Map (theft) on-line
When looking for a map for a travel website many beginning non-professional webmasters opt for not too sophisticated theft - after all another website's map is quite easy to copy as a picture.
More advanced travel websites occasionally have their maps revectorised - taking a regular image (roster) map and turning (redrawing) it through software into vectors, which can then scale and provide the advanced GIS functionality. These days a Google search for "map vectorization" reveals many companies able to perform such service with expertise.
Our experience in trying to obtain a legal yet reasonably cheap city map was a tricky one - many of the official map providers we contacted charged what appeared to us as outrageous prices yet took no action against websites blatantly stealing their map visuals and displaying them as their own.
For instance, many a website covering Bratislava use the very same map - a copyrighted pdf. Most simply modify it by cutting of the bottom strip containing the copyright. The owner does not seem to mind trying to charge others who would like to use it legally about EUR 350 (USD 400) for the privilege.
A few days ago we reported on our efforts to contact Maporama, who provides a lovely Bratislava map. After a little difficulty finding Maporama distributors on their website we did find a list and contacted the one in Romania. No reply in four days and I am obliged to carry out a small experiment (hat tip to Tom Locke): contact all European Maporama distributors on the list with the same request and see whether they can deliver on the promise of this European leader on the market of Geocentric Services.
These identical email requests were sent out to five Maporama distributors:
"Hi, I would like to inquire about the price of a Maporama map of Bratislava to be used instead of the current map at http://www.bratislavaguide.com/map. Thank you for your prompt answer."
On March 20, 2006 I sent the request to the Maporama Distributor in Romania. On March 23, having not received a reply, I sent the message to the distributors in Estonia, Poland, Greece and Hong Kong. As of March 27 I had received no replies.
On March 28 the first reply came in, quite friendly, from the Polish Maporama distributor (?) www.emapa.pl. Apparently, Emapa "are not resellers of Maporama's mapping - on the contrary, [Emapa] are Maporama's suppliers as far as map data of Poland is concerned. As such, [Emapa] cannot provide you with a price quotation for the www map service you inquired about - we simply are not in the possession of the mapping data you require." Well, time to send the message of to biz@maporama.com - listed below the list of Maporama Distributors Worldwide as the address for business information.
The following table provides a brief overview of how the articles have performed in the top search engines. Each line is structured as follows:
SE - position for word "maporama" - position for words "maporama distributors"Results on March 27, 2006
Google.com - 20 - 3
Yahoo.com - not in first 500 - not in first 500
MSN.com - 50 - 2
Results on March 28, 2006
Google.com - 21 - 3
Yahoo.com - not in first 500 - not in first 500
MSN.com - 50 - 2
The strong showing in Google is certainly of note, as is the no-show in (at least in the top results) in Yahoo. Certainly, adding fresh, relevant content should not hurt.
* - the words "maporama distributors" were searched for without the commas, these are added for the reader's convenience.
:: 28.03.2006 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Andrej ::