Just Landed – 36 Hours from blprnt on Vimeo.
The recession must be over, because Nokia has brought 2 companies so far this year. Just 2 weeks ago the Finnish giant purchased Novarra, which provides the infrastructure to do something similar to what Opera does with Opera Mini. Today Nokia has announced that they’ve purchased MetaCarta, a Cambridge, Massachusetts based company that employs over 30 people.
MetaCarta’s talent is the ability to put data on a map, and that data can range from geotagged photos to hotel listings to pretty much anything. Now when you think about where Nokia currently gets their source for points of interest data, it’s mainly from their NAVTEQ acquisition and partnerships with a select number of 3rd parties such as Lonely Planet. One criticism you often hear about Nokia’s Mapping service is that the search just flat out sucks compared to Google Maps, and that’s because Google Maps taps into a vast array of sources, which they then plot on a map.
Will Nokia’s acquisition of MetaCarta help the company provide a more comprehensive set of search results? Time will tell, but here’s hoping the company fixes their issues.
MetaCarta also offers a highly robust set of tools that let you manipulate location based data. Remember a video some guy put out that showed people’s tweets that contained the words “just landed” on a map? Guess what used to build that?
[Via: Nokia PR]