Author: Ed Parsons

Categories
Google Maps where 2.0

Where 2.0 Day 1 – Sleeping with the bear..

where20.jpg

When I worked in the software industry the term “sleeping with the bear” was often used to describe the relationship between the company I worked for and the partners and independent software vendors who all together provided solutions based on my companies core technology. The analogy follows that it is all very pleasant sleeping with the bear while it is asleep, you get its warmth and its implicit protection.. however when the bear wakes up you need to be very careful as it does not necessary want to share its bed…

I was reminded on this today at the first day of the where 2.0 conference in terms of the number of innovative companies which have based their business propositions on building on the Google Maps API. Many of these applications seem to be totally reliant on the continued availability of a mapping platform which abstracts all the complexity of managing constantly changing geospatial databases of hundreds of Gigabytes of information to a simple javascript API. While this continues to be the case everybody is happy – the bear is asleep… but I got the distinct impression that things may be beginning to change.

As mentioned earlier Google have now announced a paid for service with a clearer service definition under more strict change control, although denied, does this mean the free API is about to start the much anticipated introduction of map advertising ?

The development of services such as mapstraction and openlayers.org both announced at the conference are examples of web mapping API’s that are attempting to develop independently to the functionality of a single GYM interface.

Overall I must admit I am still taken aback by the energy and pace of development of the new application areas spotlighted at Where 2.0, in contrast to more pedestrian GIS events, these are numerious enough to need a separate post.

However in saying that, in many ways what is represented here is only the top 10% of an application stack, in effect the mash-up community is standing on the shoulders of the established GI industry, who behind the scenes, do all the difficult work to collect and integrate the data which is made available through the new accessible API’s

This is actually just as is should be, you don’t need to be a mechanic to drive a modern car, so you also don’t need to be a GIS expert to produce a pushpin map – the world however still needs mechanics and GIS experts.

More thoughts on todays presentation highlights tomorrow – I’m off to bed !!

Written and submitted from the Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, using the hotels broadband network.

Categories
GIS Google Maps where 2.0

Google offers commercially supported version of maps

Ok so what does this mean, Google are to offer a fully supported version of Google Maps for Enterprise use, with the promise to offer stable cartography – e.g no Golden Arches.

Mmm.. I need to think about this, along with a international address geocoding service are google now moving more into the “traditional” enterprise space held by mapquest, map-point and multi-map ? The service is for the US and Canada only at the moment, but the intention is to expand to other markets.

Written and submitted from the Conference room of the Where 2.0 at the Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, using the conferences free wifi network.

Categories
Technology Thoughts

BBC reports the end of the Scobleizer blog

The importance of corporate bloggers as a source of useful information (mostly without spin) was demonstrated by yesterdays reporting of the resignation of Robert Scoble from Microsoft by the BBC.

Scobles’ blog, for many a must read to understand what was actually happening in Redmond, had become a true icon of the blogosphere.

I’m not sure either Scoble or Microsoft fully understand the impact of his resignation, or the shift in users focus from relining on corporate PR to blogs for information.

Written and submitted from the Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, using the hotels broadband network.

Categories
Aviation

Hot for a flying jacket..


Click picture for more..


Tick off another ambition thanks to a wonderful birthday present from my wife, and the excellent chaps at Delta Aviation at Sywell.

On one of the hottest days so far this year in the UK, I donned an Irving Jacket to go for a trial lesson in a 1941 vintage DH82A Tiger Moth, and spent a happy but warm 30 minutes flying round Northamptonshire at 1,500 feet.

A highly recommended way to see the countryside, and I’m afraid I might just catch the bug, however rather than saving for lessons and my PPL I might just spend the money on a joyride in the P51 Mustang, Delta also operate !!

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

Categories
GIS OGC

Where 2.0 – The challenge of innovation from the edge

Where2.0

Next week I will be attending the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, and if it has anything like the impact the conference had last year on the Geographic Information world, it will not disappoint.

Although last year saw major announcements from the GYM club, it was the presentations from people like Nathan Eagle and the father of mash-ups Paul Rademacher who really demonstrated the paradigm shift that is happening in the use of geographic information.

