Author: Ed Parsons

Categories
AGI GIS Technology Thoughts

GI Innovation in the UK – you just need to look in the right place..

Yesterday was a series of interesting contrasts for me, the state of the “traditional” Government dominated GI industry was pretty well summed up by the Chorley Day review event organised by the AGI, key impression – “why after 20 years of trying does nobody listen to us”, while the very same evening brought a larger audience to the mashup* location themed event, key impression – “Hello we would really like to build application “x” using your platform is that OK..”

I was really pleased to see the WIDR guys at the event last night, some bright guys who used to work for me while I was at Ordnance Survey, who have developed a location determination platform, with an open API, based on wifi hotspots. Not a new idea I know, but the API element is really interesting as it offers the potential for developers to easily add location awareness to their own web based applications.

Widr

What would begin to close the gap between the two diverging GI communities, would be if these guys could develop they ideas during the day rather than in their spare time, and bring the benefit directly back to their organisation. The 20% time that Google engineers can use to develop their own ideas is well known, and really is a powerful tool for developing new products and services – would we ever see anything like that in Government ?

No.. I guess not.. but then the next generation of customers of Government services, as David Rhind so brilliantly called them yesterday the “myTube” generation have vastly different expectations of dealing with organisations based on experiences with eBay, Amazon, Facebook, Google etc all of which recognise the importance of innovation in keeping their customers happy.

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

Categories
Thoughts web 2.0

Academic 2.0

This evening I went along to my old haunt Kingston University to attend a lecture giving by a past colleague, Jonathan Briggs to mark him becoming Professor of eCommerce at the University.

The Talk entitled “eCommerce 2.0: How AJAX, blogging, mashups, search engines and social networks are changing business” pretty much did as is says on the tin and covered both technological change and societal impacts of the new “web 2.0” processes and how they are changing business.

All very good, but what impressed me most was Jonathan’s approach to his career so far, although an academic with teaching responsibilities, he has set up a successful internet business the other media , which some blue chip clients and has helped create new educational establishments for teaching new media in Sweden and Kosovo. He runs an excellent blog, which is one of the ways he communicates with his students.

So what we have is a real practitioner of their subject, who can provide their students with real business experience gained by actually building sites, competing to work for clients and running a successful business – for potential employers this is just what they want to hear.

Congratulations to Kingston University for giving Jonathan the freedom to do this, your students I’m sure benefit far more from this, than they would, if he published x peer reviewed journal articles each year.

Web 2.0 has massive potential to change the way higher education works, I wonder how ready Higher Education 1.0 it for it ?

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

Categories
GIS

Upcoming..

Some fascinating events coming up over the next couple of weeks, which quite well reflect the nature of the GI industry today..

Next week I will be on a panel at the mashup* event which is focusing on Location and the content goes with the title, on the same day I’m at the AGI’s Chorley Day event – a review of the progress or lack of it since the Government published it’s report on the “handling of Geographic Information” 20 year ago, and I’m sure there will be the obvious Sergeant Pepper references !!

For the first time in a number of years I will not be at the ESRI User Conference, read nothing into this other than I’m no longer a ESRI user!! ESRI continue to do great things and are building the tools which are helping to create large parts of the Geoweb. Peter I’m sure you will have a great time experiencing the force at first hand !!

I’m really excited to be delivering the Keynote at the first State of the Map Conference in Manchester next month, Steve Coast and the OpenStreetMap community are getting together for the first time ( amazing what you can do with a virtual community) and discussing the development of open geodata.
The European INSPIRE legislation has the potential to massively increase the amount of Geodata available and the 13th European Commission Workshop on Geographic Information and GIS in Portugal has INSPRE as its central theme.

Interesting times…

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

Categories
Thoughts

Depressing.. but not surprising – CIOs don’t get open source

I nearly cried over my coffee this morning, after reading this article on silicon.com which finds that British CIO’s see Open source as ‘not relevant’. As an ex-CTO I don’t find this view surprising, having attended a number of IT conferences in the UK where this attitude was all too familiar amongst the generation of IT Directors and CIO’s who view technology changes as a threat rather than a opportunity and could not tell one end of a router from a C compiler.

Come the next generation of IT managers these dinosaurs will go the way of the other dinosaurs who could not adopt to rapid environment change, this time rather than meteor impact and rapid climate change, the mass extinction will come from web based applications like salesforce.com, google apps and open source infrastructures – linux, mysql, drupal etc. and the developers trained in deploying them, who can quickly build the solutions their customers want.

Rant over – feels much better thank you !!

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Data Policy GIS Ordnance Survey web 2.0

The Power of Information Report – connecting .gov.uk to the mashup generation

Ed Mayo and Tom Steinberg have completed, their important review of the potential value of Government generated information, when combined with citizen contributed information and tools.

Power of InformationThe Power of Information review commissioned by the cabinet office, is a very important report in my opinion – noting the value of Public Sector information, but also recognising that it is when this information is in the hands of the citizen, it becomes most valuable.

The report should be seen as a way for government to catch up with and serve the needs of the “mash-up” generation who will increasingly become a demanding group of citizens who understand the power of information.

It will be interesting to see the Governments response to the report, as is often the case we must remember that Government does not speak with a single voice, but the fact that the Cabinet office commissioned this independent report in the the first place is very positive.

