Yes it may not look like a conventional cartographic map, but it is nevertheless rich geospatial information and represents the next evolution of maps.

Street View images contain both quantitative information, parking restrictions from signs, opening times of shops, the type of tree most common is the surburan streets of Manchester and qualitative information, the “sense of place” something  very difficult to represent using traditional cartographic techniques.

Street View imagery in the UK will I hope become a valuable resource to academics researching the state of the nation at the beginning of the 2010’s, a image taken every 10 metres or so for 238,000 miles a distance equivalent to travelling from the earth to the moon, must represent one of the largest archives of photographs ever collected.

It is disappointing that the raw images used to create street view will have to be destroyed at the request of the European Union Data Protection Working Party, leaving only the privacy blurred published versions for future generations to accesses, still that is the balance we need to achieve between providing useful services and protecting privacy.

When I was running around Covent Garden in the early 1990’s creating a “hypermedia” map using a video camera and Apple’s Hypercard, I had a vague idea that such a database of navigable scenes might be extended to other parts of London, but National Coverage… that would have been Science Fiction !

But then again so once was putting a man on the moon !

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

On Monday I has the massive pleasure of meeting some of the business owners located on Shambles which was a winner in one of this years Street View Awards.

Shambles is not your usual shopping street, it looks like a set from the latest Harry Potter film and is populated by various specialist shops including Past Images whose owner Ian I got talking to.

Now you too to can explore this special part of York here virtually , but if you get the chance visit York, make sure you visit yourself !

Ian and his fellow shopkeepers are all enthusiastic users of the web, have websites and appreciate how much difference tools like web search and online mapping have made to their business. Rather than driving trade away, the web is making it easier for potential customers to find their businesses.

Finding is the key point here, I think we in the GI industry often forget just how powerful a simple map showing the location of a business really is.  While we talk about the virtues of Foursquare vs Gowalla or debate how to represent disputed boundaries, real people are using the easy access to mapping to improve, in little ways, their lives !

As in all previous Transit data launches this is a non-exclusive arrangement, and others organisations or individuals could make use of the data to build applications.. This is one of main drivers of making information like this available, as it allows innovative solutions to be developed rapidly to meet real user needs.

The most well developed ecosystem of applications developers around transit data has developed around the BART System in San Francisco, who have a web page listing around 30 free and paid for applications which help people use public transport in the Bay Area.

At last weeks launch in Brussels, a local developer eMich demonstrated their android application which provides access to real time information on the STIB system, clear evidence that Europe’s developer community are just a proficient  at meeting users needs given access to the data.

In the UK the government has made some excellent progress in both providing the mechanism to download government data sets, but also working hard to develop a community of developers and innovators around www.data.gov.uk.

Now just a few weeks after the site went live we are beginning to see applications developed that exploit the data, a personal favourite of mine is the asborometer, a mobile application that allows a user to understand local crime data in a very simple way..

Listen to the developer Jeff Gilfelt describe his project..

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Not heard of them, you don’t have a tweenager then.

My Daughter returned from her hols with her new watch..”Dad can you set it ?”

“Of course..”

20 minutes later.. “OK do you have the instructions”

“No”

One hour of fruitless searching on the web later.. the instructions were found, and the problem of a very sensitive “m” button resolved by a sharper pencil, everybody happy again.

To save you the time, here are the instructions.. just keep pushing button “m” even though it seems not to be working !

Breo Watch Instructions (click to enlarge)

Love being a Dad !

Written and submitted from home (51.425N, 0.331W)

One tool allows you to flip you map, making any of the four cardinal map directions top of the map, so here is the Aussie view of Southern England with South at the top.

We are used to maps orientated to the direction of travel within SatNavs, usually in a perspective projection, but a simple reorientation of a small scale map like this still “just does not look right” to me.

Amazing the power of convention when looking at maps. For the geeks amongst you, you will also recognise that this is also a visible manifestation of a new way to render maps..

Check them out by clicking on the green lab flask icon next time you use Google Maps..

Written and submitted from Zurich Airport  (47.460N, 8.554E)

On this side of the pond it is had to understand just how big a deal the Superbowl is in the US, it remains one of the few remaining occasions when most of the country sits down and watches the same rectangle of moving pixels at the same time.

So running an ad during the Superbowl is a big deal, from the legendary 1984 Macintosh add, through the dot com madness of the 1990’s it has always provided an interesting reflection of the IT industry. So for the first time yesterday Google’s first Superbowl ad has attracted much attention.

I get the impression that this particular ad first viewed last year on youTube, was so well liked (if not loved) that it was felt that it deserved the biggest audience possible.

