Comment by tony_cannistra | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tony_cannistra | Hacker News Reader

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I am excited about Felt. (And whoever comes around to compete.)

That's mostly because I think (as they also must) that "making maps" is something that everyone does (in our heads; verbally; on the back of scrap paper; on random car-floor cardboard tacked to trailhead signs) but that few easily-accessible software tools have ever tried to facilitate digitally.

I'm interested mostly in the user-experience they've created to add our "human effects" to an "existing" map (like notes, relevant points, lines, directions). I really am drawn to it.

They're putting a lot of energy into the data-layer side of things, which I think is admirable considering the complexity, and seem to be nailing it. I'm not sure how folks will use those things, since I don't think our mental maps often require additional data.

I'll also add that their curated set of example uses is an excellent model for how to show people how to use a product that they might otherwise have no idea what to do with.

I've always been well served by screenshoting google maps and scribbling on it in WhatsApp before I send it to someone

Even in an office environment I think they're biggest competitor is going to be MSPaint(3D)

The evacuation plans in my (1000+ employee) company are still just building control plans that have been printed out on A3 and marked with a sharpie.

I am excited to share a map with my group of friends going skiing next winter. I used to create a Notion doc with manually annotated screenshots from google maps, much like you. But this feels way better.

As for me, it's not enough.

Qgis is a bare minimum to make a decent map.

Making maps is something everyone does and existing map software is really targeted to professionals. Even if you figure out how to make a map with the GIS desktop software (QGIS or ESRI), taking the maps you made and putting them online is another huge hurdle that requires a separate skillset.

I think Felt is taking the winning approach - to enlarge the market by making map making possible for everyone and making it be online-first.

I've been playing with https://clockworkmicro.com/ to make layers in my spatial database viewable by others, but it requires some GIS knowledge and familiarity with databases (unlike Felt).

https://www.ScribbleMaps.com has been around for 13 years and let's you create maps without an account. I guess there is something to be said for branding.

definitely agree to this. And one segment that they could (should) definitely get customers are those who use ArcGIS. As someone who previously worked in oil & gas, the tax that these companies pay to Arc for all their mapping data is just crazy. I've always wondered why there isn't a solid tech company that could build a product that could take over Arc's business. Looking forward to Felt!

> I've always wondered why there isn't a solid tech company that could build a product that could take over Arc's business

A few reasons:

1.) many geotech companies require on premise installations because they want control of their data and/or the internet quality at remote sites is poor. This means that a SaaS solution is a non-starter.

2.) Most geotechs are already familiar with Arc tools due to Arc’s aggressive marketing to universities

3.) Arc is a swiss army knife which can do most things “good enough”. For most businesses Arc can do what they want out of the box. Products like felt only have 1/10th or less of the functionality as Arc.

We are in the process of replacing Arc with our own custom platform at my company. If you are a heavy user of Arc you quickly outgrow the capabilities of the system. We want to serve petabytes of geotechnical data, and Arc quickly starts to choke on data sizes that large. The operational work of keeping Arc up and running smoothly is also a major headache since you don’t have access to the source code and the error messages in Arc are very poor which means you rely on ESRI support a lot.

> I've always wondered why there isn't a solid tech company that could build a product that could take over Arc's business.

A "friendly relationship" of customers with salespeople, perhaps. And familiarity with software that's used in GIS courses at universities.

Esri has been around for a long time, it’s basically MS Excel for anybody who has to make maps for work.

Their pro software and online services have kept up with the times, you can do almost anything in the program as well. And there’s multiple ways to do each thing. It also has its own internal logic that people get used to like photoshop.

I believe it’s a private company too which means they aren’t always pleasing shareholders

I feel like this product wouldn’t have much of a market if people didnt forget about desktop google earth.

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