SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- Sep 10, 2009 -- Urban Mapping, Inc. (UMI), the leading provider of location-rich content for interactive applications, today announced updates to the company's market leading URBANWARE® Neighborhoods database, including the addition of nearly 800 new cities and towns across the U.S., Canada and Europe. The database now includes coverage of over 91,000 neighborhoods in those regions.
Urban Mapping also announced today the addition of three rising Internet sites as new customers. Already used by industry-leaders in the portal, map platform and Internet yellow page markets, such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, MapQuest and AT&T's YellowPages.com, the database's customer list now also includes GiG.FM, CatchMe.com and Kayak.com. The company's developer network also continues to grow with nearly 1,000 developers using Urban Mapping APIs for neighborhood and transit proximities.
"GiG.FM provides location relevant concert information to users, creating a unique experience with what we call 'nearness' and 'nowness.' Users raise their hands and tell us when and where they are, and we deliver unique offers and access to concerts that compliment their own personal music library and taste," stated Chance Barnett, Founder and CEO of GiG.FM. "The Urban Mapping database is the best solution out there to suit our data needs and allows us to easily target offerings and provide content at the level that users speak and understand -- at the neighborhood level where they're hanging out and where they want to be."
"With the help of Urban Mapping, CatchMe.com is the first Internet dating site that allows users to search by neighborhood," stated Michael Talei, Vice President of Product for Slingshot Labs. "We've launched this feature for the New York City region and are excited to bring it to other markets soon."
Existing customer Apartment Home Living has seen 172% growth in traffic over the past nine months, thanks in part to Urban Mapping. "We help our residents find the perfect place, connect with their neighbors and neighborhood and 'Live for Fun,'" said Lawrence Cotter, Vice President Apartments.com and General Manager Apartment Home Living. "We couldn't do all of this without Urban Mapping. Their neighborhood data powers ApartmentHomeLiving.com's neighborhood apartment guides and enables us to provide local information to users in a context that is relevant to their lives."
About URBANWARE Neighborhoods
Urban Mapping's neighborhood boundary database is the most comprehensive product of its kind, enabling increased relevance for users and greater precision for advertisers. The boundary collection for the U.S. now totals nearly 75,000 neighborhoods for over 3,000 cities and towns. In addition, Urban Mapping's set of international boundary data now includes almost 18,000 neighborhoods across Canada and Europe. By geographically encoding boundaries of thousands of neighborhoods, UMI provides precise latitude and longitude points for every neighborhood. The neighborhood data can be accessed through a simple and cost-effective API, and is also available in other formats including XML, WKT, ASCII and SHP.
Urban Mapping's neighborhood data defines boundaries in a way that accounts for the informal nature of urban geography. By recognizing that a location can technically be in two or more neighborhoods, Urban Mapping eliminates binary boundaries and replaces them with conditional boundaries. Because conditional boundaries incorporate this inherent fuzziness, they are more in tune with the way people understand informal spaces, resulting in neighborhood boundaries that are more realistic and accurate. This underlying data representation formed the basis for Urban Mapping's patent pending approach to defining informal space.
About Urban Mapping, Inc.
Urban Mapping's location-rich URBANWARE products enhance the value of local content for interactive applications. The company's flagship product, URBANWARE Neighborhoods, is a database of informal space and is used by all major portals, map platforms and Internet yellow page publishers, including Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft's Virtual Earth, Idearc's SuperPages.com, MapQuest and AT&T's YellowPages.com. Urban Mapping also offers databases of mass transit systems and off-street parking lots, as well as a novel geotargeting solution focused on the needs of local search. For more information about Urban Mapping, visit http://www.urbanmapping.com or call 415.946.8170.
Urban Mapping and URBANWARE are registered trademarks of Urban Mapping, Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
Add to Digg Bookmark with del.icio.us Add to Newsvine
Company contact: Lindsay Hong Email Contact 415-946-8170 x812 PR contact: Dean Fisk Email Contact 707-837-1745