Straight To The Point

Northcliffe Local People media briefing

2009-07-16T15:51:00.002+01:00

Northcliffe explain the launch of Local People "a network of websites for people to get together and discuss the issues affecting their communities".

Birmingham Local Blogs Wire

2009-07-10T15:38:00.004+01:00

Following my recent post on Will Perrin's Talk About Local initiative, Jon Bounds has pushed ahead and created a Birmingham Local Blogs Wire by feeding a selection of blogs about Birmingham through Yahoo! Pipes.

You can read all about the thinking behind the Birmingham Blog Wire here.

Robin Hamman (@cybersoc) and I spent many an hour talking through this type of aggregation during his time at the BBC, primarily as method for BBC Local journalists across the UK to work more effectively with the local bloggers and active websites within their patch.

Sadly we never got past the talking part which is why it's really great to see something like this finally come alive, hooray!

Setting the power of postcodes free

2009-07-08T22:22:00.003+01:00

Ernest Marples Postcodes Ltd, whoever they may be, are encouraging you to use their free API to geocode your UK postcode data, with a plea to the Government and Royal Mail to make this 'official'.

Sites already using the service include:-

Jobcentre Pro Plus — Search for jobs in your area
PlanningAlerts.com — Get alerts for planning applications near you
The Straight Choice — Help monitor the claims of election leaflets
voteUK — A mobile service to look up your local polling station (in development)

Northcliffe launches community sites for local people

2009-07-08T10:06:00.003+01:00

Another attempt to provide local communities with a voice online has recently been piloted by Northcliffe Media in South West England.

From journalism.co.uk

Northcliffe and its digital arm Associated Northcliffe Digital have begun the roll-out of its ambitious plans for a network of hyperlocal websites.

The new platforms will be evenly distributed between areas with existing Northcliffe titles and those which are not served.

The sites are intended as platform for the local community and not as a traditional community news site, said Bryan, who said the network would be complimentary to the existing thisis network of regional news sites.

"What we are trying to do is to deliver a network of local sites that are aimed at providing local people in quite small communities a place and a space online to debate local issues," he added.

The sites look nice enough (See Exmouth as an example) and tick all the cliched boxes of current web design... a homepage segmented by round-cornered components, the ability to create a user profile, a twitter/facebook-esque status update, plus the standard newspaper diet of motors, properties, jobs and classifieds.

My concern is that the site already feels very busy and driven editorially by the desires of Northcliffe. There also seems to be very little recognition or attempt to integrate these sites with the existing blogs, websites, profiles of web active people already in the area - surely a key element of getting a foothold in any local community.

If you want to help local people in small communities get involved in their local space on the web then my hunch is that the Talk About Local approach has a better model.

Each website will, I imagine, be focused on solving a very specific local need, in essence doing one thing really, really well.

All this talk of new local websites and no mention of maps, maybe that bubble has started to burst!

4iP funds local community website project

2009-07-07T21:11:00.005+01:00

Talk About Local is aiming to "empower 3,000 people directly in 150 places across nine English regions with a focus on the most disadvantaged areas." by offering free advice, training materials and support to anyone who wants give their community a voice online.

Run by Will Perrin, the project is starting up in the West Midlands with funding provided by the 4iP/Screen West Midlands/Advantage West Midlands partnership.

Talk About Local plans to work with UK online centres to give people the coaching and skills they need to use simple publishing tools such as popular free blog platforms.

4iP's Dan Heaf outlines the two main reasons for funding the project on the 4iP blog.

Firstly, it stimulates alternative voices bringing fresh perspectives to the web. This project is all about giving those without a voice online a chance to get themselves heard. With the emphasis on creating local sites we hope the majority of the sites will be local in flavour helping to fill the gap being left by the retreat of traditional local journalism.

Secondly, by giving voices to local activists the project continues to hold those with money and power to account. Again we hope this will take up and enhance the job once done by local newspapers.

Reading all of this made me think of BirminghamB29 which I started almost two years ago and has been gathering pace of late due to the attentions of pindec and citizensheep in particular.

There's nothing particularly "activist" about the B29 site but as an experiment in local publishing it proves that a truly local site, covering an area small enough to walk around in a few hours, will be of greater relevance and interest than most of the supposedly "local" services offered by the more traditional media.