For me the interesting thing, is just how embedded geography is to the story, how often geospatial technology is either used directly as in maps or is there behind the scenes – Paris the place not the celebrity…

Written and submitted from Heathrow Airport  (51.478N, 0.491W)

I think Apple is actually doing the right thing, setting best practice for developing apps that use location.

What they actually say is..

“If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.”

In other words don’t just insert a location targeted ad into an application where is does not provide any benefit to the user. So you should not add a location targeted ad into your first person shooter game for pizza’s in Southampton, just because the user is in Southampton.

This is location ad spam.

On the other-hand if a user is looking for train times from their current location to Southampton, then ads from local business offering you food while you wait for the next train or offer alternative journey options via bus would be useful.

As with search ads this represents and example of advertising selection based on a users implicit intent, ignore these signals and as an app developer you would be spamming your users.

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Well that’s not quite the end of the story as I see it, the key point to understand in the importance of Apple’s new device is to recognise that computers and the web are no longer the preserve of the geeks that write blogs.

All the apparent failings of the iPad, the lack of USB, no multi-tasking, no HDMI and lack of Adobe’s Flash are actually all the reasons why it will be successful.

The choice to remove these features are a result of the laser focus of the design team to make this a simple device, not a computer as we recognise it today, but something that allows “normal people” access to information quickly and simply. Remember the similar criticism from the smart-phone experts when the original iPhone was introduced.

Just think of the contrast in terms of installing a simple application in Windows, compared to an application on the iPhone.  The idea of the computing appliance is a common goal with the ChromeOS, both the iPad and future ChromeOS devices aim to make the underlying operating system as simple and robust as possible, and allow users to get to a task hassle free.

For me I can see the iPad finding a home in my household as a “sofa computer” something to have in the living room, easy to pick up and use quickly to browse the web, read a book chapter or send an email.

You can also seen the potential of vertical applications particularly in education, imagine the interactive textbooks that can be created for such a device.

A longer shot perhaps could be GIS data capture applications making use of the 3G/GPS version of the iPad, ESRI are rumoured to be working on an iPhone app..

Such a class of device, a real “computer for the rest of us” has been a long time coming, Alan Kay a true giant in the history of computing, in 1968 introduced the dynabook concept, which was hugely   influential for many including Steve Jobs. The work of Alan Kay was also a influence to one Douglas Adams, who also saw the potential of a book like computer..

Maybe the iPad will be the most important product Apple has produced so far, if it can become the internet  appliance, that really brings computing to the mainstream, then again maybe it will not and some other device will become this long anticipated device.

I can’t wait to get one, I just wonder who is going to be first design a cover with “Don’t Panic” written on it !

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

So be honest how many of us every expected todays’s announcement would ever come?  a day when the very conservative civil service of the United Kingdom made available very comprehensive government data sets available for free.  OK there are a few notable exceptions (OS , Royal Mail and TfL spring to mind) but as a starting point to have nearly  2500 data sets available and a community of nearly the same number of application developers is a huge success.

How often is it that the UK government can demonstrate greater openness that the United States, this is a far more impressive launch than the much admired data.gov portal.

The data.gov.uk portal also represents a huge shift in mindset for government in the UK, I’m very proud of a letter which I received while working at the Ordnance Survey almost accusing me of sedition and threatening me with the official secrets act for blogging and suggesting the OS could make data more widely accessible.

Culture change is a term much branded about within the civil service, what we see with the data portal really is culture change.

From a technical perspective data.gov.uk also represents the publish first and sort out the quality / metadata later paradigm which governments must follow, an evolutionary approach is vital in the fast moving world of web today, achieving perfection and accounting for all potential uses of data is not feasible and can no longer be used as an excuse not release data “as is”

The role of Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt in this change cannot be over stated without the “star” factor of these two individuals todays announcement would not have been possible. I look forward to reading the inside story of their activities in the next edition of  Prospect Magazine which promises to be a major scoop.

Also influential with government has been the campaigning of  former innovation minister Tom Watson among others, has been edging towards this move by holding such events as Show Us a Better Way, a competition with cash prizes for government data mashups.

Today of course is not the end of the battle, we need to keep the pressure on for all public sector data holders to default to making their information available, and there is still time to express support for free access to Ordnance Survey data by taking part in the current consultation process. Evidence for why this is important is illustrated by this example, just one of many issues caused by the current licensing regime.