If you are a UK reader I recommend downloading and reading this report, there is one recommendation that is close to my heart :-), and another that is just vital –

Recommendation 9. By Budget 2008, government should commission and publish an
independent review of the costs and benefits of the current trading fund charging model for the re-use of public sector information, including the role of the five largest trading funds, the balance of direct versus downstream economic revenue, and the impact on the quality of public sector information.

For too long the debate about cost recovery has been carried out in a vacuum without an authoritative economic justification of the statue quo – this recommendation would either prove the case for the OS so it would no longer have to defend itself, or prove the case of the free data lobby – and we could then get on with the important business of using geography to make the world a better place to live in.

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

Categories
GIS Google Maps

iPhone hype – How LBS became mainstream

Great posting at the TUAW detailing the Zaprudering of the iPhone commercials which are running in the states this week. Zaprudering for those not steeped is conspiracy theory is the process of analysing meaning in the detail of a film, and derives from the famous Zapruder film of the JFK assassination.

iphone

iPhone hype and excitement is a the level now where any information about the features of the phone is blogged within minutes to an excited world, and where misinformation can cost billions to the investors of Apple.

So it’s interesting that one of the key features demonstrated is the Maps application, powered by Google, and its a great demo of what makes geographic information so valuable.

The user interface of course is great making full use of the gesture support, the application appears fully integrated with the rest of the phones applications, and most important of all for an LBS application, even though the phone is not location aware, the information presented is actionable – the vital ingredient in any LBS application..

Find a restaurant in SF and then call to make the reservation, and as TUAW points out, the restaurant in the commercial is real and is getting many calls because of their instant fame – a pretty good test of data quality.

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

Categories
GIS Ordnance Survey

Land-Line the end is in sight !

With very little fanfare the retirement of Land-Line the Ordnance Survey’s most important cartographic product was announced yesterday, oddly the main story on the OS website is about a graduate training programme !

Some seven years after the introduction of OS MasterMap, the database focused feature dataset will become the primary product for most of the professional business customers of OS in September 2008.

This has been a long time in coming, but it is a major step forward for the industry in the UK. Thing in terms of moving from MS-DOS to Windows 95 and will appreciate the scope of the change.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

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Categories
Google Earth Google Maps neogeography opensource

Google Developer Day – BBC leads the mash-ups revolution..

As a follow up to the Google Developer Day event last week , Silicon.com has a great article on the adoption of mash-up culture at the BBC and their brilliant backstage project.

GDD PinFor other content owning organisations BBC Backstage sets a great example highlighting the way that forward thinking licensing of information can really aid the innovation process and develop truly useful new content driven sites.

During my time at the OS we made no secret of the fact that Backstage was an inspiration to the OpenSpace project.

Just imagine the mashups which could be created if other content owners in the public sector were as open.. indeed in just this last week, we are beginning to see a more innovative approach to publishing content with the reporting of Brents use of google maps and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency decision to publish some of it’s charts in KML.

A point I made during last weeks London Keynote (about 30 mins in, but its well worth listening to the great Chris di Bona) is that there are still huge amounts of geographic information still to be liberated from existing corporate silos, in addition to the user generated content we are beginning to provide the tools to create.

When you think about it, this is less a technology issue that it has even been – this is now really about information policy..

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Google Maps neogeography where 2.0

Where 2.0 and “Sense of Place”

I’m flying back to the UK to present at the Google Developer Day in London, so my comments on this years Where 2.0 are rather brief. What stood out for me was the recognition of the importance of “sense of place” information, geospatial data that is not traditional cartography, but which is really useful and meaningful to people because it is not as abstract as mapping.

StreetView

In StreetView we are attempting to represent the world from the perspective of someone in it, i.e. from a perspective of a viewer 2m high not 1500m in the air. High resolution terrestrial imagery is actually very useful, as John demonstrated in today’s presentation, fro example being able to read street signs is a source of attribute information not available else where. This type of imagery especially when navigable in such a simple way, makes exploring the virtual environment easy and really does provide a sense of what in the case above San Francisco is like to visit.
The power of imagery to provide this “sense of place” was also a major part of Quakr some fellow Brits who are developing a site to put geotagged images in their correct perspective location on an interactive map, so that in effect you walk through the photos..

Combine imagery with the environmental sound-scenes developed by inside 30proof for Wild Sanctuary and you are beginning to see what I think used to be called ‘hypermedia” starting to have an impact in communicating geospatial information.

Written and submitted from the British Airways Lounge, at SFO airport using the free broadband network

Categories
Thoughts

When you see your life in a museum

Computer History Museum

If you ever find yourself in Mountain View with a spare hour or so, you really should visit the Computer History Museum. It’s a little strange seeing the computers you have used on museum shelves… guess thats a sign of getting old.

Sinclair trio

Great to see the Brits’s represented by the trio of Sinclair machines, including my first personal computer the ZX Spectrum of 1982 !!

As a Apple Fan boy, of course I was impressed by the Apple 1 and the blue box which was the first “technology” developed by the two Steves and illegal ( it was used to get free long-distance phone calls) !!

The VAX

Also represented a Vax minicomputer which was my first experience of computer mapping using GIMMS,MAPICS and SYMAP – yes I used SYMAP once upon a time !!!

Fast forward to today, I’m this evening going to the Ignite meeting part of the Where 2.0 conference to see the very latest innovative business ideas for using geospatial information and processes – this is an industry which moves very quickly but it’s good to see an organisation documenting and preseving this progress.

Now I must dust of my Apple Newton when I get home….

Written and submitted from the Marriott Residence Inn, Mountain View using the hotels free wifi network