to me as though TeleAtlas lost interest in Colorado a while back. I've made several reports. Some had reached the "We are working on it." stage. Now all of them are back at the initial "We have received your report." stage. How things can regress in this way is a mystery to me.

Two major 4 lane divided highways got a new set of ramps allowing access to and from the west that weren't there before, and they still haven't touched it... this, after being in the "working on it" phase at one point this Spring. The changes were completed and reported a year ago.

 

[mvl]

Looks to me as though TeleAtlas lost interest in Colorado a while back. I've made several reports. Some had reached the "We are working on it." stage. Now all of them are back at the initial "We have received your report." stage. How things can regress in this way is a mystery to me.

It seems like things always revert to "we've received your request" when ever a new map is released. So what you saw is expected. If you didn't get to the "we're done" stage in time, everything starts over.

The fastest turnaround time I've seen so far for Tomtom reacting to new road developments has been about 20 months. So if that still holds true, if your new exits are in the new map that would mean things sped up.

Map 835 will be a real test of community input. They claim 500,000 global changes. I'm also watching a major December 2008 exit ramp change in the heart of Providence, RI. This should have been reported by thousands of people by now. No update yet in google or tomtom maps (or Navteq for that matter).

 

[dhn]

You read it here:

If map 835 (or whatever the next NA_2GB version is called) has ALG in Canada, I'm buying everyone a beer!

 

[mvl]

Have you been able to confirm whether Teleatlas has Canadian employees?

Now that I think of it, the driver/s of the American mapping truck/s (not sure if singular or plural ) may not be able to cross the border. Since it would be work,not leisure, the driver would need immigration permission to cross.

Maybe that explains ALG in Buffalo but not Toronto...

 

[dhn]

You sure know how to depress a guy, mvl.

 

[mikealder]

David, consider a DIY approach, fit one of These to your car and send the data to TomTom, time and GPS stamped video footage should be good enough for them - Mike

 

[dhn]

I had a feeling as I was about to click the link that it would turn out to be the photo Andy_P posted in B forum.