Categories
Data Policy Ordnance Survey Thoughts

A change of direction for the OS ?

From todays Pre-Budget report, a document that’s main focus is the fiscal stimulation of the UK economy, this nugget of potentially very exciting news…

“4.54 Re-use of public sector information from trading funds 

The HM Treasury/Shareholder Executive assessment of trading funds has considered the potential for innovation and growth from increasing commercial and other use of public sector information. It will shortly publish some key principles for the re-use of this information, consider how these currently apply in each of the trading funds and how they might apply in the future, and the role of the Office of Public Sector Information in ensuring that Government policy is fully reflected in practice.

For the Ordnance Survey, this will involve consideration of its underlying business model. Further details will be announced in Budget 2009.”

In politics, timing is everything..

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

Categories
Data Policy OS Research Thoughts

Notes from down-under

As the Whitehall farce that is the OS derived data debacle continues, it’s interesting to contrast the flow of public sector information in the UK with that in Australia which I have just experienced first hand at the first Asia Pacific Spatial Innovation Conference.

Interestingly for a Geospatial conference there was in addition to the usual technology developments, a theme looking at innovation in business models, funding and licensing. It’s not often there are as many economists at a geospatial conference as ESRI gurus !

For me the biggest take away was the increasing recognition by government here that data needs to be set free both at all levels of government, and there are I’m sure many important lessons which could be picked up in Europe and in the UK specifically. 


Australia is more similar to the UK than the US, for example the value of information is recognised and information products are protected by copyright as is the case in the UK.

But in Australia, lead by the great example of Queensland, government data sets are starting to be released using Creative Commons licenses, and in a study presented by Tim Barker the Director of Queensland’s Spatial Information Office, 85% of the public sector data-sets they had examined could by licensed using one of the standard creative commons licenses without any problems.

Before you all fall about laughing saying this could never happen in the UK, the OS actually has released information under a creative commons license before, the research team published some ontologies used in semantic research using a non-commercial share alike licence, but of course perhaps that was a little under the radar screen.

Still we live in hope…

Written and submitted from the Qantas Lounge, Sydney AIrport, using its free 802.11 network.

Categories
Thoughts

London Geo/Mobile Developers Meetup

Coming up next Thursday evening at the Google Office in London, will be the first meeting of the London Geo/Mobile Developers Meetup Group. I’m sorry I will miss it, but it looks to be a great start for the group interested in one of the hottest areas of tech at the moment.

Written and submitted from the Rydges Lakeside Hotel, Canberra, using the Telstra 802.11 network.

Categories
Data Policy neogeography Thoughts

Mash-up hero !!

This is a great story from the mySociety blog, Michael Houlsby from East Hampshire council has built an API to the councils database to allow users of the fix my street application to post issues directly into the councils own operational database.

I can only imagine how hard this was to achieve not from a technical point of view, but from this bottom up approach to delivering a IT system, which goes completely against the usual philosophy of delivering IT systems in government.

Many people view mash-ups only as a way of publishing information, but really mash-ups are just about providing open interfaces to your online services, so it brilliant to see such an approach used in the UK to contribute information, which in turn potentially improves the quality of life for the lucky residents of East Hants !

Kudos to Michael, an example of the value to web 2.0 I will be using from now on..

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

Categories
Thoughts

Who reads the Terms of Service anyway..

Update : As this discussion has grown in scope, and to allow my colleagues back in the States to follow this important thread can I ask you continue posting comments at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/browse_thread/thread/3b0bd5922c7115f0

Well in the UK almost everybody involved in the GI industry!

A while ago I made a rather cryptic blog post asking for any information regarding a communication that had been sent from Ordnance Survey to Local Authorities, this is the communication highlighted by Charles in the Guardian yesterday.

As the Guardian article points out the OS was unhappy with local authorities signing up to the Google Maps API terms of service as it required a “broad” re-licensing of the data to Google and the users of Google maps based sites.

Yesterday, Google published an updated Terms of Service for both Google Maps and Earth,  which I hope will go some way to solving this issue.

The relevant section of the new terms of service with reference to the publishing of user generated content I reproduce below..

11. Licenses from You to Google.

11.1 Content License

(a) You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Your Content. By submitting, posting or displaying Your Content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute Your Content. This license is for the purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Service.

 

So part (a) says.. your data is your data, Google can make no claim over its ownership. You provide Google with a license to reproduce your maps only for promotion purposes, e.g. like the screenshot below or in a powerpoint presentation.

 

 

(b) You give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to access, reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute business listings data contained in Maps API Implementations. For example, if you create a store locator application, Google may use the business listings information from the store locator to improve the Google Services such as Google Maps and local search.

 

Part (b) is really about improving local search, if you are opening a new chain of coffee shops (not perhaps the best time methinks) and you produce a store locator that uses Google Maps, then you are allowing Google to use your store locations in the Google Search index, so people will be able to find them from other sites in addition to you own.
For local authorities this might be relevant for the location of public offices, libraries, schools etc. Type “Teddington Schools” into Google and you get a list that looks like this..
Really useful I think..

 

(c) You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make Your Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

 

Part (c) really just highlights how the geoweb works, it you create a google map with the location of your recylcing centres, that map may be syndicated to users of mobile phones on the Vodafone network for example, who have access to Google Maps as a standard option on their phones.

