Author: Ed Parsons

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

Categories
Google Earth

My new wallpaper..

GE Panorama

This week I’m catching up with people at the Googleplex in Mountain View, more mind expansion for me… one of the most drop dead cool things I have seen however has come from London and the increasing impressive Digital Urban blog.

Andy and his team at CASA, part of UCL are really extending what we understand his possible in developing three dimensional city models, but in a very practical way. One of the oldest postings describes making panoramas from Google Earth, one of which is now my Macbooks new desktop wallpaper. These images really are things of beauty. Gentle reminder though guys… You should not strip the Goggle logo off the images !!!

The most recent posting describes importing Sketch-up models into the Oblivion Game Engine !

This is a must subscribe blog ..

Written and submitted from the Googleplex , Mountain View.

Categories
LBS Thoughts

The price of a map on my phone – £0.00

There is a campaign that Mastercard runs in the UK and maybe elsewhere comparing the value of goods and services with the value of Mastercard, of course the value of Mastercard is always priceless ! Well is appears over the past couple of months and with the latest announcement from Motorola picked up by All Points Blog, The price of maps on a phone is zero.

I have two mobile devices I carry around with me, my N95 and a Blackberry both of which have manufacturer installed mapping applications which offer extensive street level mapping data free of charge.. in the case of the N95 I can even download offline a global mapping dataset to store on my 2GB storage card so that I won’t incur the stupid data rates imposed by the network operators in the UK

Of course if you don’t have a new Nokia, Motorola or Blackberry you can download Google Maps for Mobile which delivers the same Google maps experience of the desktop on any mobile device which can run Java.

I remember as a data supplier we had such high hopes of the mobile market and LBS taking off as a major revenue stream, it still is a potentially a major stream, but it is certainly not going to be the gold mine it was hoped to be with individual transaction based billing of consumers. That was always going to be too costly and complex to build a business model around, at best a subscription model as used for some of the navigation applications might be sustainable.. but time will tell.

Written and submitted from Hyatt Hotel, Calgary, using its in-room wired network.

Categories
GIS Thoughts

GeoTEC – GIS Conferences the Canadian way..

GeoTEc 2007

This week I’m in Calgary at the GeoTEC 2007 conference, where I was asked to deliver the Keynote and it is proving to be an interesting contrast with conferences back in the UK.

Outside of user conferences and a few academic conferences, it is unusual to find particularly technical presentations and workshop sessions – things that appeal to me and the “hands-on people” in GIS.

Well that is certainly not the case here, taken at random from the programme..

Advanced LIDAR processing;

Intercomparison of DEM Terrain and Watershed Attributes Derived from Three Independent Sources;

Google Earth adds a New Dimension: Dynamic Time based Data Display;

and The 1901 Census as a indication of the Spatial Existence of a Letis Homeland.

Matt Ball and his team have developed a strong technical programme which has attracted over 1000 people to Calgary, and most of those will have had to fly here, arrange accommodation etc.. In Canada at least there is a strong demand for such content – and this is the 21st GeoTEC conference.

I have often had the debate with people back in the UK why we don’t have such strong technical programmes at UK conferences, which end up often only with “Hello I’m from [organisation A] and I did this with my GIS, and here is [Vendor X] who helped me do it”, or lets bash the OS (easy target) and “Why does nobody listen to us”.

Answers on a postcard, or maybe I can convince Matt to come and run a conference in the UK.

Written and submitted from Hyatt Hotel, Calgary, using its in-room wired network.

Categories
Google Maps LBS neogeography

LBS and actionable content..

Like myself you may have been using the mobile version of Google Maps for the last year or so and it works very well, the application is well adapted to mobile devices – if you look carefully you will see that it uses a different rendering to the normal browser based Google Maps – mobile cartography needs to be different !!

Google Maps Mobile

This week a new version of maps was released in the UK which starts to really deliver on the potential of location based services, now like our American cousins we have up to date points of interest information available, so that if you try to search for a business you will actually find one now..

It’s not new or unique but what I think is really important here it that the content about locations is actionable, so if I search for a pub in London called “The Garrison” I am presented with a map, directions to the pub from where I might be, its address and telephone number which if I click on actually is dialled by the phone – remember the N95 and suchlike actually have telephone capability as well as GPS, WiFi, cameras, coffee machines etc. in them as well 🙂

Content that is actionable is key I believe to LBS finally taking off, a map on a screen is not enough, it’s still often easier to ask somebody for directions, but how likely is it that they will know a pub’s telephone number or its opening hours..

