Placebase jumped into the Web 2.0 mapping fray a few years back with a different model - one much more condusive to commercial mapping solutions than some of the other players with APIs. (1, 2) The platform, if you recall, is called PushPin.

Next week at our Location Intelligence Conference, the company makes another leap, this time in data licensing models. On Monday, the company will announce and release Pushpin Collections (don't confuse it with Microsoft's method for saving geo data of interest) which allows developers to license on a per transation basis data from Claritas, ESRI, Navteq without upfront costs or integration challenges. Among the data available to mashup that's not normally available: real estate lot outlines (parcels), school districts, block groups. The cost, depending on the data provider, can start from just $.02/transaction with discounts for volume users.