 

(d) You understand and agree that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Service to our users, may do the following:

(i) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and

(ii) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media.  

 

Part (d) is about making technical changes to the way maps are displayed to take into account bandwidth and device limitations.

 

11.2 Brand Features License. You grant to Google a nontransferable, nonexclusive license during the Term to use Your Brand Features to advertise that you are using the Service.

 

Google can use your logo to illustrate the fact you are a Google maps/earth user.

 

11.3 Authority to Grant Licenses. You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licenses.

 

This might be the difficult point, it is saying that by publishing the locations of your schools, coffee shops, crime statistics etc. you have the rights to share the information, because it is yours to share. I can see the OS view on derived data may make this currently difficult, but lets hope that that is something that can change.

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
iphone

iPhone best-selling phone in the US

The Guardian points out that the iPhone has replaced Motorola’s RAZR as the best selling mobile (cell) phone in the US. That’s impressive for an expensive smartphone, but to replace the RAZR !!

I can’t beleive people were still buying that pile of Sh*t !, a phone with perhaps the worlds most complex user interface since the Apollo command module.

Please feel free to drop a comment, with your worst phone experience.

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

Categories
LBS windows 7

The Location driver..

I have made the point a few times that for Geospatial services to belcome really mainstream, the ability to determine a users/devices location needs to be a standard function. The two latest mobile phone “operating systems” the iphone’s version of  MacOS and Android already have this, and we are seeing more and more location aware applications.

So it was no surprise that Microsoft announced last week that Windows 7 will also have a core location API, this is still a big deal as it has the potential of making location aware applications really commonplace at last, finally reducing the level of complexity for the developer to that of using a software driver.

I am concerned with some early reports as to the ability to control with enough granularity when  your location is made available, but hopefully that will imporve over the next year before the software is released.

All eyes then on Macworld in January, I would be surprised if we don’t know see a location API as a new feature of Snow Leopard. 

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Data Policy Thoughts

Show Us a Better Way, The results show

The finalists in the innovative, Show Us a Better Way: competition have been announced and its great so see how many of them make sure of geospatial information, again evidence I’m sure of the pent-up demand for access to geospatial data in the UK.

The finalists are receiving funding to either build working prototypes of continue development of existing systems such as the excellent wheres the path site and ave wrigley’s UK schools map which I first came across at the UK Mash-Up event over two years ago.

The actual winner will be announced in BBC Radio 4’s iPM programme at 5:45am on Saturday morning, for those of us who are already suffering from sleep deficit from Tuesday Night’s US election excitement, of course you can catch up with the results on the shows podcast.

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Android LBS

Wikitude : Practical Augmented Reality

Earlier this week I was talking to a group of travel journalists and demonstrated wikitude, one of the hottest applications available for the new Android powered G-1 phone. Wikitude uses the GPS, Digital Compass and camera on the G-1 to deliver one of the first really practical augmented reality applications, excellent for travel and tourism applications.

It was only a few years ago that I remember the efforts the Research team at the OS put into building a prototype of such a system to demonstrate the potential of such an interface although I don’t think my fellow directors really “got it” despite our efforts.

From the video below the potential of such an interface for displaying geospatial information is obvious.

Wikitube was another one of the Android developer challenge award winners, developed by Mobilizy a small team based in Austria who are themselves a validation of the open source approach to mobile development, a small team with a great development platform and user generated geodata content can create a truly innovative application.

Written and submitted from Vienna Airpot, using its free wifi network.

Categories
Data Policy Thoughts

The Elephant in the conference room


Last week ESRI held its annual European User group meeting in London, which as usual was a masterpiece in professional conference production. Jack gave an inspirational conference keynote on the first day followed by some great product demos by the team from ESRI UK who were the hosts of the conference this year. This was followed by team from Redlands with some pointers as to future features to be expected in the next major release of ArcGIS 9.4 towards the end of next year.

It’s often refreshing to see how much a privately held company like ESRI can talk about future products  compared to publicly listed companies who need to be more careful, I was very much taken, for example, by the new Microsoft style ribbon interface in the upcoming revision of ArcGIS Explorer.

Despite all the great technology demonstrations and great examples of the use of GIS in Schools and for humanitarian relief, I could not help feeling that a key aspect of GIS usage in Europe was missing : Data Policy and the difficulties in sharing geospatial data produced by European public sector agencies.

Until INSPIRE really begins to have a impact early in the next decade, many of the demonstrations presented here and at similar conference will remain only demonstrations…

One scenario presented by the team from ESRI UK showed various UK agencies sharing information to manage a flood event, and communicating up to date and relevant information to the population potentially impacted via a website. Those with even a little knowledge of the GI industry in the UK know of course that the various licensing regimes adopted by different Government agencies in the UK would make such a scenario impossible.

We are at a stage now in the development of the GIS industry that key vendors such as ESRI are now concentrating on improving the quality and robustness of the software rather than adding even more specialised functionality, a key sign of maturity and something that both Microsoft and Apple are now focusing on for their next releases of their operating systems, at the same time how information is discovered and shared to ultimately power these GIS tools is still caught up with the IP and publishing models of the 19th century.

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