When it comes to online maps, there is a gap between the 2-D maps and pictures you see on Google Maps, Live Maps, and Yahoo Maps, and the more fully-immersive, fly-through experiences of Google Earth and Virtual Earth. A small four-person startup in New York City called UpNext is trying to bridge that gap, by bringing extremely detailed, 3-D maps to the browser.
UpNext only maps Manhattan right now (they hope to add Boston and San Francisco next spring), but it is a powerful demonstration of how 3-D experiences could soon become more mainstream. (No download is necessary, but you do need Java 1.5—and be warned that older Macs might have some issues with it). I met UpNext chief architect Raj Advani last week at our Boston MeetUp, and he came by today with CEO Danny Moon to show me the site and its new Facebook app.
Yesterday, UpNext launched its map on Facebook, although it is not yet in the app directory. (Unlike many Facebook apps, it is not a subset of the main site’s functionality. You can do everything inside Facebook you can on UpNext.com.) UpNext is a complete 3-D representation of the city, down to practically every single building. You can pan and zoom, and click on any building to get a list of the businesses inside. Type in an address and the map flies right to it. If you want to see nearby restaurants, bars, stores, hotels, museums, or sports facilities, you can set a filter to light those things up on the map. This building-by-building and category search “is something you cannot do on Google Maps,” claims Moon.
For many businesses, UpNext pulls in ratings and reviews from other sites like CitySearch, the New York Times, and Time Out. And you can add your own reviews, and look at all the places your friends on UpNext have rated, reviewed, and visited. That now includes all your New York City Facebook friends, whom you can import into the main site as well. They pop down in a friend slider that lets you sort through them and all the places they’ve rated.
UpNext gets its map data from VisionMedia, which flies over the city taking pictures and then extrapolates the height of each building, allowing UpNext to render them in 3-D. It then takes local business information from Localeze, and drops it onto every building (which is geocoded using data from the City of New York). “We want to reach a new level of detail in immersive search,” says Advani, “so I can see at a glance where things are happening.” He’s even added day and night cycles to the map.
All of this would not be possible using Ajax or even Flash, says Advani. Only Java lets UpNext tap into the video acceleration card on your PC to render the polygons fast enough. The trick is to compress each building, rendering it with as few polygons as possible. There is some lag time while you are waiting for Java to load, but that should be fixed in an update to Java coming in about three months.
And what about a mobile version? Advani is thinking of entering the $10 million Android contest sponsored by Google for its new mobile operating system. And of course, he would develop for the iPhone in a second if Apple “would tell us some details about their API.”
UpNext is a real bootstrap operation. The four employees put in $50,000 and pulled together another $45,000 from friends and family, which was enough to create the map of New York City. Now they want to raise about $1 million to expand to other cities. In terms of making money, at some point they will turn on local search ads as well as in-map ads where buildings light up during certain searches (like for “shoes”). Moon also envisions creatiev banner ads linked to the map. “If Starbucks is launching a new drink,” he suggetss, “all the Starbucks could light up if you click on the ad.” Local business Yellow Pages-type ads are another natural fit.
In reality, though, UpNext is a technology demo waiting to be picked up by a larger company building out a global mapping platform. It cannot survive as a standalone company given the competition. Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft should buy these guys and blow out these maps worldwide.
Erick,
Fully agree with you in that this is not a standalone product or company. But they will do very well if acquired as this is a great add on solution for GoogleMaps, Yahoo etc.
Great to see Bootstrappers get this far and get a review on TechCrunch
Dude, those are so wicked.
“New York City called UpNext is trying to bridge that gap, by bringing extremely detailed, 3-D maps to the browser.”
but why? Why not use the full ability of your graphics card, and enjoy the flight sim in Earth?
Is this a make it and they will come type deal?
Wicked? That’s so 1990’s.
“all the Starbucks could light up if you click on the ad.”
pretty sure the starbucks’s whole store siting premise is that you don’t need a map to find one because they are everywhere – starbucks across the street, but you’re going to the grocery store? no matter, there’s an in-store starbucks, too!
yes, way cool maps, though!
this is very cool BUT where is the usefulness?
You are right though, Erick, it is a perfect buyout candidate for someone that doesn’t need it to generate revenue on its own (aka Google).
