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Google Maps neogeography where 2.0

Where 2.0 and “Sense of Place”

I’m flying back to the UK to present at the Google Developer Day in London, so my comments on this years Where 2.0 are rather brief. What stood out for me was the recognition of the importance of “sense of place” information, geospatial data that is not traditional cartography, but which is really useful and meaningful to people because it is not as abstract as mapping.

StreetView

In StreetView we are attempting to represent the world from the perspective of someone in it, i.e. from a perspective of a viewer 2m high not 1500m in the air. High resolution terrestrial imagery is actually very useful, as John demonstrated in today’s presentation, fro example being able to read street signs is a source of attribute information not available else where. This type of imagery especially when navigable in such a simple way, makes exploring the virtual environment easy and really does provide a sense of what in the case above San Francisco is like to visit.
The power of imagery to provide this “sense of place” was also a major part of Quakr some fellow Brits who are developing a site to put geotagged images in their correct perspective location on an interactive map, so that in effect you walk through the photos..

Combine imagery with the environmental sound-scenes developed by inside 30proof for Wild Sanctuary and you are beginning to see what I think used to be called ‘hypermedia” starting to have an impact in communicating geospatial information.

Written and submitted from the British Airways Lounge, at SFO airport using the free broadband network

5 replies on “Where 2.0 and “Sense of Place””

[…] Some exciting news from the Where 2.0 conference. Ed Parsons is one of several bloggers reporting the Wild Sanctuary sound archive site, previously mentioned by the BBC. There is now a KML link for the sounds so they can be located in Google Earth / Maps. Imaginative teachers will find all sorts of classroom uses for Wild Sanctuary. I can envisage lessons starting in a darkened room as students guess the location, or match the sounds with a choice of mystery image. It’s not absolutely obvious on the Wild Sanctuary site, but the KML portal for the sounds linked to Google Maps/Earth is here. […]

Hi, Google´s work is wonderful. But I know a Spanish website that offers the same. I’m talking about the srteet photos, they miss Google’s technology, of course. I think Google could talk with them and buy their photos. They have lots of French cities, and most important Spanish cities too.

Greetings.

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