Like most people who enjoy spending time with mapping programs, I have tinkered with Microsoft’s’ MapPoint 2000. And like most people who spend time with mapping programs, I have read the reviews. Most of the reviewers are right; MapPoint is a very good product because it is affordable and it is easy to use.

MapPoint is not alone: There are other products in its price range and some are more functionally complete than MapPoint. When MapPoint is officially released this quarter, comparisons between MapPoint and similar products will certainly spur some interesting debates among mapping aficionados. That’s fine. But the most interesting issues that MapPoint raises are the new graphic direction that this product may be taking us and its long-term impact on competitors’ pricing.

In December, I had a long conversation with R.H. Jannini IV, (a fellow Directions columnist) about MapPoint. Jannini believes that the primary map file in MapPoint is a raster image (it looks like a raster). This file is not a typical collection of vectors that have been compressed. Instead, Jannini believes that the product uses fractal technology. Fractals provide the means to zoom past the level where most raster images fall apart into pixels. If this is the case, MapPoint is a major departure from traditional desktop mapping technology.

Certainly, MapPoint is not yet MGE or ArcInfo, but it might have a similar impact on the industry. Scott Elliott reports that there are 100+ people on the MapPoint team. I have heard that some of them are ex-Intergraphers and ex-ESRI, and were among the best and brightest. If MapPoint is fractal-based then the best and brightest have taken us in a whole new direction in low-cost mapping products.

If that is not the case, MapPoint still offers consumers a big bang for their software bucks: When you use the address matching function or find a location in MapPoint, it is very fast and the point placement seems very close to reality. This occurs because MapPoint employs Geographic Data Technology’s Dynamap 2000, the same address matching engine that is used in much more expensive products. Everybody has had difficulty getting the latest TIGER files, but the Dynamap 2000 streets in MapPoint are not only up to date; they appear to be very accurate.

Microsoft says that MapPoint is programmable using the usual tools, but it is closed to additional graphic data. I am sure this situation is just for the current beta version. The “city of...” and the “county of...” will want to have their data in this product. Actually, I suspect that there are going to be a lot of add-on products. How about a spatial query add-on? How about a controlling the symbology add-on? How about some more data? MapPoint already will accommodate your tabular data, but how about more pre-packaged data from the usual suspects?

Directionsmag.com has just reported that MapPoint is working on the inclusion of NavTec streets for major metropolitan areas because they work better for routing than the GDT files do. Is the routing designed for average people to find their way around town, or will there be commercial applications as well? Will MapPoint show up in your car? Will we see this product in pizza delivery stores? At a $109 retail price and with today’s pretty healthy PC’s available for under $700, routing for those concepts could become very affordable. And since MapPoint comes from Microsoft, the training curve is almost flat.

It is possible that MapPoint will remain a little more than an electronic atlas that does geocoding and thematics. Somehow, I doubt that. But in any case, I’ll bet everyone else’s products will get a whole lot better at no price increase just because MapPoint now exists.