I’ve got an interview with them from last month as well:
http://www.cent...t-local-web-app
I agree it’s wicked – I could see it working with a Yelp as well. On CN a few of the comments were around the initial load time and the Java map.
The key is getting people off Yelp and other review sites and onto UpNext.
It’s a cool visual way of finding things – i guess.
lol – your mind gets lost in immersion and imagination while viewing the city
but i’d have to agree with most comments…
the visuals are cool, but the usefulness is in question.
I saw them demo at the NY Tech MeetUp a few months ago, and I think everyone in attendance was pretty impressed. I have also had an opportunity to chat with Danny (CEO) a few times, and he is a pretty smart guy. Good luck guys, make NY proud.
Can you stop writing so many long articles and get to the point, you moron.
You can load 3D views in a browser with Virtual Earth, and the details are much better than the screenshot above, so what’s the big deal?
“You can load 3D views in a browser with Virtual Earth, and the details are much better than the screenshot above, so what’s the big deal?”
Microsoft stuff sucks. Everybody knows that. Whatever they make doesn’t count.
BTW, If the UpNext guys want to partner with us, you know how to get a hold of me. This could be our google maps for our search. We won’t pay though, it has to be equity only.
Chris R.
stop spamming.
general rule of thumb, don’t posts twice – unless someone calls you out.
I’ve virtual earth before and i’ve just tried UpNext. Virtual Earth has better graphics but takes forever to load. With MS VE, on my comp all i could see were 3 or 4 buildings and my machine slowed to a crawl. UpNext worked smoothly though.
“general rule of thumb, don’t posts twice – unless someone calls you out.”
Ooohhhhh, good rule! I won’ts ever do its agains sir.
impressive work from a 4 man team!
i love how the lights go out when you are looking up nightclubs.
Microsoft offers a similar browser based service, review here. A startup like this taking on Microsoft and even Google (google are rolling this out now in Maps, see here) is a brave, brave startup.
Are you kidding? This is amazing. Even forgetting the fact that it’s 4 guys with a tiny amount of cash, it’s still truly remarkable.
I’ve been waiting for technology like this to implement an idea I’ve been sitting on for a few years.
A really amazing browser experience. Can be used for so much more than showing classifieds. So much more.
Well done Raj, Vik, Robin & Danny. And good luck.
Let me know if you ever want to licence the technology
They recently were chosen as the best startup at NY StartUp Camp!
Congrats on all your success!
Social Alarm Clock guy
Holy cow, is that what they turned upnext.com into? I still remember when it was an Asian American pseudo-portal site based out of Los Angeles while they played Starcraft at import car shows! My have the years gone by!
Facebook is really on the ball since we started working with them!
Would it have killed them to choose a name that had something to do with maps?
Maybe telling people what you actually do is Web 0.5 or something, but I think Multimap, Streetmap and Google Maps have an advantage over this lot because if someone says ‘You should try Google Maps’, I instantly know what they do.
Excellent, very detailed post. Good job.
But the real story here is VisionMedia – the little bootstrapping startup merely found their product and ran with it. The whole enterprise wouldn’t be possible without VisionMedia, who are the real innovators here. Upnext mashed it all up with other data, which is of course great, but not that profound.
Thanks for the comments and feedback everyone!
Nick @23: That’s a bit like saying NavTeq and TeleAtlas created Google Maps, or satellite imaging companies created Google Earth. The data didn’t make the engine. VisionMedia provided us with invaluable polygon data, but I only wish that was enough!
We developed new compression technologies to clean those polygons and transfer them to browsers, and built a browser-based 3D renderer with support for hardware acceleration. For the mapping part, we worked on spatial matching algorithms to get per-building detail. And then there was the whole web layer. Not a matter of plug-and-play, but it was a good time and there’s a lot we still want to do going forward!
Raj Advani
UpNext
“You need the latest version of Java installed for our program to work!”
Oh well guess I can’t run it then…. who still uses Java plugins?
It will be interesting to see how this evolves with next gen browsers supporting 3D natively.
John.
UpNext released an app for the iphone, btw. Tried it out, and it’s just as impressive, if not more than their site version. Great if you live in NY, as usual.