Category: Blog

Blog posts

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Data Policy neogeography Thoughts

Mash-up hero !!

This is a great story from the mySociety blog, Michael Houlsby from East Hampshire council has built an API to the councils database to allow users of the fix my street application to post issues directly into the councils own operational database.

I can only imagine how hard this was to achieve not from a technical point of view, but from this bottom up approach to delivering a IT system, which goes completely against the usual philosophy of delivering IT systems in government.

Many people view mash-ups only as a way of publishing information, but really mash-ups are just about providing open interfaces to your online services, so it brilliant to see such an approach used in the UK to contribute information, which in turn potentially improves the quality of life for the lucky residents of East Hants !

Kudos to Michael, an example of the value to web 2.0 I will be using from now on..

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

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iphone

iPhone best-selling phone in the US

The Guardian points out that the iPhone has replaced Motorola’s RAZR as the best selling mobile (cell) phone in the US. That’s impressive for an expensive smartphone, but to replace the RAZR !!

I can’t beleive people were still buying that pile of Sh*t !, a phone with perhaps the worlds most complex user interface since the Apollo command module.

Please feel free to drop a comment, with your worst phone experience.

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

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Data Policy Thoughts

Show Us a Better Way, The results show

The finalists in the innovative, Show Us a Better Way: competition have been announced and its great so see how many of them make sure of geospatial information, again evidence I’m sure of the pent-up demand for access to geospatial data in the UK.

The finalists are receiving funding to either build working prototypes of continue development of existing systems such as the excellent wheres the path site and ave wrigley’s UK schools map which I first came across at the UK Mash-Up event over two years ago.

The actual winner will be announced in BBC Radio 4’s iPM programme at 5:45am on Saturday morning, for those of us who are already suffering from sleep deficit from Tuesday Night’s US election excitement, of course you can catch up with the results on the shows podcast.

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

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Android LBS

Wikitude : Practical Augmented Reality

Earlier this week I was talking to a group of travel journalists and demonstrated wikitude, one of the hottest applications available for the new Android powered G-1 phone. Wikitude uses the GPS, Digital Compass and camera on the G-1 to deliver one of the first really practical augmented reality applications, excellent for travel and tourism applications.

It was only a few years ago that I remember the efforts the Research team at the OS put into building a prototype of such a system to demonstrate the potential of such an interface although I don’t think my fellow directors really “got it” despite our efforts.

From the video below the potential of such an interface for displaying geospatial information is obvious.

Wikitube was another one of the Android developer challenge award winners, developed by Mobilizy a small team based in Austria who are themselves a validation of the open source approach to mobile development, a small team with a great development platform and user generated geodata content can create a truly innovative application.

Written and submitted from Vienna Airpot, using its free wifi network.

Categories
Data Policy Thoughts

The Elephant in the conference room


Last week ESRI held its annual European User group meeting in London, which as usual was a masterpiece in professional conference production. Jack gave an inspirational conference keynote on the first day followed by some great product demos by the team from ESRI UK who were the hosts of the conference this year. This was followed by team from Redlands with some pointers as to future features to be expected in the next major release of ArcGIS 9.4 towards the end of next year.

It’s often refreshing to see how much a privately held company like ESRI can talk about future products  compared to publicly listed companies who need to be more careful, I was very much taken, for example, by the new Microsoft style ribbon interface in the upcoming revision of ArcGIS Explorer.

Despite all the great technology demonstrations and great examples of the use of GIS in Schools and for humanitarian relief, I could not help feeling that a key aspect of GIS usage in Europe was missing : Data Policy and the difficulties in sharing geospatial data produced by European public sector agencies.

Until INSPIRE really begins to have a impact early in the next decade, many of the demonstrations presented here and at similar conference will remain only demonstrations…

One scenario presented by the team from ESRI UK showed various UK agencies sharing information to manage a flood event, and communicating up to date and relevant information to the population potentially impacted via a website. Those with even a little knowledge of the GI industry in the UK know of course that the various licensing regimes adopted by different Government agencies in the UK would make such a scenario impossible.

