Author: Ed Parsons

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Research Technology Thoughts

App Engine for Academics

As the geospatial world moves every closer to the mainstream IT, the potential of “Cloud” based technology to share mapping data and provide distributed processing for spatial analysis is increasing relevant to academics and researchers working in higher education.

Yesterday Google announced a programme to allow academics use of Google App Engine for their research projects. App Engine is the service used by Google for building and hosting web applications and offers fast development and deployment, simple administration and built-in scalability.

This new award programme will support up to 15 projects by providing App Engine credits in the amount of $60,000 to each project for one year. In its first year, the program is launched in a limited number of countries, including the UK.

See the RFP for details.

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

Categories
Thoughts

Beyond the pin..

The redesigned Google Maps Developers site is a great resource not only for documentation for the now numerous API’s but also a great showcase of how developers have brought mapping to their sites. Of particular interest to me are the case studies from the creative agencies where mapping and in particular Street View has resulted in some really cool sites.. forget pins on a map, how about Zombies outside your house!

The family of API’s have long ago moved beyond fixing pins on the map, complex routing between multiple points can be calculated using the distance matrix web service, visualised using the styled maps API and integrated with location aware applications using the places API.

And despite what you might have heard all this comes free for most sites !

The maps API has come a long way from Housing Maps

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

Categories
Google Maps StreetView

The other pin on the web..

When talking to people about Google Maps I always mention the unique ability of Street View to provide a sense of place, the final level of zoom of Google Maps takes you beyond the abstract world of Cartography to “standing on the street corner”. Images are incredibility powerful often bringing back memories of places we may have visited.

This year marks the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II,and to commemorate this Google has worked with Historypin to launch an interactive online gallery filled with memories of her time as Queen.

The Pinning The Queen’s History project will be made up of photographic images, videos and audio clips pinned directly onto a Google Map on the dedicated Historypin site.  There is a crowd-sourcing element to the site as users are invited  to submit photos, videos and other memories of the Queen during her many visits around the UK and the rest of the World..

Of course the most interesting images will be the ones local to your neighbourhood for me, my favourite so far is this one taken in Kew Gardens !

So go search under the bed for your shoebox of old photos and get scanning !

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

Categories
Thoughts

Tommy Flowers : Colossus

Great to see the late Tommy Flowers getting the recognition he deserves, a man who because of secrecy and lack of vision was never fully appreciated in the UK.

This brilliant new video on Colossus explains the story..

This blog post by Lynette coincides with the opening of a new Gallery at the National Museum of Computing featuring the rebuilt Colossus computer itself the product of the amazing effort of Tony Sale.

I spent an amazing hour with Tony a few years ago, before his death last year, as he showed me around the Colossus, I imagine Tommy was similar .. a quiet unassuming man who changed the world.

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

Categories
Technology

Head West young man !

Well in the UK and want to experience the 4G LTE  new iPad you need to head to Newquay or St. Newlyn in Cornwall where two cell sites have been upgraded by Everything Everywhere and BT. There is also talk of a trial in Bristol !

For the rest of use we need to wait for OFCOM to auction the spectrum and the UK operators to build out their new 4G networks… Perhaps another 2 years ?

Of course HSPA is slowly rolling out around the UK, offering speeds approaching LTE, but LTE offers much greater capacity for data traffic which is of course increasingly the important factor.

You could head East of course to France, Germany, Sweden etc to try LTE now..

Welcome to the wireless slow lane..

Written and Submitted from the Festival Hall, London. (51.505N, 0.116W)

Categories
LBS

Discount for the LBS Summit Europe 2012

I am once again speaking at the LBS summit in Amsterdam this year.

The conference is the closest Europe gets to something like the Where conference, and is the must attend conference for the location and mobile marketing industry. There’ll be lots of in-depth discussion, interesting debate and great networking opportunities with over 150 senior execs from the LBS eco-system.

To get all the info on this event, get the brochure here –
http://www.thewherebusiness.com/locationsummit/conference-event-brochure.php

As a speaker I am entitled to invite 5 of my friends, clients or colleagues along at exclusive discounted rates!  So, just quote my name when booking and get the exclusive discount, saving you an extra €100 on the current listed rates when you register.

The code is only good for 5 people, so be quick if you want to make use of it.

To qualify for this saving, simply quote LBS12SPKR when registering at
https://secure.thewherebusiness.com/locationsummit/register.php

Categories
Thoughts

A two speed geospatial world ?

“Will A “Geo-Divide” Arise Between Nations In The Future?”

Kevin is right on the money with this, although I would argue the timeframes could be compressed by a factor of two.. we are already beginning to see a divide emerging even within Europe.. Street view vs. non-Street view countries for example.. or the ludicrous decision of a French court re Google Maps !

The fundamental tension remains the ability of Governmental and legal frameworks to keep pace with technological change, but increasingly this is no longer an academic debate as nations economies will be directly impacted.

If you were a geo entrepreneur where would you set up your business ?

Written and Submitted from the ALoft Hotel, Broomfield. CO. (39.905N, 105.090W)

Categories
Google Maps StreetView

Universally.. If it’s good for Guildford

 

 

 

 

When talking about Google I often mention the mission statement that dates back to the earliest days of Google and has remained a constant despite all of the changes and innovation that have happened since 1998.

The statement is actually still fundamental to what happens at Google and is for me a rich source of material to talk about.. for example the meaning of “useful” or “accessible” is key to understanding many of Google’s Geo products and Services.

Along these lines “universally” I think has two key meaning, universal in terms of who and where the user looking for information is, and universal in respect to the very geographical concept of coverage.

Since 2005 Google Maps coverage has expanded to cover (with a few exceptions) every country with both imagery and street maps. For the last 5 years Street View coverage has also expanded and as of this week the team has begun collecting Street View imagery in the wonderful African nation of Botswana.

Capturing and processing Street View Imagery is a huge task far more complex that creating street maps, but you only need to ask anyone who has used Street View how useful it is.. so if is useful to a user in Guildford will it not be as useful to a user in Gaborone ?

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

 

Categories
where 2.0 wherecamp

Where Conference

2.0 is rather passé in tech circles these days, so it now the O’Reilly’s Where Conference!

The annual meeting of the Geo tribes, this year takes place in downtown San Francisco in early April.

This is, despite the competition, the main conference to attend and along with it’s unofficial Wherecamp sister (this years date and location still in planning). It is worth a trip just to soak up the atmosphere of innovation and plain optimism you will not find at more traditional GIS conferences.

That said this year I will be stuck this side of the Atlantic that week attending other events, but many Googlers will be presenting and as an old hand O’Reilly have provided me with a conference discount code offering 20% of registration fees, so if you are going feel free to use the code “PARS20“.

Hope you like the new more stream lined blog design, I took the opportunity this weekend to update things when I moved domain and server hosting from GoDaddy (I know shameful) to an excellent UK operation tsohost, who have real support people answering email at 11pm on a saturday night !

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

Categories
Presentation

My ENTER2012 presentation

Yesterday I had the pleasure to present at the ENTER2012 eTourism conference in Helsingborg, Sweden. The ENTER conference is an excellent combination of academics and practitioners, a mix that other industry conferences would do well to replicate.

My presentation was on the continuing innovation is geospatial technology and how the addition of both social and curated content may impact on destination and travel solutions.

Here are my slides, as usual not that useful if your were not in the audience!

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