Today I was able to make a quick visit to the National Computer Museum at Bletchley Park, an absolute must for any geek in the UK. To see Colossus running, to hear it and smell the worlds first programmable computer running is an amazing experience.
There is a great story behind the reconstruction of this machine, which is told at the brilliant Tony Sale’s website.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network
At last weekends State of the Map (SOTM) conference is was clear the the OpenStreetMap project is growing up and trying to position itself at a real alternative to commercial geodata suppliers and not just a fun project for people who love maps and making them.
Perhaps it is the experience of Cloudmade or the numerous iPhone application developers using OpenStreetMap that has brought the necessary focus on the boring stuff of data quality, consistency and currency.
To actually use OpenStreetMap in many applications there needs to be improved data attributes, as Steve Coast himself noted even where there is near complete coverage of streets, such as in London for example, many of the streets are not attributed with street names. Given a focus on fixing this particular aspect, such problems are relative easy to solve, but the key point is that the project leadership now recognises that a guiding hand is needed to help the community complete the task.
In terms of spatial accuracy Muki Haklay has made a specialism of accessing OSM data quality and his latest results presented at SOTM suggest that using the UK as an example, OSM data is better than the equivalent business geographics product produced by the OS, and in some cases comparable to OS MasterMap ITN data, a product that costs over £100,000 per year to license .
Alongside the increased awareness of the importance of data quality, the other clear indication that OpenStreetMap is getting more business like was the dedicated business track day, and the long needed work to produce a new “fit for purpose” license for OpenStreetMap data in the form of the new ODbL.
Some may not like aspects of the new license (myself included) but the awareness of the problem and the willingness to address it shows that the project has reached a real level of maturity. The licensing of community sourced geodata is still novelty, we now have the mirror of a GPL like license for geodata, others licenses I’m sure will follow.
If there are still people out there than believe that community generated geodata is just a joke, its time to wake up!
OpenStreetMap, Google’s MapMaker and Tele Atlas with is Map Share programme in different ways all demonstrate that spatial data capture from the bottom up is a valid alternative to traditional mapping agencies / data providers and is in many parts of the world the only practical solution.
Congratulations to the local organising team for putting together another great conference !
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network
Great to see a little bit of humour applied the the serious stuff of freeing up Government Data. ernestmarples.com, is a project which is making available via an API the Post Office Address (PAF) file. I wonder how the Post Office will respond to this piece of civic minded provocation.
There is no doubt that the postcode is off massive value for building local websites and all things Geo in the UK, as it is key to geocoding many other datasets.
In parallel to the more public debate about OS mapping data, you could argue that making the postcode freely available would have a much greater impact as it’s potential use is more widespread than mapping.
The problem is the Post Office recognise its value and change extortionate fess for people to use it, especially online.
Lets hope this site does not go the way of it’s namesake, the real Ernest Marples escaped to Monaco pursued by the Inland Revenue and Scotland Yard !