MapForums

I received a couple of questions yesterday from Brady at O'Reilly on the launch of Live Search Maps in China. Really well though out questions in fact! Instead of digging up answers, i sent them on to Vincent Tao who worked closely with the dev team in China that built Ditu (maps in Chinese). A couple of emails later and Brady had completed a great interview with Vincent including questions like -

• Getting access to Chinese geo data is notoriously hard. Who are you getting the data from? Is it handled via a joint-venture? Where are your servers located?
• Was the data allowed to leave China? What other restrictions were placed on the data and its use?
• What are the issues surrounding showing images? Why would they be more concerned about their own population seeing them? Is http://maps.live.com blocked in China?
• Will there be an API?

Vincent's responses to these and a bunch more questions can be read in the full interview on Radar. Who said bloggers can't be reporters

Click here to view the full post.