In fact, my favourite learning from BirminghamB29 site is just how much there is to investigate, to write about, and to get out there and do, in such a relatively small area of the UK.

In case you missed it, the Talk About Local project even gets a specific mention in the Digital Britain report.

4IP and Screen West Midlands are making a major investment in Talk About Local to create hundreds of new community websites by giving community activists the simple skills

I hope that the T.A.L. team don't get overly hung up on the negative, almost political, focus that the 'community activist' tag suggests.

Often the power of a community lies in it's ability to have fun, to play together, and not simply when a group or individual feels that something needs to change.

...and I still wish that the ridiculous use of the phrase 'hyperlocal' could be banished forever! It's not hyperlocal, it's just local.

MySociety unveil Mapumental

2009-06-02T09:17:00.004+01:00

Yesterday MySociety announced Mapumental, a new service designed to help you plan your life better using the wealth of public transport and travel information available across the UK.

Currently in private beta (you can register here) the application has been built with support from Channel 4’s 4IP programme.

Take a look at the video:

Mapumental is the culmination of an ambition mySociety has had for some time - to take the nation’s bus, train, tram, tube and boat timetables and turn them into a service that does vastly more than imagined by traditional journey planners.

MP Expenses Map

2009-05-21T10:47:00.003+01:00

With all of the recent attention focused on UK Mp's expenses it's no wonder that a number of maps are appearing to help browse the data.

One of my favourites is this one using MS Virtual Earth created by Shoothill.

Google Street View in the clear

2009-04-23T12:19:00.003+01:00

Following protests and complaints over the introduction of Google's Street View technology in the UK, the UK's Information Commissioner has today ruled that it should not be stopped.

A spokesman for the privacy watchdog said removing the entire service would be "disproportionate to the relatively small risk of privacy detriment".

Local (radio) websites from the BBC

2009-04-14T13:59:00.009+01:00

I don't normally blog about specific BBC projects or work that I'm involved in on the 'day job', you can catch all of that information on the BBC Internet Blog.

However, as my recent trips to Canada (photos pending) and Cornwall have left me feeling very out of touch with the online world then what better way to start the ball rolling again than with a response to this excellent post from Matt Deegan on the current design refresh of the BBC's local websites.

Matt is correct, the local sites are going through a refresh this year which is allied to a migration of the sites onto the same content production system that has been used for some time for the BBC news and sport websites.

Currently only Bristol, Norfolk and South East Wales are live with the new templates but we aim to achieve a full roll-out by the end of the year.

There are many good points in the post relating to the presentation of content and information relating to the local radio station for Bristol on the site. I think we'll be taking quite a few of them on board as we continue to develop the visual design of the templates! (thanks Matt)

It's worth pointing out that we have very recently put our local radio programme information into the BBC Programmes system which delivers schedule and programme information integrated with on-demand and live listening via the BBC iPlayer.

It's a complicated set-up and we undoubtedly haven't yet got the perfect balance between delivering on-demand and live audio via the iPlayer, schedules via the /programmes site, and local news and information on the BBC Local website.

And there's plenty of work to do on finding the best way to visualise this wide ranging variety of content, with it's associated set of BBC brands, without presenting a multi-coloured swap shop style experience to our users.

We want a website that appeals to listeners of the radio station, but we also want to deliver a local BBC service to all license fee payers that live in the Bristol area, irrespective of which radio station they listen to.

Olly Benson and Nick Wallis have commented on the regulatory restrictions around what a local BBC web service can provide but I still believe there is much that we can, and should, do.

So in answer to Matt's original question, Have the BBC just given up on local radio websites?, my answer is absolutely not, but it's a more complicated solution than providing a website for the 162,000 people listening to BBC Bristol on 94.9 and 103.6 FM.

Residents complain over Google street view cameras

2009-04-03T13:13:00.002+01:00

Another story from BBC News today on the privacy issues surrounding Google's Street View technology - residents of Broughton, near Milton Keynes, staged a protest and accused Google of invading their privacy and facilitating crime.

Twenty five UK cities went live on 19th March with the Netherlands version also going live on the same date, making a total of nine countries now covered.

