Categories
Ordnance Survey Thoughts

Now why was that so difficult ?

Yesterday the Prime Minister announced that many of the data products produced by Ordnance Survey are too be made “open data” free for download and use by both indivuduals and commerical organsiations in the UK.

Our data has been freed ?

Well of course we will still have to see the details but this is a massive step forward and huge kudos needs to be paid to all those who have worked behind the scenes lobbying for this change and of course those who have been much more visible in their campaign. Congratulations Charles !!

The impact of Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt is raising the value of free data on the political agenda was also clearly important and perhaps was the final push in the finally balanced arguments between the treasury and cabinet office.

Is the world about to end now in Southampton?

Of course not, many myself included have often made the point that there are in actual fact two data businesses at the OS. The one which produces large scale detailed and up to date data for use by government and customers in the utility sectors and  the other which produces the rest and which actually accounts of a relatively small proportion of the revenues of the OS.

It is this second business that is impacted here, the people who continue to license OS Mastermap and Address Layer will not be impacted by this move, and the OS will not see a massive fall in revenue as a result.

On the other hand at least some of the following datasets should be made available for free, and we can expect to see many new products and services appear as a result..

  • Boundary-Line™
  • Code-Point®
  • Code-Point®  with polygons
  • Land-Form PROFILE®
  • Land-Form PROFILE® Plus
  • Land-Form PANORAMA®
  • Meridian™ 2
  • OS VectorMap™ Local

Make no mistake this is something that has been forced on the OS by Government, the OS did not appear to be represented at the announcement yesterday and there is only a terse statement on the OS website reflecting this change in direction.

This is a shame, the leadership of the OS could have been more proactive in realising the value of their information came from its wider distribution not from following a business model based on its scarcity.

Written and submitted from Pan Pacific Hotel, Singapore (01.293N, 103.859W)

Categories
AGI LBS Thoughts

The Weasley Clock and Google Latitude a mashup waiting to happen

In the UK there is a saying about waiting ages for a bus and then two come along at the same time. In the world of location based or context based computing it’s not exactly the case that there is little happening, but yesterday produced two interesting stories.

I had the pleasure on presenting at the AGI North Where2.0now event in Harrogate. It was a great event, but there was much joking from those who travelled from London and Southern England how far we had travelled.

Well now it’s possible to track exactly how far if you should choose too, as a Google Latitude user I can look at my history and see where I have travelled over a period of time.

As you would expect this is a service you need to opt in to, and by default your history will not be kept. But if you chose to store you history is makes a fascinating record of your travels here for example is my trip to Harrogate yesterday.

latitude

Tracking and storing you location is nothing new, John McKerrell has been doing so for a couple of years using his mapme.at service.

At the conference yesterday he showed the coolest piece of geo hardware seen since the Garmin GPS45, a location clock powered by mapme.at

If you have ever read any Harry Potter you will be familar with the idea of the Weasley Clock, a magical clock owned by the Weasley family which shows not the time but the location of members of the family and if they are in “Mortal Peril”.

Visit Johns blog to read how he has built a working Weasley clock using a Arduino kit, mapme.at and great imagination.

So cool !!

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Categories
Thoughts

Digital inclusion at the Royal Geographical Society

Having just watched Martha Lane Fox on the excellent Car Pool video Podcast presented by Robert Llewellyn,  I am now really looking forward to the meeting on the Digital Divide at the RGS next month.

It is one of the Society’s 21st Century Challenges series, and will also feature Prof. Tanya Bryon, and will be chaired by BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

Earlier this year Martha was appointed the government’s first Champion for Digital Inclusion.

While we are quite rightly focused at bringing the enormous benefits of the internet to the developing economies around the world like Uganda, we often forget the inequalities of access to technology and the web in particular also exist in the West.

In the UK 10 million adults have never been online, but this is more than just a problem of basic connectivity in rural areas the key issue is actually social exclusion which is self reinforcing.

By using the Internet the middle class family saves on average £560 by getting access to cheaper online goods and services, that’s a saving not available to those in society most in need of it.

Another more personal example, to register my son for secondary school I had to visit a (rather poorly) designed website to enter his details, there was the expectation that I would be able to do this and use the web to compare different schools as part of my decisions making process.

I’m not arguing we stop using the web for this, the advantages are just too great, however we need to make sure in this case that  everyone gets access to information for making these important education choices – by making sure everybody has access to the web.

Time for a One Laptop per Family initiative ?

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)