Category: Technology

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opensource Technology Thoughts User Generated Maps

A conference rich in social capital

I got back last weekend from Cape Town and the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference 2008, easily one of the best conference I have attended recently!

The FOSS4G conference is like no other attracting the most enthusiastic and active delegates who as well as talking about the potential of geospatial technology, also get on and build the tools.

To be fair Google has taken some criticism from the FOSS community for not making some of its user generated content available in its raw form “think geodata source code” rather than maps tiles, and this was a topic debated with some feeling at the conference. I did my best to explain our priorities in our approach to date, and I certainly enjoyed the debate.

The Google team from our Nairobi office ran a workshop on MapMaker which is making great progress in filling in the gaps in mapping Africa, in many countries making mapping publicly available for the first time.

mapmakerclass.jpg

For the moment making this mapping available for free to as many users of Google Maps and potential Google Maps API sites is our priority.

Following my keynote I spent as much time as possible at the Google Booth, and it was great to meet and talk to developers for literally around the world over half of the 500 people at the conference had travelling to South Africa to attend, again and indication of the commitment of the FOSS community to get things done.

The power of the FOSS community is demonstrated both by the almost complete stack of open source tools which can be used to build almost any scale of GIS system, and by the projects the community is involved in; projects such as Ushahidi which uses a combination of Free and Open Source tools to monitor human rights violations in Africa.

I spent Friday morning following the conference at Trafalgar High School in Cape Towns infamous District 6 running a workshop for teachers on using Google Earth for GIS education at the same time other delegates were running similar courses using other tools.

trafalger.jpg

If like me you are becoming a little tired of the introspection of the traditional and proprietary GIS world, check out OSGeo the organisation supporting many FOSS4G projects, and start saving for your air ticket to attend FOSS4G 2009 in Sydney… you won’t regret it.

Written and submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Technology Thoughts where 2.0

Semantics and the GeoWeb

I went along to a very interesting and well delivered presentation in front of it must be said a rather disappointing audience at the British Computer Society in London yesterday evening. “Make Mashups Correct, Complete, Relevant and Revisited” was a presentation originally given by Jonathan Lowe of Giswebsite LLP at Where 2.0, and as Jonathan is a great presenter I was really looking forward to it.

The presentation actually focused on the currently rather specialised area of semantic spatial databases and their potential in powering the mash-ups of the future. He high-lighted some of the darlings of the semantic database industry freebase and True Knowledge, who have developed technology that really demonstrates well the benefits of semantic databases.

The benefits come from having a much more structured data modelling approach than we have become used to on the web, the demo of freebase here is a great example of this, but such a strongly typed approach is also the major weakness of semantic databases at the moment.
Who defines and categorises data into these types and who builds the relationships between database elements. The wiki approach that freebase uses is a great start but ultimately will it scale ?

Semantic databases will become the future way we interact with information online only when their development and maintenance can become automated, in the same way that the creation and analysis of the web indexes behind web search is automated.

In the meantime that make some great demos

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

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Technology Thoughts where 2.0 wherecamp

Camping Geowanking style

From Wherecamp 2008

This weekend the geowankers camped out at the Googleplex for the second Wherecamp.

What has become an annual event the weekend after Where 2.0, Wherecamp is an unconference, a self organised event which starts without an agenda, and features talks, hacking sessions and debates suggested by the people who turn up. As Andrew Turner captured so successfully on twitter, “#wherecamp is Where2.0 2009 beta, 2010 alpha”, or maybe the other way round ?

The camp featured many excellent presentations and discussions, The value of 3D data (aka “Is 3D shit ?” ), building 3D displays, cartography for the web, geosearch, data licensing, micro formats etc., and because of the nature of the event plenty of opportunity for practical demonstrations, including the creation of gigipan images by Rich Gibson.

Gigiapan
click to see gigapan at work

And Jeff Johnson of PictEarth capturing aerial photography of the Googleplex using a Nokia N95, in an r/c model aircraft..

Googleplex from an airborne N95

As an old geezer I skipped the camping part, retreating to the comfort of my hotel room rather than a google tent for the night, but it was a great format and a great event. The contrast to the established GIS conferences in Europe is marked, the barcamp format, provides a great opportunity for more open debate and the presentation of ideas rather than products, and it’s just great fun.

EuroWherecamp Anyone ?

Written and submitted from the Googleplex, using the Google 802.11 network.

Categories
Google Earth Technology

Backyard Space Photography

Picture from 30km

From the excellent Google Earth Blog, Frank links to another great example of what the process of democratising technology has achieved.

A group of guys launched a fully instrumented sensor package below a helium balloon, which was tracked in real time using google earth and produced some stunning images. The video on their site of the launch and recovery of the balloon, are great fun – you can just sense the excitement !!

