Category: Google Maps

Categories
Google Maps

www.royal.gov.uk – one is impressed

 

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.

royaldotgov

Of course for me the most innovative part of the site is the Royal Diary Map, a simple tool well executed, which allows interested members of the public to find out where members of the Royal Family will be in the next two weeks.

What’s good enough for the Royal Family should be good enough for other parts of UK government don’t you think ?

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

Categories
Data Policy Google Maps

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.

victoriafires

A crucial part to making this happen beyond the skill and dedication of the Google team in Sydney, has been the system put in place by State of Victoria Country Fire Authority (CFA). This largely volunteer fire brigade have put in place an excellent web based system including a RSS feed of incidents which is used to produce the map.

This is a great example for all public sector providers of information.. provide your information in a form that allows reuse via different channels, not only does this spread the flow of information to as wide an audience as possible, it also reduces the direct traffic to your site during major events.

And for UK readers it is interesting to note that although protected by our familiar friend Copyright, these feeds are available and indeed designed for personal and non-commercial use. 

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Google Maps Thoughts

Everybody reads the Terms of Service..

Just like buses on the high street in any town in the UK, you have to wait ages and then along come a bunch together, so it is with the Maps API TOS, which Google revised again today.

Clearly section 11 was an area of concern to the community, it is the section that balances legally what you as a map user submit and how Google may use your content. MIckey on the Geo Developers Blog gives an excellent explantion of the thinking behind the changes to this section.

I believe these changes improve the clarity of the TOS and will hopefully reduce the concerns expressed by some developers. 

The new section 11 for reference is below…

11. Licenses from You to Google.

11.1 Content License. Google claims no ownership over Your Content, and You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Your Content. By submitting, posting or displaying Your Content in the Service, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute Your Content through the Service and as search results through Google Services. This license is solely for the purpose of enabling Google to operate the Service, to promote the Service (including through public presentations), and to index and serve such content as search results through Google Services. If you are unable or unwilling to provide such a license to Your Content, please see theFAQ for information on configuring your Maps API Implementation to opt out. 

11.2 Brand Features License. You grant to Google a nontransferable, nonexclusive license during the Term to use Your Brand Features to advertise that you are using the Service.

11.3 Authority to Grant Licenses. You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licenses.

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