Just came across a link to this YouTube video which is doing the rounds at the moment. If you are having trouble explaining how or why Web 2.0 is important or different to anybody, it would be 5 minutes well spent…
Just needs a little bit about KML methinks 🙂
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
You can almost sense the building excitement around the development of “Neogeography” services and applications, following on from yesterdays very positive news from Plazes, I have just realised that I am presenting at the Geoware event next month with its founder Felix Petersen.
Geoware is the perfect example of the new more innovative approach now driving forward the development of new services which make use of Geographical Information.
Organised by the Innovation Lab in Ă…rhus, Denmark, Geoware brings together an international community of researchers, scientists, entrepreneurs and artists who are developing new business opportunities using place.
If you can make the trip I would recommend it, if not, keeping with the theme of exploiting the potential of technology, the event will be webcast at www.innovationlab.dk/uk
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Could be quite a lot ! Techcruch report that Plazes the European LBS/Social networking website has raised €2.7 million of VC funding.
Not bad for a system with a small but growing user base, OK this is not in the realms of youtube yet, but clearly the potential value of such services is recognised, as the VC guys are valuing this at about €50 per user!
Congratulations to Felix and the plazes team, now I must go and update my plaze !
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
I was asked to speak yesterday at the e-Government National Awards Conference at the Savoy, in London – very nice gig btw!!! I was presenting on the potential impact of web 2.0 approaches and the development of mash-up applications to future e-Government services.
Coincidently a perfect example of what I was suggesting as a future approach was announced yesterday by the US Environmental Protection Agency who are taking their first steps by publishing the locations of some contaminated land sites in XML of their website, with the specific intention of allowing citizens to analyse the data themselves. Of course raw data has always been more available in the US and I not getting into that debate… the difference here is that by publishing data in XML the EPA are opening up the data for people to manipulate using their own lightweight applications.
Such approaches to providing public access to government information are by their nature simple and rapid to implement, with the current focus on “shared services” in government and bringing together back-end systems to reduce cost, we should not forget that they are simple and cheap approaches to providing greater levels of information to the citizen by allowing the citizen to carry out the analysis themselves.
Another key point I made was that the next generation of citizens, “Generation Y” if you like, are in many ways more open to sharing data, having grown up defining they characters on-line on mySpace and Bebo than today’s. However this willingness to share data with others, even government? comes from the fact that as authors their “own” their own data and are free to modify, correct and update it.
For anyone delivering the citizen services of the future here is an important lesson – it is NOT your data, it is the citizens and they must feel true ownership of it.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Nestoria, a real UK based Web 2.0 success story, have an interview with me on their company blog.
If you are not sure of the business impact of the use of mash-up technology, and the difference the widespread availability of geospatial data and tools is making to new innovative businesses you should look at what Nestoria are doing.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Time Magazine, the popular choice of travellers at airport bookstores every year publishes it’s Person of the Year special. In the past Time has recognised such figures as Winston Churchill, Ronald Reagan, The Apollo 8 astronauts, John F. Kennedy, and last year Bono, Bill and Melinda Gates.
This year in an inspired piece of journalism, Time has chosen You (us) the users of the internet who together are exploiting the small contributions of millions of other people and are collectively taking control of the information age. The cover of the magazine has a mylar screen in which you are supposed to see a reflection of yourself – does not quite work but a great idea.
As one would expect there is of course mention youTube, Flickr, wikipedia and the impact of blogging on mainstream journalism – this is all great so see presented to the wide readership of Time magazine, but key to me was the opinion that users were now filling the gaps left my mainstream content providers, and the default position was that such information would be shared with little restriction.
Within the niche that it Geographic Information we are of course beginning to see this happen also, with “free the postcode”, Openstreetmap, platial and of course the impact of Google Earth. There is of course enormous scope for community generated geographical information, after all we are all experts about our neighbourhoods, in many ways we are only beginning to see the potential of this which will develop I’m sure as rapidly in 2007 as it did in 2006.
Written and submitted from the BCS London Office, using its members broadband internet connection.
I can’t believe it’s nearly a month since the UK Mash-up event, I have literally not had a chance to stop and catch my thoughts about the event. It was technically interesting and I think it had quite a big impact on some of the OS staff who attended, who for the first time in some cases, were exposed to the “non-professional” GI community.
OS announced our Openspace project, which hopefully we will be able to release in the near future subject to legal and licensing concerns. The Openstreetmap team demonstrated it’s first commercial application of its data with the Nestoria home finding site, best mash-up of the day was the real time train map developed by Matthew Somerville of mySociety.
As pointed out by Jo much of the afternoon debate facilitated by Peter Cochrane focused on the big topic of business models and data licensing issues. Well I guess my views of licensing are well known, simply put… “somebody has to pay !!”
The business model question is more interesting..
Other thans Google’s clear advertising model of today it is not clear how others will make profits or even cover their costs. I made the point however that this might not be as big a problem as it might seem, successful business models will either emerge or the phenomenon will disappear as an unsustainable activity brought into brief existence by the development of web 2.0 technologies.
These technologies and their impact on how systems are developed, and the close relationships with users established, will survive however… whatever else happens as an industry we can ignore user generated content no longer.
Written and submitted from the City Inn Express, Birmingham, using the hotels free (yes free!!) broadband internet connection.
Tim O’Rilley has successfully developed the Web2.0 label, and is now exploiting the interest of “Big” Business by writing a report Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices: ” with John Musser of ProgrammableWeb.com
The report based on the now classic web2.0 paper is aimed at a market beyond the normal “alpha geek”, instead O’Reily are for the first time really targeting business strategists, investors, and well.. suits !
For the comments to the original posting of this announcement the reaction has been rather negative to say the least, attacking the high cost of the report. The critism I think misses the point here, this is the type of audience that Gartner or Meta Group sell reports costs thousands of dollars to, and who an wiling to pay from quality foresight.
O’Reilly is a business after all !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.