Montreal Tech Watch

Poly9, the same company known for its famous 3D browser globe, has released last week mapspread, a web service which lets anyone to manage geographical data, in an easy to use interface.

In the same way that Google Maps democratized maps, mapsread democratizes advanced mapping features, the typical use case being the case of organizations having databases of geographical data. Previously, those organized had to get expensive geographical information systems, an expensive step both in terms of money and time need to setup.

Poly9 is based in Quebec city, a city with many experts in GIS (for instance phds at Université Laval). You can see it as one of those Canadian companies having unique technologies and IP in one specific field. They did setup a blog though, so they might actually be looking to market mapsread. A company to follow.