Blog posts
Nice posting for yesterday by steve on the opengeodata blog, one day maybe ?
Still think my MapSat news from last year is hard to beat, like all 01/04 gags it could almost be true…
How about a GPS enabled zune, that will tell your location to 5 people within wifi distance of you – comes in a nice shade of brown…
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
This week I am giving the keynote presentation at World of Geomatics, for many years the main trade show for the surveying industry in the UK. Although small compared to something like interGEO or GITA, the show is successful and is supported a loyal audience. It is also fully supported by the professional bodies of surveying in the UK RICS, ICES and the Survey Association.
In contrast to these international shows you will not find any GIS vendors a World of Geomatics, for many years the GIS software and data interests were served by the large GIS shows in Birmingham in the late 80’s early 1990’s and more recently by the AGI annual conference and exhibition. In the last decade these shows have struggled to compete with the internet as educational resources and this year there will be no vendor neutral GIS exhibition in the UK !!
I have never really understood this, why do experts in the fields of manipulating Geographical Information in the UK exist in almost parallel universes – Answers on a postcard if you have any thoughts (OK by email but I have always wanted to write that !!) – Maybe there is a future opportunity here ?
I think I understand why the surveying shows have remained successful, it is to do with professionalism and the recognition of the value of “industry best practice”, something which has been recognised only recently by GIS professionals.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Great news announced at the Google Maps api blog today, that GeoRSS is now fully supported in Google Maps. It is now possible just to pass the location of a GeoRSS feed as a parameter to the google maps url to see the feed rendered as an overlay. So http://maps.google.com/maps?q=http://edparsons.floo-net.com/?feed=rss2 produces a map of this blog.
Of course the map is also embed-able using the api, as in this quick and dirty example of this blog, and my past travels.
Many have been waiting for this capability, and as the Google api seems to be the most popular mapping api this is a great opportunity, GeoRSS is a really robust lightweight encoding which should now be able to reach an even wider community of users
It you are publishing simple geographic information on a regular basis why are you not using GeoRSS ?
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
This week the guardian “free our data” campaign recaps on a years activities and what progress has been made, not a great deal I’m afraid, awareness may have been increased, but this is still not an issue on the political radar screen because as Charles and Michael point out, there really is nobody in government with the remit for information.
This week a comment I made at the Open Knowledge conference last weekend is used, I think, to support the campaigns aims, maybe it can be used in that way, but my intention in bringing up the “Lockerbie question” was to point out the dangers of under-funding national mapping.
The “next Lockerbie” – a disaster such as a plane crash in a remote area – could bring problems for emergency services. Last year the government ended its “National Interest Mapping Service Agreement”, which funded the mapping by Ordnance Survey of remote areas that a private organisation might not bother with. As recently as 2004-05, Nimsa made up 11% of the Ordnance Survey’s turnover. The effect, says Ed Parsons, until December chief technology officer of OS, is that changes in remote areas of Scotland may go unmapped for years – “which is fine, until the next Lockerbie happens”. OS says it will continue a “mapping for emergencies” helpline service.
I would argue that the demise of NIMSA points out the major weakness in the argument for direct taxpayer funding of national mapping activities, in the one area of the work carried out by the OS which was directly funded by government, that funding was cut when the money got tight, and these activities were sacrificed to allow DCLG to continue to fund tasks it deemed more important.
The only organisations which actually value information are those who use it, and it therefore is logical that they should pay for it.
However, although I firmly believe the current funding model for the OS is the correct one, I am not going to argue that as currently defined the licensing framework around the crown copyright data the OS manages is fit for purpose.
There needs to be a fundamentally new approach to licensing OS data which allows greater access to information, and yes for some types of data and for some types of user this would be without cost to the end user. This could be achieved with minimal impact on the financial performance of OS but could inject a major boost to the UK GI industry.
Written and submitted from the BA lounge, Schipol, using the BT Openzone 802.11 network.
The Geoware conference I presented to in Denmark is featured in a Special Episode of the Very Spatial podcast this week.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Well somebody gets it !! Sometimes just surfing for some unrelated information brings up a really interesting nugget of information like this.
Clearly the guys in MV get it.. it’s all about context !!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
As many of you know Chris Lightfoot, a prolific developer and “mash-up” artist behind some of the most exciting citizen focused website died last month. This mornings Times has his Obituary and I can’t think of a better tribute to Chris.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
The next evening meeting of the BCS Geospatial SG meeting is on the Digital National Framework.
The meeting on Tuesday 27th March feature presentations from Keith Murray and Les Rackham who are “THE” experts on the Digital National Framework, a potential foundation to a future UK SDI. Key to the Success of DNF will be widespread adoption of its framework geography approach.. so awareness building event like this are key..
See you there.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Life is really busy at the moment, but I am finally in a position to put down a few thoughts about this weeks Geoware in Arhus.
I was very impressed by the organisation and quality of speakers, credit is due to Anders, Peter and the rest of the team at the innovation lab for putting the event together.
Nicholas Nova who gave a very interesting talk on mobile gaming gives a good review of the event on his blog. This is the closet I have seen to the “must visit” Where 2.0 in Europe.
To me one of the most interesting debates was around business models for these new mobile services, and the fact that for the most part quite traditional business models based on advertising or commission payments underlie these new services.
Nokia for example who demonstrated the N95 smartphone ( Forget the iPhone, this is the phone for geo-geeks) which ships with a free mapping and navigation package for Europe, with POI data sponsored by Restaurants, Hotels, Car hire companies etc. Nokia receive a commission from any transaction, such as booking a hotel which comes from their mobile service – a business model as old as publishing !
I wonder if we will see a similar event in the UK , and if so who would organise it? I know from trying to run the innovation process at the OS how difficult a task it is to get UK companies to think along these lines… and of course the other obvious challenges to GI based startups regarding availability of data are well known.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Lunar Eclipse from Teddington
Originally uploaded by ed_parsons.
Nothing to do with GI, Maps or Web 2.0 – But the lunar Eclipse this evening caused much interest in the Parsons household – It’s amazing what you can do with a Digital Camera, Macbook and wifi connection.
SIr Patrick would be proud !!
Written and submitted from the garden, using my new “longer range” home 802.11n network.