Today the long anticipated Pixelmator image editing application for the Mac was released, and for me it is quite a birthday present. For a long time I have used Photoshop which was too complicated for my needs, or Photoshop Elements which was just too windows like.
Pixelmator the product of London Brothers Saulius and Aidas Dailide is just perfect for my needs – and boy does it exploit the modern Macintosh system exploiting OS X’s core image technology and making use of that powerful GPU you have sitting in your Mac, it is fast and looks beautiful.
For just over £30 if this does not win awards this year there is no justice.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Just got back from the 2007 AGI conference, which I thought was a massive improvement on previous years events. Steven Feldman and his team at the AGI have done a great job downscaling the event, and taking a new direction as a residential conference for the GI industry to talk to itself.
The GI industry in the UK is now well beyond the stage in its maturity where there is a need for a big conference and exhibition to attract new users – today if you need GIS, you are already a user.
So this years conference was really an opportunity for the industry to meet and discuss issues and developments, and to help develop a sense of community.
This year the recurring theme seemed to be the impact of Neogeography (Andrew Turner has a lot to answer for !!) on the traditional GIS industry or Paleogeography as I called it in my keynote.
I think, there is still someway to go for the GIS industry to fully come to terms with the potential that a neogeography approach to providing solutions to users has, and there is still a large amount of scepticism, but I was really pleased to see a programme which contained a number of “neogeo” presentations.
Of particular note for me, Ian Holt and John Abbott of Widr gave two excellent practical demonstrations of building mashups using location aware API’s, Ed Freyfogle of Nestoria was impressive as ever and Nick Black opened many peoples eyes in the audience to OpenStreetMap, many of whom it would appear had not come across it before.
Nick introduced Cloud Made a new project in collaboration with Steve Coast to offer commercial support to organisations wanting to use OpenStreetMap data – Cloud Made is only just getting off the ground, but think Redhat and Linux.
There really are two ages of geography at the moment, the established GIS industry is great at serving the needs of organisations for which geospatial data really is core and for creating core large scale geospatial data. This will not change fundamentally, although there are important lessons in particular around simplicity of tools and licensing models that can be picked up from neogeography !
On the other hand Neogeography offers a better approach to communicate and engage with communities of users who need to use geography to put whatever data they are interested in, in context. This is potentially everybody !!
Vanessa Lawrence in her presentation confirmed that the OS will be releasing the OpenSpace API before Christmas!! I have a couple of bottles of Champagne I promised the team once upon a time, that I can put back on the ice !
In many ways this year the conference also seemed to represent to some extent a handover to a more relaxed and down to earth view of the industry, no better demonstrated than by the soon to be infamous AGI party, partly captured on my camera phone !
GIS professionals dressed up as village people… that would never have worked 15 years ago in Birmingham !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Last week I was in Norway attending the annual InformNorden Conference, which is an event which covers the issues and impacts of ICT on Public Transport in Northern Europe. To some extent you might imagine this represents a culture clash between largely conservative public sector organisations administrating transport networks and technology providers.
This is actually not the case, and in the Nordic region in particular, public transport makes excellent use of technology; from journey planning to card based payment systems like London’s Oyster. In most cities it is common to see electronic displays with arrival times of buses/trams subway trains etc.
This has, in most cities, had a noticeable impact on the use of public transport, with increased passenger numbers following the introduction of the technology.
My interest in the conference was in talking to these public transport operators to get access to their schedule information to include in Google Transit, a project to bring routing using public transport to users of Google applications, like Google Maps and Google Maps for Mobile.
This complements the operators own web-sites by providing schedule information alongside other points of interest data and imagery, users can always click through to the operators own web-sites for real time information and service updates.
Technology like this really can make a big difference in terms of making public transport a more acceptable solution for many, knowing a bus will be at you local bus stop in 6 minutes might just stop you jumping in the car to make the same journey. Or knowing that there is a tram stop 1 minute away from the cinema and that there is a tram arriving there 15 minutes before the movie.
Imagine your commute to work downloading tunes to your new iPod Touch via wifi using the pilot system running in Helsinki at the moment. This system which by providing broadband internet access on a proportion of the bus and tram fleet in Helsinki, means that it is possible to track these buses and trams in real time using a Google Maps application – very cool.