Guardian allows users to geo-tag content with launch of new Open Platform tool

2009-03-10T14:15:00.002Z

The Guardian has today launched Open Platform with the hope of freeing up their data and allowing users to build other tools and services using Guardian content.

Of particular interest is the work on a crowd-sourced solution to geo-tagging.

"Stamen and OpenStreetMap developed a service that they hope will encourage Guardian readers to "geo-tag" the newspaper's content, positioning every article, video and picture on a map so users can find news, commentary, video and other content related to their area.

The Guardian experimented with geo-location during last year's US presidential election, and hopes the project will help add location information to its vast archive of content."

BBC Trust rejects local video proposals

2009-02-24T21:17:00.004Z

The BBC Trust confirmed today that it has refused permission for a planned BBC Local Video service after concluding its public value test (PVT) into the proposals.

Diane Coyle, BBC Trustee and Chairman of the Strategic Approvals Committee, said:

"The Trust is committed to improving regional and local services from the BBC for licence fee payers but a broadband-only local video news proposal is unlikely to achieve what they want.

"Instead, we believe the BBC's priority should be improving the quality of existing regional services. We recognise that the ways of achieving this may vary in different parts of the UK. We have asked the Executive to come back to us with new proposals later this year which will then be fully scrutinised by the Trust.

The final decision can be read in full on the BBC Trust website.

Links (9th February 2009)

2009-02-09T22:22:00.001Z

Share your aerial imagery with the world
Google invites anyway to share their own aerial imagery via Google Maps.
London 2012 Map
Already getting excited about the prospect of the London Olympics? Then this map could be just what you need.
Flickr reaches 100,000,000 geotagged photos
Which means that around 3.3% of the 3 billion photos on Flickr have geo data of some form.
Open source mapping for Birmingham
Birmingham becomes the first UK city to be full 'openstreetmapped'.
Sky News sees 'opportunity' in regional news websites
Press Gazette reports that "Sky News is exploring the possibility of launching a series of regional websites around the UK to complement its national TV news channel."

Google Latitude launches

2009-02-04T11:43:00.010Z

Google launched it's own Fire Eagle today, enabling you to 'See your friends on a map and get in touch'.

I haven't had enough time to get properly stuck in but from first viewing the Google Latitude user experience is more map-based and the 'sales pitch' is much more end-user focused.

Whilst all the hype around Fire Eagle was it's ability to be the 'glue' between applications, storing, retrieving and passing on location information, Google Latitude seems to be promoted as an application that will directly help you organise your real world existence by knowing if your friends are nearby, if your parents' flight arrived safely, and so on.

They are essentially the same thing in a different package.

I guess the next technological breakthrough will be a device, small enough to put in your pocket, that will include an audio speaker and receiver set such that, upon entry of a particular numeric code, you will be able to converse directly, one-to-one, with anyone else with a similar device.

Then you could find out, not only if your friends are nearby and if that flight arrived safely, but how everyone is feeling, whether they saw the game last night, and if anyone fancies a beer?
Oh, hang on... (photo: Olib)

From a business point of view it makes a great deal of sense for Google to be pushing heavily into this area.

If the great Google machine knows the whereabouts of you and your friends, and builds an understanding of your travelling habits, then, together with all of the other information Google already knows about each one of us, just imagine the kind of powerful, relevant advertising model that could be created for each individual.

Putting sarcasm and cynicism aside for one moment, my major tech prediction for 2009 was thus:

"Determining your present location will become a seamless and automatic feature on mobile devices, enabling some breakthrough location based services to achieve widespread popularity."

Google Latitude is yet another step in the right direction, although they might want to launch an iPhone version fairly soon.

For more information, here is Google's introductory video explaining their new service:

'Kitemark' could distinguish journalism from 'web noise'

2009-01-21T16:28:00.004Z

From Press Gazette:-

A 'digital kitemark' to differentiate quality journalism from 'the noise of the web' should be introduced, according to a new report published this week.

“A digital kitemark… would identify and differentiate professional journalism amidst the noise of the web,” the report says.

In my experience websites are already pretty good at providing this differentiation already.

A banner that says Guardian, The Times, The Sun or The News of The World or even Bob's News Blog or Amy's News Blog pretty much signifies the type of journalism and 'professionalism' of those involved.

