I’m really pleased to see the Ordnance survey presenting at this years 
Where 2.0 Conference this May in San Jose, California. Its important because it demonstrates that both “old” geography and neogeograhpy can learn from each other. This was a point well made by Jack Dangermond at last years event, and hopefully Ian and Mikel’s presentation will demonstrate the real benefit of this mash-up of approaches
The Free Our Data campaign this week asks “Will the government try to privatise the UK Hydrographic Office?” – Such a development I believe has been on the cards for some time and is a result to some extent of the continuing lack of focus or understanding of information as an asset.
You get the impression that the management of information is seen by government purely as a cost to endure rather than the potential benefit it would be, if government information was better managed and shared across .gov.uk.
In saying that, UKHO is actually more an aggregator of information rather than a producer, its value as an organisation comes from the systems and processes to carry out the complex task of rapidly bringing together global datasets produced by 100’s of other marine data collectors – quite a specialised field.
If this niche is seen as valuable enough to consider privatisation, then how much more interest can the treasury have in the other agencies which create information and therefore sit on more valuable assets ?
Written and submitted from the Apple Store, London, using its free 802.11 network.
You can almost sense the building excitement around the development of “Neogeography” services and applications, following on from yesterdays very positive news from Plazes, I have just realised that I am presenting at the Geoware event next month with its founder Felix Petersen.
Geoware is the perfect example of the new more innovative approach now driving forward the development of new services which make use of Geographical Information.
Organised by the Innovation Lab in Århus, Denmark, Geoware brings together an international community of researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs and artists who are developing new business opportunities using place.
If you can make the trip I would recommend it, if not, keeping with the theme of exploiting the potential of technology, the event will be webcast at www.innovationlab.dk/uk
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
You can tell that Geospatial technology is mainstream, when a GI company can afford the rates to place a Superbowl ad on US Television. Step up Garmin, with their very cheesy but entertaining Godzilla inspired ad for the Nuvi.
Another nail in the coffin of the road atlas ? Not a bad game this year either !
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Directions have an interesting article by David Williams, on why LBS has failed to taken off so far identifying the “Seven” deadly sins which cause LBS Applications to fail.
The sins to me look like they could be applied to any new mobile application type, so perhaps there is actually nothing special about LBS – how many other new families of Mobile applications have actually developed in the last five years and are actually increasing ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) ? Music downloads maybe ?
To me it is still about the user experience… despite being a guy and naturally reticent about asking people for directions – it is still easier and more useful to do so, than to use one of today’s LBS applications.
Written and submitted from Zurich Airport, using the Swisscom 802.11 network.
If you want a quick introduction into the new ways of creating and using Geographic Information, that has got such a lot of us excited, you could not go wrong by handing over $7.99 to the guys at O’Reilly.com for a copy of “An Introduction to Neogeography” by Andrew Turner the guy behind the highearthorbit blog.
As with the other O’Reilly Short Cuts this is a short (54 page) pdf primer to the subject which gives a great overview of a new emerging part of the technology landscape.
Read this and you should understand why the established GI Industry needs to be looking over its shoulder.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
The BBC reports on the antics of some New York Thieves, who stole some GPS receivers thinking they were phones and we caught when the GPS systems “phoned home” and told the cops where they and the thieves were hanging out !!
Surely a candidate for a new category of Darwin Awards
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
I was asked to speak yesterday at the e-Government National Awards Conference at the Savoy, in London – very nice gig btw!!! I was presenting on the potential impact of web 2.0 approaches and the development of mash-up applications to future e-Government services.
Coincidently a perfect example of what I was suggesting as a future approach was announced yesterday by the US Environmental Protection Agency who are taking their first steps by publishing the locations of some contaminated land sites in XML of their website, with the specific intention of allowing citizens to analyse the data themselves. Of course raw data has always been more available in the US and I not getting into that debate… the difference here is that by publishing data in XML the EPA are opening up the data for people to manipulate using their own lightweight applications.
Such approaches to providing public access to government information are by their nature simple and rapid to implement, with the current focus on “shared services” in government and bringing together back-end systems to reduce cost, we should not forget that they are simple and cheap approaches to providing greater levels of information to the citizen by allowing the citizen to carry out the analysis themselves.
Another key point I made was that the next generation of citizens, “Generation Y” if you like, are in many ways more open to sharing data, having grown up defining they characters on-line on mySpace and Bebo than today’s. However this willingness to share data with others, even government? comes from the fact that as authors their “own” their own data and are free to modify, correct and update it.
For anyone delivering the citizen services of the future here is an important lesson – it is NOT your data, it is the citizens and they must feel true ownership of it.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Last week I spent a couple of days with Reuters, as part of their excellent Innovation Programme looking at the potential for new products and services in the next 5-10 years. It is vital for information businesses such as Reuters to do this, as it is for any knowledge business, as the barriers to entry in the web 2.0 world are low for future potential competitors.
Within the geospatial industry many of us are excited by the prospect of ambient geospatial information and the ability of future devices to really deliver services using the location of the user to provide the much needed context.
The interest of Reuters in this is just one example of the increased awareness of the importance of “where” in delivering future consumer focused services, as with many things maybe it will take at least three or four attempts for “location based services” to reach the mainstream.
There are still many challenges to deliver LBS operationally, data availability, privacy concerns, standards, etc and of course the business model – however maybe awareness and the interest to innovate in this space is no longer a problem
If you don’t believe me just type iPhone and GPS into Google and see what you get !
Written and submitted from Starbucks, Fleet Street, using the BTOpenzone 802.11 network.
Nestoria, a real UK based Web 2.0 success story, have an interview with me on their company blog.
If you are not sure of the business impact of the use of mash-up technology, and the difference the widespread availability of geospatial data and tools is making to new innovative businesses you should look at what Nestoria are doing.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.