StateoftheMap 2009 Call for Papers

The call for papers for always one of the most interesting conference has just been announced. StateoftheMap 2009 is the conference to discuss all thinks to do with the ground breaking Open Street Map Project, and this year will be held in Amsterdam in July This is much more than a gathering of people who like to ride bikes …

Transport for London boards the mash-up bandwagon

As introduced by Christopher Osborne @osbornec on Twitter this morning (where else do you get news these days ?), Transport for London (TfL) the government organisation responsible for most transport in London have begun providing access to limited amounts of their transit data, via a simple web feed interface. TfL must be congratulated for this step, and by doing so using simple XML …

History in Google Earth – Did you miss it ?

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. …

Mapping the Victorian fires – Some important lessons for Europe ?

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 …

Just brilliant @uk_trains

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 …

Power of Information Taskforce – Homework for the OS

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 …

A change of direction for the OS ?

From todays Pre-Budget report, a document that’s main focus is the fiscal stimulation of the UK economy, this nugget of potentially very exciting news… “4.54 Re-use of public sector information from trading funds  The HM Treasury/Shareholder Executive assessment of trading funds has considered the potential for innovation and growth from increasing commercial and other use of public sector information. It will shortly publish some key principles …

Notes from down-under

As the Whitehall farce that is the OS derived data debacle continues, it’s interesting to contrast the flow of public sector information in the UK with that in Australia which I have just experienced first hand at the first Asia Pacific Spatial Innovation Conference. Interestingly for a Geospatial conference there was in addition to the usual technology developments, a …