Category: Thoughts

Categories
Android Context based computing Thoughts

Went for a walk, came back with a map

 

Early this week to test a new Android application and to walk of the Google Christmas Lunch, I went for an early afternoon walk near the office.

The application I was testing was My Maps Editor and Android application to create and edit Google My Maps, and it pretty much worked first time as expected allowing be to create a simple map of my walk.

At the end of 2008 it’s quite difficult to get really excited by this as we have come to expect so much from mainstream geospatial technology.

But just think what I have achieved from my walk, not only have I created a multimedia rich database with potentially metre accuracy geospatial features, I have also created a distribution channel to publish the database within minutes to hundreds of millions of users.

All from a mobile device that costs a few hundred pounds.

 

So this type of technology may never be used to create base map data, but for many organisations who need to be able to do simple data capture outside of the office there is huge potential here.

Maybe over christmas I will complete my recycling map for Richmond 🙂

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Fun !! Thoughts

The “modern world” demo…

As anyone who has spent any time as a demo jockey can tell you, the best demos paint a picture for your audience of a future using your tools/products which is both exciting and believable. If your demo and your product was really good your audience would leave enthused with the possibilities now achievable, and can’t wait to try themselves.

On rare occasions you might get an opportunity to demonstrate something a little more radical, something that is really just out of the labs but which has the potential to really change the industry, I think about the first time I saw MapGuide in late 1995 and of course Google Earth ten years later, both products which have had a major impact on the Geospatial industry directly or indirectly.

40 years ago however a demo was given that truly radical, so audacious in terms of its content to many who saw it, it seemed so different from the current technology that it appeared to be science fiction rather than IT. Yet the demo given by Doug Engelbart and his colleagues from the Stanford Augmentation Research Centre, was so influential it has become known as the mother of all demos, it’s pretty much a demonstration of the computer you are sitting in-front of today, with mouse , web like hypertext documents delivered via a wide area network which allowed real time collaboration with remote colleagues, there is even an example of structuring data using location !

Now thanks to the modern version of that technology you too can watch the complete demo on youTube. While watching this, don’t forget that the primary mechanism to interact with a computer was the punch card.

Oh and by the way, iPhone product mangers take note – there is a great demo of copy and paste in part 2 of 10 if you need some inspiration..

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Data Policy Thoughts

Set the boundaries free

An excellent post by Richard Allan on the Power of Information blog, Geographic Data that Should be Free (In All Senses of the Word).

As the post points out there could be a very simple solution to the current problem with OS derived data, make certain types of geospatial data including administrative boundaries and the locations of public services free . 

This would have a very minor impact on the revenue of the OS, the real “cash cow” for the OS is its large scale Mastermap data, it could almost give away all it’s other data products and not really notice the difference.

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

Categories
Google Maps Thoughts

Everybody reads the Terms of Service..

Just like buses on the high street in any town in the UK, you have to wait ages and then along come a bunch together, so it is with the Maps API TOS, which Google revised again today.

Clearly section 11 was an area of concern to the community, it is the section that balances legally what you as a map user submit and how Google may use your content. MIckey on the Geo Developers Blog gives an excellent explantion of the thinking behind the changes to this section.

I believe these changes improve the clarity of the TOS and will hopefully reduce the concerns expressed by some developers. 

The new section 11 for reference is below…

11. Licenses from You to Google.

11.1 Content License. Google claims no ownership over Your Content, and You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Your Content. By submitting, posting or displaying Your Content in the Service, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute Your Content through the Service and as search results through Google Services. This license is solely for the purpose of enabling Google to operate the Service, to promote the Service (including through public presentations), and to index and serve such content as search results through Google Services. If you are unable or unwilling to provide such a license to Your Content, please see theFAQ for information on configuring your Maps API Implementation to opt out. 

11.2 Brand Features License. You grant to Google a nontransferable, nonexclusive license during the Term to use Your Brand Features to advertise that you are using the Service.

11.3 Authority to Grant Licenses. You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licenses.

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

Categories
INSPIRE Ordnance Survey SDI Thoughts

Place matters: the Location Strategy for the UK

Finally after an extended delay the Dept of Communities and Local Government has published the UK location strategy, Place matters. The blueprint for a UK Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI), or an extended job application for someone in Southampton…

You decide !

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Data Policy Ordnance Survey Thoughts

A change of direction for the OS ?

From todays Pre-Budget report, a document that’s main focus is the fiscal stimulation of the UK economy, this nugget of potentially very exciting news…

“4.54 Re-use of public sector information from trading funds 

The HM Treasury/Shareholder Executive assessment of trading funds has considered the potential for innovation and growth from increasing commercial and other use of public sector information. It will shortly publish some key principles for the re-use of this information, consider how these currently apply in each of the trading funds and how they might apply in the future, and the role of the Office of Public Sector Information in ensuring that Government policy is fully reflected in practice.

