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Spent the weekend flicking through a very cool new book on GI and GIS technologies, “Mapping Hacks” a product of the people behind the mapping hacks website.

This is great stuff, it bites off all the basic principles of GeoData in small chunks, from the perspective of someone actually trying to build practical solutions. This would be a great alternative text book to the more academic standard texts used to teach on GIS Masters courses, at least it should develop some enthusiasm in students, I will certainly recommend this to the students on the Masters programme I’m external examiner for !

It’s just a shame it missed the google map hack phenomenon , but hey thats for the second edition !!

The movement towards Open Source geodata continues – there is still someway to go until we need to think about co-existence strategies with commerical geodata but that time will come.

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

Daniel H. Stienberg pens a review of the where 2.0 conference at O’Reilly Network: The How and Who of Where. A whole new sector of the GI market is emerging based on open IT standards, and collaborative development. The old guard of the established mapping agencies needs to take note, although their core business will remain unchanged, consumer mapping applications have changed forever.

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

As reported by O’Reilly Radar Google have released an official API to their google maps application at the Where 2.0 conference. Website developers can legitimately embed google maps in their application for no charge !! – Mapquest et al… the clock is ticking.

But you ask how can this work, google has to pay teleatlas, digitalglobe and others for the data.. well the answer is on the google maps API page –

“The Maps API is a free beta service, available for any web site that is free to consumers. Google retains the right to put advertising on the map in the future. Please see the terms of use for more information.”

Ah…

but hey this is GREAT at last some innovation.

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

This week sees the O’Reilly Where 2.0 conference take place in San Francisco, which I believe marks a turning point for the GeoData and GIS industries if they want to take it. Where 2.0 gives a pointer to the direction the geodata industry will go if the likes of Google and Microsoft in the form of MSN Virtual Earth are successful.

This direction is characterised by modern internet based applications built using industry wide web standards and exploiting established internet business models. – No talk of GML or the OGC here..

In his pre conference interview Tim O’Reilly identified the role of XML based API’s such as the “google hack” interface of google maps as allowing “mash up” applications to be created by website owners combining data from different sources in a way not possible in the previous generation of web mapping sites such as mapquest and in the UK multimap.

O’Reilly clearly sees data as the key to success in this new market.. resulting in my quote of the year so far

“There is a big concept that hit my radar…the idea that data is the INTEL inside.”

Time will tell to what extent this is true but it will be interesting to see the response of the traditional GIS industry as represented by Jack Dangermond of ESRI who is also speaking at the conference.

I personally think this is a big deal, I just wish my calendar allowed me to attend, the world of GeoData and location based applications is changing as the giants awake.

Written and submitted from the Holiday Inn Express Southampton, using the hotels 802.11 network

The BBC report that the rise of satnav spells the end of the map as an in-car navigation tool. I think there is some truth in this, although I still carry a half million scale map in case of system failure in my satnav equipped car.

A point which the article could have made more of is the complete reliance on the system, when as a user, to get used to having a calm voice telling you where to go next. What happens when “she” and it usally is “she” is not there anymore ? – blind panic.. cars stopping with lost drivers not knowing our to unfold their maps 🙂

Still its great to see geograhic information becoming more and more mainstream.

Written and submitted from the garden just before a thunderstorm, using my home 802.11 network

Spot the deliberate mistake ?

I am a huge fan of google maps a well designed application and great user expereice, however can you spot the problem on this map of Europe.. Look closely and you will see a error in the text placement routine which means that..

Belgium has swapped places with the Netherlands !

Listening to the Adam Curry podcast this morning, who described using google local on his mobile to give his cab driver directions to a hotel.. LBS is alive and well outside the network operators “walled gardens” it seems.

Happen to be passing the Gizmondo flagship store on Regent Street on Friday and poped in. Gizmondo are a UK based company and are trying to establish a handheld games platform similar at first glance to the PSP or Nintendo DS.

What makes the Gizmondo interesting is that is that it is a network device with an GPRS modem and is location aware with a in-build GPS receiver. These are not just add-ons, Gizmondo seem to be serious about delivering location based games, their parent company in the US Tiger telematics has a solid telematics backgound developing vehicle tracking solutions, and a game soon to be released “colors” is a street gang games played in a virtual model of the street you are actually in !

Gizmondo are also developing more familar LBS like applications mapping, geo-fence creation etc to exploit a powerful device, under the hood Gizmondo runs Windows CE, and the backend is powered by MapInfo technology similar to that employed by vodafone.

This could be a interesting new market for Geodata taking its first steps, but as Gizmondo must be aware “content is king” and they need to get some outstanding games behind them to compete in a established market dominated by others. The trick may be to extend the market really making the most of the GPS and WAN capability of the device, the competition may actually be the next generation of smartphones rather than current games platforms. The Gizmondo is available now in the UK and will reach the US in August.

Whatever… I think I need to get one to try it out – Question do I expense a games device ?

Written and submitted from the garden on a warm evening, using my home 802.11 network.