iGeo is a geo-tagging service designed to take advantage of the Microsoft and Google mapping, search and location platforms. Set up to enrich online text on websites, iGeo can leverage either Google Earth or Bing Maps, in order to expand the content related to specific geographical locations with links to the associated maps. Developing company nTerraCon has made two variants of iGeo available to users. First off, there’s a free Community edition. The free flavor of iGeo is aimed at owners of a low-traffic website that wish to add geo-context to them. In addition, the nTerraCon Consumer Edition of iGeo delivers a more comprehensive solution that, on top of “on-the-fly” geo-tagging, also delivers text, image, audio, or video, embedding capabilities.

nTerraCon was co-founded by Clyde Ford, and former Microsoft Sr. Product Manager Lisa Swei, and was positioned as a company offering document and text geo-enriching capabilities. With iGeo, the two have worked to ensure that adding geographical information to online text, websites, but also additional forms of media is a seamless experience, which translates into a superior UX for end users.

Chris Pendleton, the Bing Maps technical evangelist for Microsoft, revealed the best way for customers to start test-driving iGeo:

“First thing you have to do is register, so get that out of the way. There is a free community version that you can use to at least test it out.

After you register, get a key from the iGeo web site. This was a bit confusing since this is their V1 release, but you’ll want to login, click 'My Account'; (upper right) and then click 'Obtain a New Key' (left nav). They [sic] key is good for the entire domain or directory within a domain. So, enter your domain and accept the TOUs – this will generate your key.

Take the little bit of JavaScript (below) paste it where you want iGeo to geotag your locations and magically all location information in your web pages, documents (yes, Word and PDF files too!), files anything on the respective domain will be linked up to a Bing Map (assuming, of course, you chose a Bing Map).

<script src="http://www.myigeo.com/api/igeo.aspx? width=600& height=500& map=VE& igkey=PRIVATEKEY& type="text/javascript"> </script>.”