Following along with the transport technology theme, this post was submitted from the 13:00 London-Edinburgh GNER train service somewhere outside Peterborough, using the onboard wifi service.
No hell has not frozen over, Ordnance Survey finally launched their explore portal this week, a site designed for walkers, hikers, cyclists and anyone interested in the outdoors to share their walks and favourite places.
Although this is nothing new, platial after all offered similar functionality a few years ago, this has been a long time coming, I was involved in some of the design work over a year ago! this is still an important step forward for the OS.
From a technology point of view the service was/is underpinned by the backend system developed to support the long delayed OpenSpace project, so hopefully there will be news about that soon.
Although I would take issue with some of the T&C’s, this really is progress in the right direction from Southampton.
As with all software Easter Eggs who first finds them is open to debate, Marco’s Blog a blog by a South African student has at least been reported in a couple of places..
Well it’s a bit of fun, and actually if you are into to VFR flying (looking out of the windows rather than using instruments) it’s a pretty good expereince. As many have noted the SR22 is easier to get started with than with the F16 , which is way sensitive.
Just don’t expect the FAA to allow hours on Google Earth to count towards your ticket 🙂
Written and submitted from the BA Lounge, Gatwick Airport, using the BT Openzone network.
We were joking in the office last week, while preparing for the launch of sky in Goggle earth, how long would it take for somebody to mash-up the USS enterprise somewhere in the universe.
Well we were close in our estimates,Captain Kirk was found within a few hours !
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
After the buzz has died down about the new sky feature in Earth, I personally think one of the most useful new features is the ability to place images in the landscape, matching the perspective of the location from which they where taken.
The new photooverlay element in KML 2.2 is used to great effect with the gigapxl images, which you just have to try out to really appreciate.
You can just keep on zooming into these amazing images..
And these are taken with a single exposure, so they are very useful for analysis of the images.
For me the most exciting development is the potential now for those millions of geotagged photos already online to be placed in the locations from where the pictures were taken, this would provide another great way of representing the “sense of place” of a location.
As a simple example, this is a picture of the Google Office in London, taken with the Camera in my Nokia N95. With its GPS, and the additional of a simple compass to provide the bearing of the shot, you have all your need.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Stefan Geens the man behind the fantastic Ogle Earth blog, has put together an amazing DIY TV show using Google Earth and Wirecast.
Everyday the tools that where once only in the hands of the professionals are now available to the professional-amateur, although I think Stefan may have another career on IPTV waiting for him!Â
Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.
I am not going to comment on this weeks Story in the Guardian, as I would never discuss the details of any potential commercial arrangement in public.
But I am personally very disappointed for the people at CASA at University College London who have developed a world class 3D city model which could potentially have been licensed to many organisations, not just Google.
Keep up the great work guys, it is vital for University departments to both move forward the science of GIS but also innovate in a commercial setting and develop products and techniques which have the potential to be used both by Industry and Government.
Have a few beers over the weekend, and enjoy the rest of your vacation !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
I loved Appleworks ( previously know as Clarisworks) and it has been finally retired with the addition of the numbers spreadsheet to Apples iWork suite. Not sure where the MacDraw like drawing application replacement is but never mind.
The long life of Claris/Applework is both a reflection on the perceived dominance of Microsoft Office and a focus on Apple else where, but it is also interesting to note that is was always a very popular application all the way to its end because it was very simple, fast and well integrated. I have only just managed to stop my wife using it exclusively and moved her onto to Pages/Word.
Few users of Office use more than 10% of the capabilty of their applications and while in a business seeting there is always someone who might use more, this is not the case for the vast major of home office, and personal users.
I’m sure there are lessons for GIS designers in recognising the demand for simple applications that offer 10% on the functionality of a tool kit desktop GIS system but to 99% of the users – there are still people hanging on to their copies of ArcView 3.x I’m sure?
Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.
This year the recurring theme seemed to be the impact of Neogeography (
I am not going to comment on this weeks 
The long life of Claris/Applework is both a reflection on the perceived dominance of Microsoft Office and a focus on Apple else where, but it is also interesting to note that is was always a very popular application all the way to its end because it was very simple, fast and well integrated. I have only just managed to stop my wife using it exclusively and moved her onto to Pages/Word.