Ben Stucki

SpatialKey Technology Preview

Universal Mind released a technology preview of SpatialKey last week, which is the information visualization product that I’ve been working on in its various forms since late last year. Andy and Doug already have detailed posts about the release, but I wanted to mention a few more things that I think make SpatialKey the best web-based mapping product in existence.

1. It answers the big questions.

When someone’s dealing with larger sets of geographic data, there’s something fundamentally different about the questions they have regarding that data. For instance they’re not only interested in the location of an individual house, but in how that house’s price contributes to the local market. So while SpatialKey can still answer questions like “Where are the three bedroom houses in my area?”, it also lets users answer questions like “What’s the average price of a three bedroom house in my area?”. I think that’s a big shift from anything that exists in web-based mapping today.

2. Big questions require big data-sets.

The fact that SpatialKey lets users answer “big” questions means that it needs to handle more data than other mapping solutions, a lot more. So while Doug’s pretty happy with the demos we have out that visualize thousands of points (even tens of thousands) using SpatialKey Personal, those are still “cute” compared to what we’re able to do using the Enterprise Server. With the server-side solution hooked into your database, you can do all of the same filtering and visualizations with literally millions of points, and it’s just as fast. We don’t have any public demos of the Enterprise Server yet, but keep an eye out for updates on the SpatialKey blog just in case.

3. It’s engaging and interactive.

The need to make geographic data relevant isn’t new, but historically the task of analyzing and visualizing this data was firmly in the hands of analysts and statisticians. SpatialKey not only renders these visualizations in realtime, but it allows almost anyone to interact with and explore the data globally, city-wide, street-level, and even further. The answers that were once hidden in raw data are now at your fingertips and easily acessible.

I’m obviously proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish with SpatialKey so far, but we know that it’s not perfect yet. We’re still rounding out a few rough edges and working hard on more features that I look forward to showing you soon. Until then, let me know what you think of it so far!