To paraphrase outrageously, for Open Access to Government data, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, Copenhagen (55.683N, 12.571E)

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)

The drive down the M3 was particularly spectacular clear blue skies and a snow covered countryside is the positive spin of a country whose infrastructure struggles with a few cm of snow. However this winters snowfall is rather extensive e a fact brought home by a MODIS image acquired today from NASA’s Terra satellite.

Cool in both senses I think your agree !

UKSnow via Terra (click to enlarge)

Happy New Year BTW !

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

This year my projct is less challenging in many ways, completely inspired by John McKerrell and his now famous Weasley Clock I am going to learn how to build robuts using the Arduino Kit. So I have my book, a simple Arduino kit and some stuff from Maplin..

Our Robot Overloads will take their first steps…

Happy Holidays !!

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)

For many years I used to buy the Newspaper on a Thursday just for the tech section and it’s news from the IT industry and it’s IT and science job listings. Over the last few years the job listings disappeared replaced by online job sites, and of course we now get much of our news from blogs and the twitter.
It was the lack of advertising that killed the printed version, the Guardian still remains one of the best source of technology reporting online and out of all of the UK news publishers the Guardian is the most innovative in using new media, as demonstrated by the release this week of their excellent iPhone app.

Lets hope that the Guardian can continue its great work online, and I would recommend the weekly Guardian Tech podcast to anyone wanting to go beyond the 140 character version of tech news. Lets also hope that the campaigning element of the Guardian work continues, the victory of the Free our Data campaign in the UK, will have I hope a major impact on the UK Tech industry and the Geospatial Industry in particular.

Does this mean all printed media is ultimately doomed, of course not, however it does bring into stark  focus the business models of business that in the past have been based on the scarcity of information. When I started reading the Tech section, or Guardian Online as it was in the late 1980’s it was about the most up to date source of news, as it was published not monthly like most magazines but weekly ! Now via Twitter, I can learn of a new product announcement within minutes, and then read more in depth opinion of the news over the following hours and days via blogs.

While there was no alternative to printing on paper and having a distribution model of trucks and corner shops the inherent latency in the system was not a problem. Now of course that distribution mechanism has been replaced by the web, and as users we expect to see information delivered more quickly and a lower or no cost because the information is no longer scarce.

I expect we will see a similar shift in the provision of geospatial information to people over the next few years, the same web based distribution mechanism is already reducing the importance of paper maps and thanks in no small part to the efforts of the Guardian Geospatial infomation itself we become much less scarce early next year.

I hope to see by the middle of next year a whole range of alternative mapping products delivered online and in particular to mobile devices based on free OS mapping but showing real innovation, after all walking maps for use on my iPhone don’t have to look like the Landranger maps designed for paper 50 years ago.

So perhaps the end of paper for the mapping industry in the UK will actually mark the beginning of a creative renaissance in cartography, as with newspapers its ultimately not the medium of paper that is important,  but content.

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

The source code of his perl program is here

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)

In a really inspiring series of posts to his blog, Martin Daly has described the efforts his company Cadcorp has gone through to deliver a robust and high performance web system to one of their customers.

Very few GIS companies  would have opened up in such detail to describe the difficulties and problems associated in delivering a solution to meet a challenging set of requirements, and to be so frank about the process.

Cadcorp and Martin emerge very well from the exercise, OK so our software may a few problems but we know how to fix them and will work hard to do so, and we will show you how we did it in public.

A example for many others in the GIS industry…

(geek test : Recognise the engineering solution in the image ?)

Written and Submitted from the San Francisco Airport (37.613N, 122.390W)

This week the UK’s Met Office released a subset of HadCRUT data-set, just about the most comprehensive data-set of historic climate data. Already  John Graham-Cumming yes he of The Geek Atlas fame, is working on analysing and visualising the data.

Yes early days, but a confirmation of the value of making this information accessible..

Written and Submitted from the Googleplex (37.426N, 122.070W)

The debate is not helped by lingering doubts among many people that climate change itself is no more than a liberal conspiracy or at least there is little evidence to support that mankind and increased CO2 emissions are actually responsible for the changes.

Of both sides of the arguments there are powerful interest bodies, who are actively working on providing their interpretations to the evidence without necessarily being fair and open minded, even respected academics it appears have felt it necessary to manipulate information to fit their world view.

Ultimately if we are to get politicians to act with conviction on this matter, they need to believe it is something for which there will be a domestic political cost for not doing so, and this only results from the issue becoming something that the mainstream population has a firmly held opinion of.

Unfortunately people have lost confidence is both politicians and I’m afraid scientists to provide unbiased analysis of data on Climate Change, perhaps we now need to better educate people as to how to look at climate change data themselves  and to make this data available without spin or interpretation so that people can make their own minds up.

