Month: November 2007

Categories
Data Policy Ordnance Survey Thoughts

Geodata suppliers – lessons from the music industry..

I got myself in trouble on a number of occasions with my old boss when I drew the obvious comparisons between the Geodata industry and the Music Industry, and how Geodata providers needed to move with the times..

It is therefore interesting to see that a least one music industry boss is recognising the mistakes of the past/present… to quote Edgar Bronfman of Warner Music..

“We used to fool ourselves…We used to think our content was perfect just exactly as it was. We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong. How were we wrong? By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find and as a result of course, consumers won.”

Remember this is not always about making information free, it is about making it accessible..

There is a lesson there for leadership of a number of .gov.uk organisations don’t you think ?

Written and submitted from Starbucks, Horseferry Road, using my three 3G modem.

Categories
Android LBS Mobile opensource

Android and LBS – in the stack at last…

So maybe now Mr Balmer is reconsidering his comments of last week..

For me and my interest in geographic information the key detail about the Android SDK is the LBS component, and where is appears in the whole android stack. I have often argued that LBS would only really make sense as an underlining infrastructure that is available to all applications, therefore allowing much higher levels of integration.

One of the key factors to the success of the iPhone is the great integration between its applications, it’s just a shame these are currently restricted in number, to the Apple supplied applications.

Android

With Android the Location Manager component is part of the core application framework, meaning that all user applications have access to the devices location. At a simple level this means that applications like the address book as access to the device location, so your contacts rather than sorted alphabetically could be sorted based on distance from your locations.

Or slightly more “left field” how about a security application which locks the device waiting on the user to enter a PIN if the devices location does not match the scheduled location from the calendar application.

For really the first time, the innovation which always comes from Open Source development can be focused on building LBS.. at last !!

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

Categories
GPS Technology Thoughts

More trouble for Galileo as Mrs Dunwoody attacks

One of the most formidable and well respected members of British Parliament, Gwyneth Dunwoody has attacked plans by the European Commission to fund Galileo, the European version of GPS.

The Commission is stepping in to fund the initial phases of the programme as a plan to obtain funding from potential commercial operators of the system failed.

Even if funding is found to launch the system the question as to what the eventual business model looks like is still unanswered, unlike GPS there is not Dept of Defence to write the cheques if all else fails, and the day to day running of the system will need to be funded.

From my time in Government, I remember nobody wanted to end up in front of Mrs Dunwoody, you can understand why !!

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.