edparsons.com

Sometimes you can’t beat a simple story..

On this side of the pond it is had to understand just how big a deal the Superbowl is in the US, it remains one of the few remaining occasions when most of the country sits down and watches the same rectangle of moving pixels at the same time.

So running an ad during the Superbowl is a big deal, from the legendary 1984 Macintosh add, through the dot com madness of the 1990’s it has always provided an interesting reflection of the IT industry. So for the first time yesterday Google’s first Superbowl ad has attracted much attention.

I get the impression that this particular ad first viewed last year on youTube, was so well liked (if not loved) that it was felt that it deserved the biggest audience possible.

For me the interesting thing, is just how embedded geography is to the story, how often geospatial technology is either used directly as in maps or is there behind the scenes – Paris the place not the celebrity…

Written and submitted from Heathrow Airport  (51.478N, 0.491W)

So Apple are banning location based advertising apps, as a result of their recent purchase of Quattro Wireless. Well that would seem to follow the usual Apple control freakery, well I’m not  so sure..

I think Apple is actually doing the right thing, setting best practice for developing apps that use location.

What they actually say is..

“If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.”

In other words don’t just insert a location targeted ad into an application where is does not provide any benefit to the user. So you should not add a location targeted ad into your first person shooter game for pizza’s in Southampton, just because the user is in Southampton.

This is location ad spam.

On the other-hand if a user is looking for train times from their current location to Southampton, then ads from local business offering you food while you wait for the next train or offer alternative journey options via bus would be useful.

As with search ads this represents and example of advertising selection based on a users implicit intent, ignore these signals and as an app developer you would be spamming your users.

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

So its the iPad, a large iPod Touch and the blogosphere has spoken, it’s a fail.

Well that’s not quite the end of the story as I see it, the key point to understand in the importance of Apple’s new device is to recognise that computers and the web are no longer the preserve of the geeks that write blogs.

All the apparent failings of the iPad, the lack of USB, no multi-tasking, no HDMI and lack of Adobe’s Flash are actually all the reasons why it will be successful.

The choice to remove these features are a result of the laser focus of the design team to make this a simple device, not a computer as we recognise it today, but something that allows “normal people” access to information quickly and simply. Remember the similar criticism from the smart-phone experts when the original iPhone was introduced.

Just think of the contrast in terms of installing a simple application in Windows, compared to an application on the iPhone.  The idea of the computing appliance is a common goal with the ChromeOS, both the iPad and future ChromeOS devices aim to make the underlying operating system as simple and robust as possible, and allow users to get to a task hassle free.

For me I can see the iPad finding a home in my household as a “sofa computer” something to have in the living room, easy to pick up and use quickly to browse the web, read a book chapter or send an email.

You can also seen the potential of vertical applications particularly in education, imagine the interactive textbooks that can be created for such a device.

A longer shot perhaps could be GIS data capture applications making use of the 3G/GPS version of the iPad, ESRI are rumoured to be working on an iPhone app..

Such a class of device, a real “computer for the rest of us” has been a long time coming, Alan Kay a true giant in the history of computing, in 1968 introduced the dynabook concept, which was hugely   influential for many including Steve Jobs. The work of Alan Kay was also a influence to one Douglas Adams, who also saw the potential of a book like computer..

Maybe the iPad will be the most important product Apple has produced so far, if it can become the internet  appliance, that really brings computing to the mainstream, then again maybe it will not and some other device will become this long anticipated device.

I can’t wait to get one, I just wonder who is going to be first design a cover with “Don’t Panic” written on it !

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Spent an interesting day making by way down to Southampton to give a talk to some 3rd year Computer Scientists, strange to be back near by old employers, I did not drop in however..

The drive down the M3 was particularly spectacular clear blue skies and a snow covered countryside is the positive spin of a country whose infrastructure struggles with a few cm of snow. However this winters snowfall is rather extensive e a fact brought home by a MODIS image acquired today from NASA’s Terra satellite.

