I’ve just spent the last couple of days the Google Geo Marketing people, and was introduced to and instantly became a fan of a series of videos produced by the vacationeers, a LA based group of video artists.
These were developed independently of Google and are just brilliant..
This is my favourite (please note Daily Mail journalists.. this is a work of fiction), but visit their site to watch them all !
Written and submitted from Madrid Airport, using its kubi 802.11 network.
As many of us have always suspected, geospatial data is a great foundation to finding and publishing all types of government information, so it should not be unexpected that many of the entries for the Show us a better way competition to develop applications using public sector information make use of geospatial technology.
These move beyond the simple map mash-ups including for example some mobile LBS applications.
It’s wonderful to see organisations like the Dept. for Transport, Post Office and the OS 🙂 opening up their databases via API’s and simple click through licenses. These are of course temporary arrangements in many cases, but this is a great opportunity to prove the potential of publishing this information in this way.
For many years the supporters of both sides of the argument around the release of public sector information based their argument not on real evidence, but on dogmatic positions.. hopefully we will soon have some real world examples to develop evidence to conclude the arguments one way or the other.
Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.
Last week Google introduced Map Maker a set of online map making tools to very positive… but not universal acclaim.
I can understand where SteveC is coming from, but I think it’s important to clarify a few points.
Map Maker is clearly not an open source project, and as such is not in competition with openstreetmap and does not I believe represent a forking opportunity for the creation of open geodata. If you wish to help build an open geodata based global map then openstreetmap is the project for you.
What Map Maker represents is the public exposure of the tool Google has been using internally for a while to “fill in the gaps” of our global mapping coverage, specifically mapping areas not currently covered by the commercial map data providers. We are now asking the users of Google Maps to help us by providing mapping data using the same tool. The data submitted is licensed by contributors to Google to eventually become part of Google Maps/Earth following moderation by Google.
This is a key difference in approach to openstreetmap, most end users of Google Maps/Earth etc. and most developers using their api’s don’t want or need access to the raw data, for them such information is most usefully made available as pre-rendered tiles.
Although not currently an open source project, it does produce data that is free to users, the information contributed by the community becomes freely available to them via Google Maps and the Maps and Earth API’s
At the moment, I believe this is the best way to rapidly expand the availability of mapping and to provide access to detailed online maps to communities which up until now have just not had access to something most of use take for granted.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
There is a great story behind this map, which illustrates why the Geospatial Industry is just so exciting at the moment, and hints at the potential of the geoweb as a global phenomenon.
Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.
Digital Urban and the guys at CASA announce the latest iteration of their brilliant tool to fill the gap between traditional GIS data and Google Maps – MapTube.
There can’t be a better way at the moment to publish results more quickly and easily, this is a key tool in publishing the results of GI Science to the mainstream. It will be interesting to compare this approach to the upcoming ArcGIS 9.3 functionality.
It’s worth thinking carefully how you use this powerful tool, if you have not already, make sure you catch up on the basics of thematic cartography, This was the key textbook in my day !
Written and submitted from the Ottawa Airport, using its Boingo 802.11 network.
A nice Free Wifi Access map from the Londonist, locating free public wifi sites, moderated at the moment pehaps it would be more useful if it allowed users to maintain the database.
Still a long way from the original consume the net database.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
I have just returned from the beautiful town of Girona in Spain, where I was speaking at the AGILE 2008 Conference, a meeting of the key Geographic Information research laboratories in Europe, which was expertly organised by SIGTE the GIS Lab at the University of Girona.
As is increasingly the case at conferences I attend, researchers are using both Google Maps and Google Earth as mechanisms to communicate their results in an appealing way. I hope to be able to highlight some interesting examples over the next few days, but there seems to be a clear pattern emerging where spatial analysis may be carried out using programs developed by researchers or by using powerful analytic tool sets like ArcGIS or ArcGIS Server, but presented using Google Earth.
The products of the research are often rendered via KML for display, but what is perhaps still missing in some cases is for the results to be really published, i.e. for the KML files to be posted on a web server somewhere along with details of the research for others to discover.
Interestingly there was very little discussion of the neo/paleo-geography debate, which is great, I hope we have moved onto to a position where the users of “professional” high end tools such as those produced by ESRI see a natural final publishing step of creating KML output of their work, certainly with the tools now available in the next version of ArcGIS and the OGC adoption of KML this should be simple one.
Of course as you would expect there are limitations with the current generation of virtual globes, Google Earth included, for some aspects of GI Science. Notably in more complex handling of temporal and sub surface features, and in cartographic output more functionality is needed.
Some of these limitations reflect the largely mass-market focus of Google Earth, but such feedback is always useful to hear, todays research requirement could well be tomorrows mass-market standard feature, and it is wise never to underestimate how sophisticated users may become.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Mano and Pamela present the first in a series of “hands-on” videos on various aspects of the Google Geo products, this first video is brilliant, a really down to earth discussion of how to create and manilpulate KML in both Google Earth and Google Maps.
Almost everybody will learn something from watching this, from newcomers to the geoweb to the experts out there !
Low production values (note the use of a box for a lectern), but all the better for it !
I’m in Trinidad this week at the Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Conference, more about that later this week.
Written and Submitted from the Hilton Trinidad, using the hotels broadband network.
I went along today to an excellent showcase of the academic worlds take on Web 2.0 approaches and neogeography. Organised by the team at CASA at UCL the event attracted a large crowd for a one day event to London’s Barbican Centre. Although I was only able to attend the afternoon the presentations I attended were all excellent and I got similar feedback speaking to others who had attended the whole day.
Visually the day was very well produced, it’s amazing how far we have come in just the last few years in our ability to visualise geospatial data, and interact with it both in the lab and in the field.
A key point for me and something that I feel hugely proud of, was the number of times Googles tools were not only mentioned but also demonstrated used in the way we hoped they would be, as a way of people communicating their own work to a wider audience.
Google Earth, Maps, Sketchup etc don’t compete with the full functionality professional GIS or Architectural design packages, but they do allow anyone to create new information easily and importantly for this audience, easily communicate results of analysis to a global audience.
I was also pleased to see that the importance of developing a community of users who contribute information and ideas was also highlighted as an important success factor, indeed there was much evidence of collaboration between different universities departments, something that was rare in my day as an academic.
Andy Hudson-Smith has produced an excellent full colour booklet in parallel with the event which I recommend taking a look at, I’m sure he will is due course make it available via his blog.
Overall I was very impressed by the work presented, not quite a Scoble cry inducing event, but very motivating!
BTW If anybody find a pair of Nike trainers in Second Life, Andy is looking for them !
Written and Submitted from the Holiday Inn, Nottingham using my 3 3G usb modem.
Interesting “My Map” by techcrunch uk, locating Web 2.0 startup in London, seems like Shoreditch is still the place to be..
Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.