Neither Nathan or Paul come from the “traditional” GIS industry and although it is not unusual for innovation to come from the edge of an existing domain, it is causing a real cultural clash with the established industry.

The “mash-up” community have a different culture and a different world view to the traditional industry, this was perfectly illustrated this week in the blogosphere with a discussion around how the developing GeoRSS standard is taken forward, with well argued points made by Allan Doyle in his blog, where he expresses concerns as to the potential for OGC to “hijack” the standard.

The OGC, I hope in this case, wish only to move towards greater adoption of GeoRSS, but may have to modify their processes radically in recognition that the dynamic of the industry has changed – a point many other organisations representing the “traditional” GI industry would do well to recognise.

If you are travelling to where 2.0 drop me a line – It would be good to catch up over a beer and meet in real life.

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

Categories
GIS Oracle

5,000 changes a day and other urban myths..

We all know the statistic that 80% of all information is spatial, but I guess like most people I’m not clear where that particular figure has come from, and thinking about it.. I not convinced it is actually true. There is much information held in databases around the world which is about activities which happen at specific locations, but as much as 80% ?

Another much repeated statistic is that Ordnance Survey makes 5000 changes to the national geospatial database every day – this time however, although I’m not sure where the statistic came from, I can put more accurate figures in place.

As part of the development of a new Oracle Spatial database system, we have looked at the number of transactions going through the database in order to scale the system, a 10 node RAC cluster by the way ..

In general day to day operations the OS actually makes between 30-50,000 changes per day, representing the modification of existing features in the database and the addition of new features into the landscape, things like new housing estates.

Over the past few years however a larger than average amount of change has been happening as a result of the Positional Accuracy Improvement Programme, resulting in peaks of 500,000 changes in a day !!

These figures sound a lot especially compared to the often stated 5,000 changes a day, but you need to remember the database contains around a billion individual features.

We really did need a new database !!!

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

Categories
Google Maps Thoughts

Spoof ? Google maps Ad

Google Map ad

Thanks to my old pal Berik, for the link to this video , a spoof ad for Google Maps ? So good it could be real or then again is this another example of a great viral campaign..

Categories
GIS Thoughts

Spatial analysis hits the mainstream..

mySociety Travel maps

mySociety have put the analysis of geographical information into the mainstream press, with the London evening newspaper, The Standard running a report today on the Travel Maps they have created working with the Dept. for Transport in the UK.

This is great to see, and again compliments to Tom and Chris for the work they are doing, but don’t you think it is strange that the usefulness of this type of spatial analysis has been popularised in the eyes of the media by the guys at mySociety and not the traditional users of GI who have had access to this data and the tools to produce isochrones for many years.

BTW I live right between the two red vectors to the west of London indicating faster travel times.. ah well 🙂

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

Categories
GIS Thoughts

E911 almost there…

Wired reports on progress in the US on E911 legislation which requires mobile operators to pass the location of emergency calls to the emergency services. Despite a 2005 deadline most providers it appears are only now getting to the position where location data is available and unlike in Europe the route adopted has been through the use of GPS enabled phones, rather than network based analysis.

For the benefit of public safety the faster this and the equivalent E112 rules in Europe are met the better, but remember this will also provide a major boost to the reawakening LBS market.

As I have noted before however knowing where you are is only part of the answer for the development of the LBS market, we still need richer geospatial databases and most importantly really compelling applications.

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

Categories
Telewest Thoughts

Beware the early adopter – don’t use a TVDrive yet…

tvdrive

After many years of happy service I replaced my trusty Tivo with a new Hard Disk PVR that my cable company Telewest have just introduced. The TVDrive has multiple tunners, HD TV support and a larger hark disk capacity – sounds great.

But I was one of the first to take the service, and yes you guessed it this is a major bug in the system software which means that it won’t record a series – a basic function of a PVR.

The frustration with consumer electronics for the geek is that you can’t get in and hack them to fix problems (something you could do with the tivo incidentally !!) – so my advice to any other potential telewest customers out there is to wait for us early adopters to find all the other bugs first !!

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