Back in 2014, Skybox Imaging made the headlines for its 500m USD acquisition by Google Inc. It’s interesting to note Google’s comments on the acquisition
“Their satellites will help keep our maps accurate with up-to-date imagery. Over time, we also hope that Skybox’s team and technology will be able to help improve Internet access and disaster relief — areas Google has long been interested in.” – Google press release – Business Insider.
Introducing Terra Bella
Fast forward to 2016 – Skybox Imaging is now Terra Bella. The branding isn’t just a namesake one, Terra Bella has a new vision altogether and this time, it doesn’t seem like Google and Terra Bella want to settle at just updating Google Maps and improving internet access. (Read: Introducing Terra Bella).
A new name, A new vision!
Looks like Google and Terra Bella are finally ready to harness the power of spatial data and build that satellite-based search engine we all want to see 😉
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If you considering to go green and buy an electric vehicle, the first thing you’ll probably google is if there is a charging station nearby and how well distributed they are in your country/continent.
Where’s the nearest… EV Charing Station?
You could try googling for that information on g-maps and surprisingly a wide variety of searches still don’t turn out to provide me with the results I want to see. “EV charging station locations” isn’t something that google has mapped (just yet).
There is a Map for it!
Well, like the saying goes.. there is an app (map in this case) for it. Plugshare (the OSM/Airbnb of the EV charging world?) has one of the most detailed maps of all the EV Charging stations in the world and it’s truly amazing to see how many EV charging stations are available across the planet.
They also have an API, if you are interesting in using the data for your own app (link to dev page). Another alternative source is Carstations but PlugShare definitely seems to have more filtering options compared to the other website.
