Cloud IT formerly On-Site Technical Solutions: google maps

Thursday, June 28, 2012

Introducing Google Maps Coordinate: Organize teams on the move

Some people are really going to hate this - more Big Brother tracking me... But for several of our clients a tool like this will save them time and money in dispatch and response times.

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Introducing Google Maps Coordinate: Organize teams on the move

Google Maps Coordinate is:

...a new tool designed to improve communication between businesses and their employees in the field. As the number of mobile employees continues to grow, so does the need for a location sharing solution that works in real-time. Research firm IDC estimates that there will be over 1.3 billion mobile workers by 2015 (37.2% of the total workforce) ¹. Google Maps Coordinate combines the power of Google’s mapping technologies with modern smartphones to help organizations assign jobs and deploy staff more efficiently.

Google Maps Coordinate has an introductory price of $15 per user per month until September 1, 2012.

We pretty much know where our techs are (all of the time...) and they tend to perform most if not all of their tasks remotely with the new tools available to us in the cloud. But not all of our professional services and trades clients currently have that information at their fingertips or are spending quite a bit of money on software to track this information. Let me know what you think of this tool!

Visit On-Site Technical Solutions for information on how you can move to Google Apps or other Cloud Computing applications. Call us for all of your network computing and business IT needs. We can also help with your data security and mobile computing. Follow us online below. Call or text me at 1-949-212-2168.

Technorati Tags

Cloud IT
Google Maps Coordinate
Google Maps
Google Enterprise Maps and Earth

Monday, January 9, 2012

Open Source Maps Gain Ground as Google Paywall Looms

Google announced late last year that they would start charging some of their Maps clients fees.

Businesses to be hit as Google starts charging for maps service

Google is keen to emphasize, though, that the changes won't hit sites or apps who are light users of Google Maps.

Ordinary restaurants or hotels, say, won't be affected. To be charged, you have to hit 25,000 map loads per day.

As expected, some of Google's paid clients are not sticking around to see how much it's going to cost them - they're looking for alternatives.

Open Source Maps Gain Ground as Google Paywall Looms | Wired Enterprise | Wired.com:

Nestoria is one of those companies that was told it would have to start paying real money for Google Maps. When Google couldn’t tell it exactly how much, Nestoria kicked Mountain View to the curb and switched to OpenStreetMap, a free, collaborative effort to map the globe...

OpenStreetMap, or OSM, is yet another example of a project that manages to compete with a massive tech company simply by crowdsourcing a problem. Much like Wikipedia challenged Encyclopedia Britannica and Linux took on Microsoft Windows, OpenStreetMap is battling Google Maps, and at least in some cases, it’s winning.