Month: March 2010

Categories
Thoughts

Digital Economy Bill, this would funny if it was not so serious..

In a real test of democracy, a widely regarded poor piece of legislation is currently making it’s way through parliament without much scrutiny to make sure it becomes law before the upcoming election. The Digital Economy Bill is wide-ranging and addresses an increasingly important part of the British Economy, yet it’s hard not to get the impression that due process is being sacrificed to meet the needs of some very vocal lobby groups.

Write to your MP if you think its wrong that your connection to the internet could be removed on evidence that would so weak that no criminal case could even be made.

“Alright mush.. we know you were in WH Smiths when someone nicked the packet of smarties.. we going to take your car keys to make sure you never visit the shop again !”

Of course there is also the wider argument, who is actually suffering the music industry or the record business ?

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

Categories
Thoughts

Wherecamp EU : A people powered success

A public note of congratulations to the organisers of the weekendsWherecamp EU , well done it was a massive success!

It is often said that the most useful part of any conference are the conversations that happen in the hallways or over lunch, and the bar-camp format used this weekend makes the most of this by doing away with a formal agenda, and making the whole meeting spontaneous.

To many this might seem like madness, but the resulting selection of talks would be hard to improve upon in terms of breath and interest.

Despite a few snarky comments, almost everybody I spoke with at the event, and the feedback I have seen since has been completely positive, highlighting the quality of talks and the discussions which then followed.

The voice of the individual often drowned out by corporate messaging at traditional conferences is prominent at events likes wherecamp EU, and  it is a real step forward to see such events taking their place alongside more traditional industry shows now in Europe.

Wherecamp is an established brand in North America, the next Wherecamp there follows Where 2.0 later this month and is hosted once again by Google at the Googleplex , but at least now we can say there is a real alternative this side of the pond.

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

Categories
Google Maps Street VIew

From the Earth to the Moon

Today some 230,000 miles of Street View coverage has gone live in Google Maps, which represents arguably the most detailed map of the UK every produced. I say this because of the amount of information contained in each panoramic photograph is simply massive.

Yes it may not look like a conventional cartographic map, but it is nevertheless rich geospatial information and represents the next evolution of maps.

Street View images contain both quantitative information, parking restrictions from signs, opening times of shops, the type of tree most common is the surburan streets of Manchester and qualitative information, the “sense of place” something  very difficult to represent using traditional cartographic techniques.

Street View imagery in the UK will I hope become a valuable resource to academics researching the state of the nation at the beginning of the 2010’s, a image taken every 10 metres or so for 238,000 miles a distance equivalent to travelling from the earth to the moon, must represent one of the largest archives of photographs ever collected.

It is disappointing that the raw images used to create street view will have to be destroyed at the request of the European Union Data Protection Working Party, leaving only the privacy blurred published versions for future generations to accesses, still that is the balance we need to achieve between providing useful services and protecting privacy.

When I was running around Covent Garden in the early 1990’s creating a “hypermedia” map using a video camera and Apple’s Hypercard, I had a vague idea that such a database of navigable scenes might be extended to other parts of London, but National Coverage… that would have been Science Fiction !

But then again so once was putting a man on the moon !

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