Category: Thoughts

Well done OS !!

Reshared post from +Ordnance Survey

We recruited a number of summer interns this year and one of them, Joseph Braybook, spent his time with our Innovation Labs team.  An avid fan of the Minecraft video game, he suggested building a Minecraft world using OS OpenData products. In just two weeks Joe created a Minecraft world representing over 224,000 square kilometers of Great Britain and featuring 22 billion Minecraft blocks! You can download the world now:

The Jewish History Museum, Warsaw an amazing location for the Google Think event this morning.

Now in it's fifth year the Earth Observation Business Summit organised by Euroconsult provides an overview of the  Earth Observation industry. I was part of a panel on the view from the Location Based Services industry, which it is estimated to be about 4% of the annual $1.5 billion market.

Some other interesting facts from Euroconsult..

– the number of Earth observation (EO) satellites launched by civil government and commercial entities is expected to more than double over the next decade to 360 satellites !

– within 10 years  42 countries will have launched at least a first-generation earth observation satellite

– Earth Observation satellites are getting cheaper,  during the next decade 69% of EO satellites will cost less that $100 million (compared to 56% in the last decade)

There is a real sense that the market is changing with new players like skybox representing a new direction..

After a prolonged final period of semi-working Heathrow Airport's IRIS (Iris recognition Immigration System),nice recursive acronym, is to be switched off permanently next week.  

For the regular traveller who had perfected the IRIS dance of "Move back a little", "Move forward a little"  the automated immigration line straight out of Minority Report often saved a few minutes at the end of a long journey.

But I fully accept that it never really worked very well and a couple of times was ejected from the machine to go and show my valid passport to a nearby human, oh the humiliation !

From now on it will have to be the increasing long line in front of a human UK Border Agency official or the less sci-fi influenced e-passport gates which seem neither faster or more reliable than IRIS.. 

A follow-on  to the influential "The Wilderness Downtown" online experience, "Just a Reflector" uses a number of feature in Chrome to allow the visual effects of the music video to be controlled by your smart phone – a different take on second screen experiences but very cool , I particularly  like the 1970's Top of the Pops multi-exposure effects !

As an aeroplane geek I'm afraid I am no fan of the F-35 the worlds most expensive single engine aircraft, but i have to admit there is something Gerry Andrerson about this video of a prototype night landing at sea.. its Thunderbird 1 brought to life.. if only the pilot (sorry Naval Aviator) was called Scott ,