For the Ordnance Survey, this will involve consideration of its underlying business model. Further details will be announced in Budget 2009.”

In politics, timing is everything..

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

Categories
Data Policy OS Research Thoughts

Notes from down-under

As the Whitehall farce that is the OS derived data debacle continues, it’s interesting to contrast the flow of public sector information in the UK with that in Australia which I have just experienced first hand at the first Asia Pacific Spatial Innovation Conference.

Interestingly for a Geospatial conference there was in addition to the usual technology developments, a theme looking at innovation in business models, funding and licensing. It’s not often there are as many economists at a geospatial conference as ESRI gurus !

For me the biggest take away was the increasing recognition by government here that data needs to be set free both at all levels of government, and there are I’m sure many important lessons which could be picked up in Europe and in the UK specifically. 


Australia is more similar to the UK than the US, for example the value of information is recognised and information products are protected by copyright as is the case in the UK.

But in Australia, lead by the great example of Queensland, government data sets are starting to be released using Creative Commons licenses, and in a study presented by Tim Barker the Director of Queensland’s Spatial Information Office, 85% of the public sector data-sets they had examined could by licensed using one of the standard creative commons licenses without any problems.

Before you all fall about laughing saying this could never happen in the UK, the OS actually has released information under a creative commons license before, the research team published some ontologies used in semantic research using a non-commercial share alike licence, but of course perhaps that was a little under the radar screen.

Still we live in hope…

Written and submitted from the Qantas Lounge, Sydney AIrport, using its free 802.11 network.

Categories
Thoughts

London Geo/Mobile Developers Meetup

Coming up next Thursday evening at the Google Office in London, will be the first meeting of the London Geo/Mobile Developers Meetup Group. I’m sorry I will miss it, but it looks to be a great start for the group interested in one of the hottest areas of tech at the moment.

Written and submitted from the Rydges Lakeside Hotel, Canberra, using the Telstra 802.11 network.

Categories
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.

Categories
Thoughts

Who reads the Terms of Service anyway..

Update : As this discussion has grown in scope, and to allow my colleagues back in the States to follow this important thread can I ask you continue posting comments at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/browse_thread/thread/3b0bd5922c7115f0

Well in the UK almost everybody involved in the GI industry!

A while ago I made a rather cryptic blog post asking for any information regarding a communication that had been sent from Ordnance Survey to Local Authorities, this is the communication highlighted by Charles in the Guardian yesterday.

As the Guardian article points out the OS was unhappy with local authorities signing up to the Google Maps API terms of service as it required a “broad” re-licensing of the data to Google and the users of Google maps based sites.

Yesterday, Google published an updated Terms of Service for both Google Maps and Earth,  which I hope will go some way to solving this issue.

The relevant section of the new terms of service with reference to the publishing of user generated content I reproduce below..

11. Licenses from You to Google.

11.1 Content License

(a) You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Your Content. By submitting, posting or displaying Your Content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute Your Content. This license is for the purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Service.

 

So part (a) says.. your data is your data, Google can make no claim over its ownership. You provide Google with a license to reproduce your maps only for promotion purposes, e.g. like the screenshot below or in a powerpoint presentation.

 

 

(b) You give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to access, reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute business listings data contained in Maps API Implementations. For example, if you create a store locator application, Google may use the business listings information from the store locator to improve the Google Services such as Google Maps and local search.

 

Part (b) is really about improving local search, if you are opening a new chain of coffee shops (not perhaps the best time methinks) and you produce a store locator that uses Google Maps, then you are allowing Google to use your store locations in the Google Search index, so people will be able to find them from other sites in addition to you own.
For local authorities this might be relevant for the location of public offices, libraries, schools etc. Type “Teddington Schools” into Google and you get a list that looks like this..
Really useful I think..

 

(c) You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make Your Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

 

Part (c) really just highlights how the geoweb works, it you create a google map with the location of your recylcing centres, that map may be syndicated to users of mobile phones on the Vodafone network for example, who have access to Google Maps as a standard option on their phones.

 

(d) You understand and agree that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Service to our users, may do the following:

(i) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and

(ii) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media.  

 

Part (d) is about making technical changes to the way maps are displayed to take into account bandwidth and device limitations.

 

11.2 Brand Features License. You grant to Google a nontransferable, nonexclusive license during the Term to use Your Brand Features to advertise that you are using the Service.

 

Google can use your logo to illustrate the fact you are a Google maps/earth user.

 

11.3 Authority to Grant Licenses. You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licenses.

 

This might be the difficult point, it is saying that by publishing the locations of your schools, coffee shops, crime statistics etc. you have the rights to share the information, because it is yours to share. I can see the OS view on derived data may make this currently difficult, but lets hope that that is something that can change.

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.