Some old news that was missed here a week and a half or so ago, but which I'm excited for, as it bodes well for the future of Apple Maps.
John Paczkowski at All Things D:
Locationary is a sort of Wikipedia for local business listings. It uses crowdsourcing and a federated data exchange platform called Saturn to collect, merge and continuously verify a massive database of information on local businesses and points of interest around the world, solving one of location’s biggest problems: Out-of-date information.
If Apple could implement this smartly, it could be huge for Apple Maps. Ever since they started, Apple has been doing nothing but playing catch up, but if they could use crowdsourced information from all Apple Maps users in an intelligent manner, and truly keep their service up to date with the movements of local businesses, Apple could finally get a leg up on Google, who's service also struggles with out of date information. In the best case scenario, Apple would even start being able to really keep up with the constant fluctuations of unpredictable impediments such as construction sites, large car accidents, traffic jams, etc. If Apple Maps could reroute you in real time to avoid things like this, it would be incredible. If Siri could say something like "Here's the most direct route, Alex, but perhaps you might want to go this way instead in order to avoid the construction area", it would be incredible. No one knows how long it will take Apple to actually implement this new service, or how successful and effective it will really be, but the possibilities of eliminating outdated information and using crowdsourcing to get real time updates are endless. If Apple managed to implement something like I stated above, the first real smart mapping service would finally exist, and Google would finally become the one scrambling to catch up.
