A very strong contender for worst press release of the week

Microsoft and Navteq have unveiled some pretty newsworthy and geek-excitement inducing news this week, with improvements to Microsoft’s mapping service that include new 3-D views and a nifty transition from bird’s eye through to street level perspective. As this cnet report shows, particularly the film, there’s plenty that’s newsworthy and interesting here.

But oh my goodness, let’s take a look at the Navteq press release in its full glory.

First, the headline:

NAVTEQ Announces Global Technology Agreement

Yup, technology company has done something with technology. No hint as to why I should be interested in what it’s done as you might expect from a headline. But on we plough.

Advancements In Collection Capabilities To Benefit From New Relationship With Microsoft

Collect more of what? Where? Why? Oh well, at least it names Microsoft. Some progress there.

On to the first paragraph:

NAVTEQ, the leading global provider of digital map, traffic and location data for in-vehicle, portable, wireless and enterprise solutions, today announced a new technology agreement which will allow NAVTEQ to more rapidly deploy innovative collection capabilities and accelerate the collection, creation and storage of 3D map data and visuals.

Ah, nearly a clue there. Not exactly plain English. And not sure why telling me who NAVTEQ is (leading company? you don’t say! any company say it’s not leading?) comes as more important than telling me what the news is. But the news is “innovative” (you don’t say! any company say it’s not innovative?).

And on it goes, turgid paragraph after turgid paragraph. I particular like this one:

With this new relationship NAVTEQ elevates its alliance with a trusted collaborator to help advance important 3D collection technologies which, when integrated into NAVTEQ’s broader proprietary data collection process, will support the capture of a range of advanced navigable map features at an exceptional level of accuracy and scale.

Cool, whizzy, useful, interesting, lovely data reduced to a collection of tech news release cliches.