Cool in both senses I think your agree !

Happy New Year BTW !

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Every year I give myself a little project to do that has the twin aims of providing an alternative to watching TV and keeps my “hand-on” skills with technology current. In the past I have built linux servers from scratch, learnt Ruby of Rails (remember that !!) and of course uncessfully tried to build a cheap remote sensing platform from an electric RC helicopter (not enough lift – too much vibration).

This year my projct is less challenging in many ways, completely inspired by John McKerrell and his now famous Weasley Clock I am going to learn how to build robuts using the Arduino Kit. So I have my book, a simple Arduino kit and some stuff from Maplin..

Our Robot Overloads will take their first steps…

Happy Holidays !!

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)

Yesterday marked the end of a era for many people interested in technology in the UK, as it was the last publication of the Guardian’s Thursday Technology supplement.

For many years I used to buy the Newspaper on a Thursday just for the tech section and it’s news from the IT industry and it’s IT and science job listings. Over the last few years the job listings disappeared replaced by online job sites, and of course we now get much of our news from blogs and the twitter.
It was the lack of advertising that killed the printed version, the Guardian still remains one of the best source of technology reporting online and out of all of the UK news publishers the Guardian is the most innovative in using new media, as demonstrated by the release this week of their excellent iPhone app.

Lets hope that the Guardian can continue its great work online, and I would recommend the weekly Guardian Tech podcast to anyone wanting to go beyond the 140 character version of tech news. Lets also hope that the campaigning element of the Guardian work continues, the victory of the Free our Data campaign in the UK, will have I hope a major impact on the UK Tech industry and the Geospatial Industry in particular.

Does this mean all printed media is ultimately doomed, of course not, however it does bring into stark  focus the business models of business that in the past have been based on the scarcity of information. When I started reading the Tech section, or Guardian Online as it was in the late 1980’s it was about the most up to date source of news, as it was published not monthly like most magazines but weekly ! Now via Twitter, I can learn of a new product announcement within minutes, and then read more in depth opinion of the news over the following hours and days via blogs.

While there was no alternative to printing on paper and having a distribution model of trucks and corner shops the inherent latency in the system was not a problem. Now of course that distribution mechanism has been replaced by the web, and as users we expect to see information delivered more quickly and a lower or no cost because the information is no longer scarce.

I expect we will see a similar shift in the provision of geospatial information to people over the next few years, the same web based distribution mechanism is already reducing the importance of paper maps and thanks in no small part to the efforts of the Guardian Geospatial infomation itself we become much less scarce early next year.

I hope to see by the middle of next year a whole range of alternative mapping products delivered online and in particular to mobile devices based on free OS mapping but showing real innovation, after all walking maps for use on my iPhone don’t have to look like the Landranger maps designed for paper 50 years ago.

So perhaps the end of paper for the mapping industry in the UK will actually mark the beginning of a creative renaissance in cartography, as with newspapers its ultimately not the medium of paper that is important,  but content.

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Final post on the subject, John Graham Cumming demonstrates in this YouTube video, what bedroom climate science looks like . Marvelous !!

The source code of his perl program is here

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)

In his rather influential book on Google, Jeff Jarvis describes how successful companies on the web need to “bring their customers into their processes”,  and by using open and transparent communications when things go wrong, companies will not only maintain but enhance their users trust.

In a really inspiring series of posts to his blog, Martin Daly has described the efforts his company Cadcorp has gone through to deliver a robust and high performance web system to one of their customers.

Very few GIS companies  would have opened up in such detail to describe the difficulties and problems associated in delivering a solution to meet a challenging set of requirements, and to be so frank about the process.

Cadcorp and Martin emerge very well from the exercise, OK so our software may a few problems but we know how to fix them and will work hard to do so, and we will show you how we did it in public.

A example for many others in the GIS industry…

(geek test : Recognise the engineering solution in the image ?)

Written and Submitted from the San Francisco Airport (37.613N, 122.390W)