Last week I visited the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission in Ispra, Italy and meet with some scientists who are analysing greenhouse gas emission data over the last 25 years. The EDGAR project latest analysis is to try provide a granular map of the distribution of greenhouse gas emissions which they have visualised using Google Earth.

This is no doubt a powerful image, and an interesting talking point to the debate, but it is also the results of a model, a manipulation of raw data to paint a picture.

There is of course nothing wrong with this, as it makes a particular point, and because in this case the  raw data behind the analysis as well as the well documented model are also easily accessible for bedroom scientists to analyse themselves.

And before any climate scientists out there claim that this is ridiculous and that the general public cannot be expected to deal with such complex tools and concepts, ask a surveyor or cartographer if they expected that the general public would be building the only detailed global digital maps a few years ago ?

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

Our data has been freed ?

Well of course we will still have to see the details but this is a massive step forward and huge kudos needs to be paid to all those who have worked behind the scenes lobbying for this change and of course those who have been much more visible in their campaign. Congratulations Charles !!

The impact of Berners-Lee and Nigel Shadbolt is raising the value of free data on the political agenda was also clearly important and perhaps was the final push in the finally balanced arguments between the treasury and cabinet office.

Is the world about to end now in Southampton?

Of course not, many myself included have often made the point that there are in actual fact two data businesses at the OS. The one which produces large scale detailed and up to date data for use by government and customers in the utility sectors and  the other which produces the rest and which actually accounts of a relatively small proportion of the revenues of the OS.

It is this second business that is impacted here, the people who continue to license OS Mastermap and Address Layer will not be impacted by this move, and the OS will not see a massive fall in revenue as a result.

On the other hand at least some of the following datasets should be made available for free, and we can expect to see many new products and services appear as a result..

• Boundary-Line™
• Code-Point®
• Code-Point®  with polygons
• Land-Form PROFILE®
• Land-Form PROFILE® Plus
• Land-Form PANORAMA®
• Meridian™ 2
• OS VectorMap™ Local

Make no mistake this is something that has been forced on the OS by Government, the OS did not appear to be represented at the announcement yesterday and there is only a terse statement on the OS website reflecting this change in direction.

This is a shame, the leadership of the OS could have been more proactive in realising the value of their information came from its wider distribution not from following a business model based on its scarcity.

Written and submitted from Pan Pacific Hotel, Singapore (01.293N, 103.859W)

I had the pleasure on presenting at the AGI North Where2.0now event in Harrogate. It was a great event, but there was much joking from those who travelled from London and Southern England how far we had travelled.

Well now it’s possible to track exactly how far if you should choose too, as a Google Latitude user I can look at my history and see where I have travelled over a period of time.

As you would expect this is a service you need to opt in to, and by default your history will not be kept. But if you chose to store you history is makes a fascinating record of your travels here for example is my trip to Harrogate yesterday.

Tracking and storing you location is nothing new, John McKerrell has been doing so for a couple of years using his mapme.at service.

At the conference yesterday he showed the coolest piece of geo hardware seen since the Garmin GPS45, a location clock powered by mapme.at

If you have ever read any Harry Potter you will be familar with the idea of the Weasley Clock, a magical clock owned by the Weasley family which shows not the time but the location of members of the family and if they are in “Mortal Peril”.

Visit Johns blog to read how he has built a working Weasley clock using a Arduino kit, mapme.at and great imagination.

So cool !!

Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)

It is one of the Society’s 21st Century Challenges series, and will also feature Prof. Tanya Bryon, and will be chaired by BBC Technology Correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones.

Earlier this year Martha was appointed the government’s first Champion for Digital Inclusion.

While we are quite rightly focused at bringing the enormous benefits of the internet to the developing economies around the world like Uganda, we often forget the inequalities of access to technology and the web in particular also exist in the West.

In the UK 10 million adults have never been online, but this is more than just a problem of basic connectivity in rural areas the key issue is actually social exclusion which is self reinforcing.

By using the Internet the middle class family saves on average £560 by getting access to cheaper online goods and services, that’s a saving not available to those in society most in need of it.

Another more personal example, to register my son for secondary school I had to visit a (rather poorly) designed website to enter his details, there was the expectation that I would be able to do this and use the web to compare different schools as part of my decisions making process.

I’m not arguing we stop using the web for this, the advantages are just too great, however we need to make sure in this case that  everyone gets access to information for making these important education choices – by making sure everybody has access to the web.

Time for a One Laptop per Family initiative ?

Written and submitted from the Google Offices, London (51.495N, 0.146W)