91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø Professor and Students Form Web2.0 Company -
GeoMonkey, LLC Launches January 23, 2007
Q: What is GeoMonkey?
A: GeoMonkey, LLC is a Web2.0 startup company that enables community-building around the creation and sharing of customized maps. Users can create and save personalized maps for future visits, and publish them on the Web to share with friends, colleagues, and customers.
Q: Where was GeoMonkey developed, and how was it funded?
A: The GeoMonkey technology was developed at 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø. The company was then formed in Vancouver. WSU Research Foundation provided initial funding to the group via the Cougar Gap Fund. The Cougar Gap Fund exists for the purpose of moving WSU innovations from research on to commercialization.
Q: Who are the partners in GeoMonkey, LLC?
A: Dr. Orest Pilskalns, WSU Research Foundation, and 10 students belong to this partnership. Of the 12 members of the LLC, 6 are voting members.
Q: Why was GeoMonkey created?
A: GeoMonkey began as a 91³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏÍø software development class project, proposed and led by Dr. Orest Pilskalns. Dr. Pilskalns had been considering the idea for a few years, but only recently did the public mapping software, such as Google and Yahoo! Maps, become available for use in this type of application. The use of online maps has exploded since June 2006, when Google first opened the Google Maps API to the public. User-generated content on the web has grown incredibly in recent years and the realm of online social networking has done the same, generating a new stream of online companies (Web2.0).
Q: How will this impact the use of mapping software, travel, etc?
A: The software uses existing Google Maps as a base on which to overlay user-generated content. Thus, the maps themselves are dynamically supplied by Google. GeoMonkey allows users to geo-locate their own content, such as photos, videos, documents and custom routes. GeoMonkey enables anyone to customize a map, save it to their own user profile, and share it with others or with the general public. Examples: a user can share pictures from vacation, directions to my house, trip planning or wedding planning details, etc. This is the basis of the social networking aspect. In some ways, it could be compared to MySpace, allowing the public to generate an entire database of customized online maps. Ultimately, the database of custom maps will be available for searching by location, keywords, interests, and user. They have also developed unique functionality for automatically geo-locating RSS feeds, mainly news feeds. So, you can go to GeoMonkey.com and view a map of where the news is happening. You can also manually geo-locate news feeds on your own maps.
Q: Is GeoMonkey unique? Is it patented?
A: There are several patents pending on the technology and concepts used.
Q: How does the development of GeoMonkey tie into Governor Gregoire's vision for Washington state's economy and the higher education/economic development link?
A: This project is a great example of a university development spawning local economic development. The student involvement helped bring a current, consumer-oriented relevance to the technology. The project also enhanced the students' learning, engaging them in a hands-on experience which extended beyond the scope of the software code itself. The investment provided by the WSU Cougar Gap Fund helped make it possible for the team to continue working on the project after the class was finished, and to scale the technology up into a commercially viable platform.
Photo: Orest Pilskalns
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