Slashgeo

Very Spatial points to an article about China online mapping. From the article's conclusion: "Moreover, the location and map system on mobile phones has become a profit growth engine in China. It has already been used in public security, agriculture and marine sectors, according to China Unicom and China Mobile."

Slashdot discuss the Chinese Beidou geostationary GPS system to be offered free. Their summary: "The Chinese GPS system, Beidou, is apparently to be opened up for free access within China, worrying European investors on the 2.5 billion competing project, Galileo. Initially, China had declared that access to their system would be restricted to the military, and Europe had planned to recoup some of the cost of their system selling licenses to China. Michael Shaw, from the US government's National Space-based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Coordination Office in Washington DC said "Frankly, China's behavior towards Europe is not so different to how Europe behaved with us when GPS was the only game in town a decade ago."

On China's official Beijing 2008 Olympics page you can find E-Map, which I guess makes it the official web map of the 2008 Olympics. While functional, it's maybe not as flashy and user-friendly as other maps that will try to attract the international attention of Olympic fans. Will it get the traffic other web maps will get?