Category: where 2.0

Semantics and the GeoWeb

I went along to a very interesting and well delivered presentation in front of it must be said a rather disappointing audience at the British Computer Society in London yesterday evening. “Make Mashups Correct, Complete, Relevant and Revisited” was a presentation originally given by Jonathan Lowe of Giswebsite LLP at Where 2.0, and as Jonathan is a great presenter I was really looking forward to it.

The presentation actually focused on the currently rather specialised area of semantic spatial databases and their potential in powering the mash-ups of the future. He high-lighted some of the darlings of the semantic database industry freebase and True Knowledge, who have developed technology that really demonstrates well the benefits of semantic databases.

The benefits come from having a much more structured data modelling approach than we have become used to on the web, the demo of freebase here is a great example of this, but such a strongly typed approach is also the major weakness of semantic databases at the moment.
Who defines and categorises data into these types and who builds the relationships between database elements. The wiki approach that freebase uses is a great start but ultimately will it scale ?

Semantic databases will become the future way we interact with information online only when their development and maintenance can become automated, in the same way that the creation and analysis of the web indexes behind web search is automated.

In the meantime that make some great demos

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

Technology Thoughts where 2.0 wherecamp

Camping Geowanking style

From Wherecamp 2008

This weekend the geowankers camped out at the Googleplex for the second Wherecamp.

What has become an annual event the weekend after Where 2.0, Wherecamp is an unconference, a self organised event which starts without an agenda, and features talks, hacking sessions and debates suggested by the people who turn up. As Andrew Turner captured so successfully on twitter, “#wherecamp is Where2.0 2009 beta, 2010 alpha”, or maybe the other way round ?

The camp featured many excellent presentations and discussions, The value of 3D data (aka “Is 3D shit ?” ), building 3D displays, cartography for the web, geosearch, data licensing, micro formats etc., and because of the nature of the event plenty of opportunity for practical demonstrations, including the creation of gigipan images by Rich Gibson.

Gigiapan
click to see gigapan at work

And Jeff Johnson of PictEarth capturing aerial photography of the Googleplex using a Nokia N95, in an r/c model aircraft..

Googleplex from an airborne N95

As an old geezer I skipped the camping part, retreating to the comfort of my hotel room rather than a google tent for the night, but it was a great format and a great event. The contrast to the established GIS conferences in Europe is marked, the barcamp format, provides a great opportunity for more open debate and the presentation of ideas rather than products, and it’s just great fun.

EuroWherecamp Anyone ?

Written and submitted from the Googleplex, using the Google 802.11 network.

ESRI Google Earth where 2.0

Where 2.0 from a distance

Just watched the John Hanke, Jack Dangermond session from Where 2.0 using Seero, think Qik with maps. Actually worked really well, along with the IRC channel you get a good idea of what is happening.

sero

As to the presentation, there is great benefit clearly from combining the strengths of ESRI tools is terms of geospatial data creation, management and analysis with Google expertise in organising and publishing information. From the “fat end” of the long tail, the ability to expose “professional” GIS data is vital for the ongoing development of the Geoweb.

Some good comments from Jack at the end in answer to a question from the floor, making this possible technically does not mean that it will be any easier from an operational perspective for some organisations to publish their data.

There is still much work to be done to solve that issue, especially here in Europe.

UPDATE : You can also follow Where 2.0 from a distance via Mulitmaps’ John McKerrell, who his doing an excellent job live-blogging at http://blog.johnmckerrell.com/.

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