With last months launch of Google Earth 5.0 much “mainstream” interest was focused on the capability to view under the ocean, and of course to begin the search for the lost city of Atlantis 🙂 For many however, myself included, the most important new capability is the ability to view historic images from the Google archive of satellite and aerial imagery. …
As highlighted by Keir on the excellent Google Maps Mania last week, AfricaMap is an interesting attempt to build a repository of geospatial data about Africa, developed by the Center for Geographic analysis at Harvard University. What is interesting about this site, is both the scope of the project and the approach taken. From decades many individuals, groups and organisations have been trying to develop Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) at …
As the Guardian Technology blog notes the UK government is once again trying to push Government Departments into looking at Open Source software solutions at least as an alternative to the proprietary software we all know and love. This is not the big stick approach which has been used in some other countries, here the policy is from a procurement perspective to just make …
OK, firstly I’m not a great royalist I must admit, but I am quite impressed by the new Royal Family website. As government websites go this is fairly impressive and well designed with great use of media, social network linking, FAQ’s etc. Of course for me the most innovative part of the site is the Royal Diary …
From Planes Happy Birthday to the Boeing 747 which first flew on this day in 1969. The risk this project represented for Boeing is often overlooked, had it failed so would have Boeing itself. Of course it was a great sucess and its impact on the world has been profound, long distance air travel …
Nobody can have failed to be moved by the tragedy of the Bush fires which have been devastating Victoria, Australia this weekend. As reported by Official Google Australia Blog the Google Geo team in Sydney worked fast yesterday to get a real-time map of the extent of the fires available online and is has seen extensive use over the last 24 hours. A crucial …
Read more “Mapping the Victorian fires – Some important lessons for Europe ?”
Blogger at the excellent Mobile Industry Review, Ben Smith has developed one of the most useful services to emerge from the event that will become known to many as #uksnow. UK trains is a BBC Backstage powered mash-up which sends travel update information from all the UK Train Operating companies to dedicated twitter feeds, so for me to …
The influential Power of Information task force, the group working within the Cabinet Office to suggest better ways of using Government Information has published their interim report back to government in a “wiki-like” form to allow comments from the community before final publication. As any reader of this blog will expect, there is considerable discussion of the potential value and problems associated with access …
Read more “Power of Information Taskforce – Homework for the OS”
A brilliant result for mySociety and all who support openness in government, I guess that includes President Obama. “And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day – because only then can we restore …
© edparsons.com ltd
edparsons dot com Limited is registered in England 16609927