Ok so this may not be a practical remote sensing application yet, but it’s amazing.. pictures from 30 km high, a third of the way to space, taking with a Canon Digital camera you could buy on the high street.

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

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Data Policy Technology

In praise of the iPlayer

iplayer

In the past I have been very critical of the BBC approach to making their programmes available online, which until December required you to use Microsoft DRM, and hence was PC only. However in December the beeb released the streaming version of
iPlayer using the latest Adobe technology to allow users to watch selected programmes online for a week after they are broadcast, and this is a cross platform service.

I must say this is really well down, the interface is simple and well designed, the quality of the video is very good and the flexibility such as service offers the viewers of the BBC is massive, along with on-demand services offered by virginmedia my cable supplier, my household rarely watches live broadcast TV, other than the news, choosing what to watch, when we want to watch it.

We are not alone the BBC reports today that 3.5 million shows have been streamed or downloaded since Christmas Day. Interestingly the number of people streaming the programmes outnumber those downloading using the Microsoft DRM by a factor of eight.

This could be interesting in context to the expected announcement from Apple that they will now support movie rental from itunes, is it that the video market unlike music is one where we don’t feel it necessary to “own’ the media, or is it now the fact that access to the cloud is so pervasive we don’t mind accessing information when we need it and then throwing it away.

Either way again, you can’t help but draw comparisons with how geodata is licensed, and ask similar questions, for example as a developer building some new houses, would you not want to license the data for just the period of build ?

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

Categories
Technology Thoughts

Someday all hotel rooms will come with an iMac

City Inn with iMac

This week I ended up unexpectedly staying a night in Manchester and chose the City Inn Hotel close to the station (No drunk Manchester Utd players is always a plus point in my mind), anyway I was amazed to see rather than the usual hotel room TV, a iMac sitting on the desk.

It was running a highly customerised version of Front Row which allowed me to watch TV, but it also gave me full user access to MacOS, so i could surf, email, charge my iphone etc.

Very neat !

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
GPS Technology Thoughts

More trouble for Galileo as Mrs Dunwoody attacks

One of the most formidable and well respected members of British Parliament, Gwyneth Dunwoody has attacked plans by the European Commission to fund Galileo, the European version of GPS.

The Commission is stepping in to fund the initial phases of the programme as a plan to obtain funding from potential commercial operators of the system failed.

Even if funding is found to launch the system the question as to what the eventual business model looks like is still unanswered, unlike GPS there is not Dept of Defence to write the cheques if all else fails, and the day to day running of the system will need to be funded.

From my time in Government, I remember nobody wanted to end up in front of Mrs Dunwoody, you can understand why !!

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.

Categories
Mobile opensource Technology Thoughts

So where will you be at 6:02pm GMT this Friday

Me, I will be at the back of the line outside the Regent Street Applestore, in the line for my iPhone hopefully I will do a few lives blogs using my brilliant Three USB broadband modem – which is just great and has replaced by dependence on BT Openzone.

This wireless internet thing seems to have arrived !

Is it just me or has the tech and mainstream press missed the point on Android – It’s an opensource platform for mobiles and as such a potential alternative to the current closed nature of mobile networks and devices..

If you don’t like your current mobile then build your own !!

Written and Submitted from the Google Office, London.

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Technology Thoughts

Watching the tech world go by…

As blog readers you are not doubt aware of Technorati, the aggregation site of the worlds blogs, well now they have a rather neat feature which allows you to watch postings in real time..

You can really sense how in particular the technology media landscape is changing, when was the last time you found out about a new technology development from something other than a blog?

Even major vendor announcements are made through blogs rather than the traditional established PR routes of the past.

I sense in the Geospatial technology area this even more the case !
Written and submitted from the Googleplex , Mountain View.

Categories
Technology Thoughts

Beep..beep..beep – The legacy of Sputnik

Moscow Event

I just love working for Google, an organisation happy to celebrate the great technological advances of our times despite criticism from some. I was lucky enough to be asked to present at a event organised by Google in Moscow to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Sputnik.

The celebration involved presentations of Sky in Google Earth, Anecdotes from Cosmonauts including Alexander Volkov, a charming man who just happens to hold the joint-record for the longest space-walk in history and was Commander of Cosmonauts at the Cosmonaut Training Centre, and a presentation by Greg Maryniak on the Google Lunar X-Prize.

It would be wonderful if the X-Prize could rekindle the enthusiasm for space and science and technology in general that the original space race developed around the world. Clearly the political motivation is no longer there and that of course is no bad thing, however we are all the beneficiaries of the massive boost in funding for science that the space race produced.

30 years after man set foot on the moon, the mash-up generation will be back with technology that has its roots in the boost in science and technology funding that came as a result of that iconic beep-beep sound.

Written and submitted from the O’Callaghan Mont Clare Hotel, Dublin, using the hotels broadband network.