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

Categories
Google Earth Google Maps neogeography

Google LatLong blog

latlong blog

So you may have been wondering why I have not really written a huge amount about Google so far here.. well unlike my previous employer Google is well versed in the business of blogging and the Geo team have been working on a team blog which is now online at Google LatLong – Enjoy !

Don’t worry, I will still keep writing here 🙂

BTW make use of the “What we are reading section” these are links to some of the most dynamic blogs on the internet.

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

Categories
GIS

The return of the NRSC

NRSC logoAs a youngster, OK MSc Student.. we all wanted to work for the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) an organisation based in Farnborough with loads of exciting technology – GEMS workstations, Prime mini computers, tens of megabytes of disk storage, and a national remit to evangelise and exploit Remote Sensing.
This week the BBC announced the launch of the ‘Green eye’ technology centre, just multiply the old NRSC by 100 and you have some idea of the progress made in Earth Observation in the last 20 years..

A who would have though we would have sub meter imagery of much of the world available to anyone on their home computer !!

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

Categories
GIS

KMS A model for Ordnance Survey ?

Today I presented a Keynote to the Partner Conference of Kort & Matrikelstyrelsens or KMS the Danish National Mapping Agency, and as a organisation it represents an interesting contrast to Ordnance Survey. There is in Denmark a clear separation between the capture and use of core geographic information for government use and the commercial exploitation of that data.

Within government agencies there is a free flow of information with little restriction to allow goverment activities to be carried out and services provided to the citizen. All commercial applications of geographic information are served by a group of partners of KMS who all have access to the national datasets via a range of web services implemented using OGC WxS services, including feature serving. Something the OS has been experimenting with for 5 years…
KMS have added to the standards to allow e-commerce tracking of usage and the correct licensing to take place.

Importantly KMS do not compete with their partners in serving these commercial markets.

Technically this is a great solution, which seems to be working both for the customers of KMS and its dynamic partner community and there is complete clarity as to the respective roles of each within the market.. it is nicely summarised by the following statement on the KMS website

“The National Survey and Cadastre creates and maintains geodata, which professional firms use to produce maps and mapping products.”

If nothing else, this should be food for thought for the OS with the government response to the OFT report expected any day now…

Written in the BA Lounge, Copenhagen Airport and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Categories
GIS

GI-Days 2007 – Young Researchers Forum announced

I was passed this “call for papers” this week for the GI-Days 2007 a GI Research Forum event in Germany aimed at Young Researchers. Sounds like a fantastic opportunity, I will try to attend myself !

GI-Days 2007
Young Researchers Forum
September 10-12, 2007

Münster, Germany
http://www.gi-days.de
——————————

TOPICS AND TARGET GROUP

GI-Days 2007 will provide a platform for young researchers worldwide to
present their work from all sectors of geographic information science.
The range of topics will be comparable to the well established series
of GIScience conferences, focusing on emerging topics and basic
research findings.

GI-Days 2007 will bring together young researchers from the field of
geographic information science. We encourage PhD and Master students
as well as post-docs to submit papers. Participants of GI-Days 2007
will learn about the diversity of currently ongoing research projects
and receive feedback on their research in a constructive and
international atmosphere.

Short papers (max 1000 words) can be submitted to present research
results, visionary ideas and work in progress. All papers will be
reviewed by at least three members of the program committee. Papers must
be written and presented in English. All accepted papers will be
published in the ifgiPrints series (with ISBN).

We invite you to be part of the up-and-coming generation of geographic
information scientists meeting at GI-Days 2007.

Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

* Spatial data infrastructures
* Geospatial semantic web
* Geographic information in Web 2.0
* Geospatial web services
* Geospatial ontology engineering
* Semantic annotation of geospatial data sources
* Similarity and geospatial concept representation
* Sensor web services and sensor networks
* Location-based services, mobile and ubiquitous geo-computing
* Space time analysis and modelling
* Privacy in information management
* Algorithms and data structures
* Functional programming in geo-applications
* Self-organizing maps
* Map-algebra services
* Disaster and risk management
* Social aspects of geospatial information
* Dealing with uncertainty in geographic information
* Cognitive aspects of spatial knowledge

TUTORIALS

GI-Days 2007 will provide a platform for young researchers worldwide to
The paper presentations will be followed by a tutorial program tailored
to the interests of starting researchers:

* The In’s and Out’s of Writing a Thesis.
Dr. Francis Harvey, University of Leicester, UK
* Funding Acquisition.
Dr. Christoph Brox, University of Münster, Germany
* Utility of Logic and Formal Methods for the GIScientist.
James Hood, University of Exeter, UK.
* How Does Geoinformatics Business Work?
Dr. Adam Sliwinski, con terra GmbH Warsaw, Poland.

SHORT PAPER DEADLINES

Submission deadline May 21.
Notification June 24.
Camera-ready manuscripts July 19.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

* Pragya Agarwal University College London
* Fernando Bacao Universidade Nova de Lisboa
* John Bateman University of Bremen
* Jörg Baus Saarland University
* Kate Beard-Tisdale University of Maine
* Brandon Bennett University of Leeds
* Roderic Bera University College London
* Lars Bernard University of Dresden
* Susanne Boll University of Oldenburg
* Stefano Borgo Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Trento
* Boyan Brodaric Geological Survey of Canada
* Gilberto Camara INPE Brazil
* Christophe Claramunt Naval Academy Research Institute
* Max Craglia Joint Research Centre, Ispra
* Matt Duckham University of Melbourne
* Max Egenhofer University of Maine
* Sara Fabrikant University of Zurich
* Fred Fonseca Penn State University
* Andrew Frank Technical University of Vienna
* Christian Freksa University of Bremen
* Sven Fuhrmann Texas State University
* Mark Gahegan Penn State University
* Chris Gold University of Glamorgan
* Mike Goodchild University of California, Santa Barbara
* Francis Harvey University of Leicester
* Stephan Hirtle University of Pittsburgh
* Piotr Jankowski San Diego State University
* Marinos Kavouras National Technical University of Athens
* Alexander Klippel Pennsylvania State University
* Menno-Jan Kraak ITC, Enschede
* Antonio Krüger University of Münster
* Werner Kuhn University of Münster
* Lars Kulik University of Melbourne
* Patrick Laube University of Auckland
* Rob Lemmens ITC, Enschede
* Michael Lutz Joint Research Centre, Ispra
* Harvey Miller University oif Utah
* Daniel Montello University of California, Santa Barbara
* Marco Painho Universidade Nova de Lisboa
* Edzer Pebesma University of Utrecht
* Lutz Plümer University of Bonn
* Hardy Pundt Hochschule Harz
* Martin Raubal University of California, Santa Barbara
* Wolfgang Reinhardt Universität der Bundeswehr, Munich
* Femke Reitsma Edinburgh University
* Claus Rinner Ryerson University, Toronto
* Andrea Rodriguez Universidad de Concepción
* Monika Sester University of Hannover
* Takeshi Shirabe Technical University of Vienna
* Kathleen Stewart Hornsby University of Maine
* Ulrich Streit University of Münster
* Eleni Tomai University of Athens
* Ignacio Torres National Autonomous University of Mexico
* Ubbo Visser University of Bremen
* Agnes Voisard Fraunhofer ISST and FU Berlin
* Monica Wachowicz Wageningen University
* Stephan Winter University of Melbourne
* Mike Worboys University of Maine
* Andreas Wytzisk 52° North

CONFERENCE ORGANIZATION

General Chair Eva Klien
Program Chairs Florian Probst and Carsten Keßler
Tutorial Chair Jörg Müller
Local Chair Sven Schade

CONFERENCE FEES

Early registration until 6th July
Students: 60€
Regular: 160€

Late registration
Students: 90€
Regular: 190€

Tutorials: 15€

Conference fees include:
* Conference proceedings
* Coffee and lunches at conference
* 22 € conference dinner on Monday (drinks not included)
* Guided city tour on Tuesday

Tutorial fees include:
* Tutorial materials
* Coffee breaks

FURTHER INFORMATION

Check http://www.gi-days.de for further information. Please address all
correspondence to info@gi-days.de.

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