We are at a stage now in the development of the GIS industry that key vendors such as ESRI are now concentrating on improving the quality and robustness of the software rather than adding even more specialised functionality, a key sign of maturity and something that both Microsoft and Apple are now focusing on for their next releases of their operating systems, at the same time how information is discovered and shared to ultimately power these GIS tools is still caught up with the IP and publishing models of the 19th century.

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

Categories
conference neogeography Technology

The Geoweb and Digital Mapping Conference 2009

Looks like the first conference of next year for me will be a new one, The Geoweb and Digital Mapping Conference 2009 is a new conference for Europe along the lines of Where 2.0 or Location Intelligence, to be held in London, 13-14 January.

It’s great to see a conference like this in Europe, as much innovation in the Geospatial area happens this side if the Atlantic, there is huge interest in free and open source solutions projects including OpenStreetMap, GDAL and  gvSIG started in Europe and some of the biggest names in the industry Nokia, Tom-Tom are of course European.

For all those Europeans who make the annual trek to San Francisco every summer, it looks like you now have something to keep you enthusiatic during the long winter, and it’s a great excuse to come to London !

Written and submitted from the Leader Hotel, Taipei using its free in-room internet.

UPDATE : Thanks Michael for pointing out my mistake, of course GDAL in not a project with a European start – my apologies to Frank but at least I did not accuse him of being an American !

Categories
Fun !! Technology Thoughts

The old computers quiz

A bit of midweek fun from the BBC. The old computers quiz inspired by a question asked on University Challenge no less, which my wife just knew I would love. A little UK-centric, but good fun anyway. I am a Super-Mario of old computers it seems, my children must be so proud !

Written and submitted from a First Great Western Train near Reading, using my Three 3G modem.

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Google Maps Technology Thoughts

Whose map is it anyway..


View Larger Map

It’s mine all mine..

This is a map of recycling centres in Teddington, my local neighbourhood in London. I created it my looking up the locations of recycling centres run by my local council, the London Borough of Richmond, from their website and then added the points using the existing Google Map and Satellite image for context.

So who owns this new map ?

I do !

By publishing the map using Google Maps, I give Google a license to use my data but it’s “ownership” as such remains with me. The license is just an explicit statement of the implict intenention of publishing a map for consumption by the public using Google as a publication channel.

Google makes no claim over the intellectual property of the maps you create, they remain your maps and the data remains your data !

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

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AGI Thoughts

The Paleotards have spoken..

I was trying to be positive I really was… picture the scene the final session of the AGI conference, had descended into the usual case of introspective soul searching, what is a GI professional ?, why does nobody listen to us ?, these newcomers don’t understand the complexity of what we do, and their data stinks, and bizarrely we should stop fighting amongst ourselves…

I felt is was like the last meeting of Association of Empire Telegraph Operators, bemoaning the fact that these new wireless equipment operators could not write Morse code as quickly.

I tried to be a little more upbeat in my comments, I really do believe that this is a time of great opportunity for the GIS industry, GI professionals are the gate keepers of huge amounts of useful geospatial information and knowledge which people are desperate to get access to, but need help to do so… if every there was a grand challenge for an industry that is it.

But no, there was to be no happy ending, at the very end of the conference as Adena has pointed out, the members of the AGI decided to award the prize for the best paper of the conference to Mark Bishop of MapInfo, and his paper “The Hype of Web 2.0”..

Like her I just don’t understand it, OK so the term is rather overused by now, but we have as a community benefited hugely from the technology and business shift that was Web 2.0, do we really want to go back to the GIS business of the late 1990’s.. well I guess maybe the AGI membership does…

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

Categories
Google Maps iphone Thoughts

As if my Magic… Traffic on your iPhone

This morning we enabled Traffic Maps are part of Google Maps in the UK, and as a result of the magic of cloud based computing, all UK iPhone uses have new functionality to their maps application.

It’s worth thinking just how difficult it would have been to do a similar thing only a few years ago, now with a more open development architecture on mobile devices and the availability of geospatial infrastructures like Google maps.. it just works magically.

Written for the AGI Conference, Stratford-Upon-Avon using my three 3G Modem.