Categories
Thoughts

Happy Birthday Jumbo

 

From Planes

Happy Birthday to the Boeing 747 which first flew on this day in 1969. The risk this project represented  for Boeing is often overlooked, had it failed so would have Boeing itself.

Of course it was a great sucess and its impact on the world has been profound, long distance air travel for “normal people” would not have been possible without the dramatic changes in the economics of flying that the 747 introduced.

Today the 747 has flown 3.5 billion people equivalent to halt the worlds population, or  twice the number of people who access the internet.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Data Policy Google Maps

Mapping the Victorian fires – Some important lessons for Europe ?

Nobody can have failed to be moved by the tragedy of the Bush fires which have been devastating Victoria, Australia this weekend. As reported by Official Google Australia Blog the Google Geo team in Sydney worked fast yesterday to get a real-time map of the extent of the fires available online and is has seen extensive use over the last 24 hours.

victoriafires

A crucial part to making this happen beyond the skill and dedication of the Google team in Sydney, has been the system put in place by State of Victoria Country Fire Authority (CFA). This largely volunteer fire brigade have put in place an excellent web based system including a RSS feed of incidents which is used to produce the map.

This is a great example for all public sector providers of information.. provide your information in a form that allows reuse via different channels, not only does this spread the flow of information to as wide an audience as possible, it also reduces the direct traffic to your site during major events.

And for UK readers it is interesting to note that although protected by our familiar friend Copyright, these feeds are available and indeed designed for personal and non-commercial use. 

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Data Policy

Just brilliant @uk_trains

Bus park

Blogger at the excellent Mobile Industry Review, Ben Smith has developed one of the most useful services to emerge from the event that will become known to many as #uksnow.

UK trains is a BBC Backstage powered mash-up which sends travel update information from all the UK Train Operating companies to dedicated twitter feeds, so for me to find out if my train to work in running I just need to follow @uktr_southwest.

uktrains

This morning most of the official web sources of public transport information failed under the weight of traffic, which just highlights, as Ben points out the, the value of publishing transport information via as many online channels as possible.

It would be great for example to be able to offer transit information for London of Google Maps as happens in New York or Chicago, perhaps fellow Londoners you might ask Transport for London why this is not possible ?

 

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Data Policy Ordnance Survey

Power of Information Taskforce – Homework for the OS

The influential Power of Information task force,  the group working within the Cabinet Office to suggest better ways of using Government Information has published their interim report back to government in a “wiki-like” form to allow comments from the community before final publication.

As any reader of this blog will expect, there is considerable discussion of the potential value and problems associated with  access to geospatial data in the UK. 

The report make a number of recommendations which don’t really appear to be that radical,  and are not a million miles away from suggestions I have made in the past, lets hope the influence of the cabinet office can move policy in Southampton with more success.

Here are the recommendations themselves..

▪ Basic geographic data such as electoral and administrative boundaries, the location of public buildings, etc. should be available free of charge to all.

▪ There should be simple, free access to general mapping and address data for modest levels of use by any user

▪ Voluntary and community organisations pursuing public policy objects should benefit from straightforward standard provisions for ensuring access to geospatial data at all levels of use

▪ Licensing conditions should be simplified and standardised across the board and, for all but the heaviest levels of use, should be on standard terms and conditions and should not depend on the intended use or the intended business model of the user.

▪ The OpenSpace API, similar to but currently a constrained version of Google Maps should become the primary delivery point for the Ordnance Survey’s services

Although not a recommendation in itself, clearly a key point remains the OS view of derived data, and it viral effect on the creation of geospatial data in the UK, the current situation where even the smallest use of OS mapping in locating a new feature on a map results in the OS claiming IP on the whole map cannot continue.

Overall the report itself and the process by which it has been created are a great example of how Government can really make use of “web 2.0” approaches to change how policy is developed, discussed and communicated.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Data Policy Thoughts

Government forced to more openness

A brilliant result for mySociety and all who support openness in government, I guess that includes President Obama.

“And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Today the UK Government shelved plans to exclude MP’s expenses from the Freedom of Information Act, a result of an active online campaign and the resulting loss of cross party support.

As Tom points out, this is a real example of the potential of citizen power in the age of the internet.

Great Stuff, and huge kudos to mySociety.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Thoughts

History

barack obama

Categories
Fun !!

A “get well soon” video from Microsoft?

I thought this must be a joke, or pehaps a clever “Get Well Soon” card for Steve Jobs, you know don’t worry iLife is safe for the next six months because your competition is Microsoft Songsmith.

 

I still think maybe this is an elaborate joke, along the lines of the Microsoft Shoe commercial, just to demostrate the potential of spinning the blogosphere.. but it seems real ?

Love the fact they use a Macbook Pro covered in stickers in the video.

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Thoughts

My favourite Carol Bartz story

I really enjoyed my time at Autodesk and was sad to leave a great company when I left for my adventure at Ordnance Survey. Autodesk was an exciting place to work, very focused on design, well managed and lead by Carol Bartz. Her vision and leadership was a key part to the success of Autodesk, in particular making it a billion dollar company within a few years.

I can imagine that her leadership style which was direct to say the least, may not seem very “yahoo like” but it worked at Autodesk.

I remember a corporate redesign which resulted in everybody getting new business cards with just a email address rather than a name on the front (very .com of Autodesk at the time), so I was ed.parsons@autodesk.com. Now a few of my colleagues who had PhD’s or letters after their names were a little disappointed that their full title would not be on the card.

In front of 1000 staff at an all-hands sales meeting Carol addressed the issue; “If you don’t like your new business cards, F*ck off and go work for somebody else” – can’t imagine Jerry Yang doing that.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
Google Earth Mobile

Palm, Google Earth and storytelling..

I often talk about the use of Google Earth for storytelling, illustrating a story with its geographical context displayed interactively is very powerful, to see what I mean just watch the first few minutes of the launch event for the new Palm Pre at last weeks CES show.

BTW Its great to see Palm that seem to be getting their original mojo back, remember how cool the original Palm V was..

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Thoughts

Geo-tagging for the masses

Just got back from doing a plenary presentation at ESRI UK’s kick-off meeting, wow has that organisation grown some.. came back on the No. 285 bus – I do love these local meetings 🙂

The topic of my presentation was the increasingly mainstream appeal of geospatial technology, not so much the geoweb/neogeography of the tech community but the applications that have real mass-market appeal like the Santa tracking sites over christmas, and yesterdays announcement of geotagging in iPhoto 09.

The mainstream applications all share a common characteristic they are from a user perspective simple applications which provide a useful purpose / entertainment, but which nevertheless are built on a hidden geospatial infrastructure which may be very complex and sophisticated.

Now from what I have seen, iPhoto 09 may have quite limited geotagging capabilities compared to existing services, however the interface is very appealing and the process of geo-tagging straightforward. And it is of course simple, there is no mention of reverse geocoding or geoparsing, all of which is part of the process and necessary – but hidden.

The future of geospatial I believe will increasingly take this form, where complex geospatial functionality disappears hidden behind great interface design and brilliant process engineering.

Today I was drawn to use a wonderful Douglas Adams anecdote.. Douglas was told that one day all houses would have a centralised electric motor to run all sorts of home appliances, and what better job could one have than to be an electric motor repair man.

The study of electric motors was thus recommended as “the” thing to study. Of course today there are no centralised electric motors, and no electric motor repair men, but our houses are full of electric motors invisible in devices all around the house (Just counted over 20 in the very room I am sitting in, computers, hi-fi, coffee maker , etc.).

The parallel is clear for electric motor read GIS.. in the future, important and even more widespread than today; but ultimately invisible.

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network