As for suggesting that the "noise of the web" is inferior, that somebody enthusiastically producing content because they are interested in the subject matter is somehow not as useful or interesting as somebody who has been paid money and told by their boss to write some words on this subject.... huge generalisations I know, but I think somebody might have missed the point somewhere along the line.

Links (16th January 2009)

2009-01-16T17:00:00.002Z

Has it really been almost two months since my last post?! Blimey! OK, let's get back on the road in 2009 with some recent interesting links...

Road Trip Anyone?
If you have a spare 55 days free and fancy journeying from California to Sydney then here are the directions, as supplied by Google Maps. Don't forget to pack a kayak for the 3,879 mile leg of the journey across the Pacific Ocean!
Google Maps add public transport lines
Google Maps have added a transit layer for 50+ cities which displays lines of public transport over the standard map. Makes the London Underground look like a right mess.
UK WiFi Maps
Showing WiFi locations (free and otherwise) in 15 UK cities.
When Networking Fails, Company Goes to Local Search - All Points Blog
30% of Sat-Nav users have been taken to the wrong place
A recent survey by The AA reveals how Britons are using Sat-Navs in their cars.
Geo-tagging for the masses - edparsons.com
Does the OpenDatabase License need CC style Modules? - High Earth Orbit
The public transport network around Birmingham (UK) on a map
Travel West Midlands attempt at using Google Maps to provide an interactive resource for their public transport services in the Birmingham area.
Mapping down to your house
Ryan muses over some of the options for the future of the BBC Local websites.
BBC News uses data wisely in “Mapping UK’s Teen Murder Toll”
The BBC's teen murder map gets plenty of praise from Innovative Interactivity.

UK Location Strategy is published

2008-11-27T13:36:00.003Z

A new strategy to tackle problems from traffic management to flooding, improved policy formulation and decision making by using better geographical information, was launched by Baroness Andrews today in a report Place Matters: The Location Strategy for the United Kingdom.

Full details, including a press release announcing the launch, on the Communities and Local Government website.

The Location Strategy sets out a Five-Point Action Plan for public services that will help them to:

know what data we have and avoid duplicating it

use common reference data so we know we are talking about same places

share the data easily through common technology, standards and business relationships

gain the appropriate skills to support its use

drive strong governance to enable change which will be led by the Location Council which is being set up by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

I haven't had a chance to look at it yet but if you have then let me know what you think.

BBC Trust says No to BBC Local Video

2008-11-21T09:05:00.001Z

The regional and local newspapers of the UK had an early Christmas present today with the announcement from the BBC Trust that it has rejected proposals from the BBC for adding video content to its network of local websites.
(Disclaimer: I am involved in this proposal as part of my day job at the BBC.)

After strong protests from across the UK newspaper industry and local commercial radio operators and ITV Local, the BBC Trust has refused permission for local video "because it would not improve services for the public enough to justify either the investment of licence fee funds or the negative impact on commercial media."

Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust, said,

"We believe the BBC’s priority should be improving the quality of existing services. The public wants better quality regional television news programmes and more programmes of all kinds produced in and reflecting their areas."

"Our decision today to refuse permission for local video means that local newspapers and other commercial media can invest in their online services in the knowledge that the BBC does not intend to make this new intervention in the market."

The full press release from the BBC Trust is here.

Lessons to learn from the BNP map

2008-11-19T17:22:00.004Z

Details of over 10,000 members of the UK British National Party appeared in the public domain after a former member supposedly leaked the list online. Links to the data were made highly visible on sites such as Digg.com.

Then a Google map mash-up was created - zoom in to find the BNP member in your street!

The Guardian decided against embedding or linking to the map and instead used this still image (left) to illustrate their coverage.

Techcrunch did carry the map, much to the disapproval of some.

Ben Charlton (spod.cx), who created the map that appeared on TechCrunch, has now removed the Google map from his site and replaced it instead with a heat map (left) saying that,

I have decided to take down the map. Many people have commented that the map does give a false impression of accuracy, despite my making this clear, and I'm tempted to agree. I do not want to single anybody out and by removing the accuracy from the map it is possible that it ends up incorrectly implying a property contains a BNP member. It has been suggested that an inaccurate map that doesn't make that clear is worse than publishing the list itself, and I think that's a reasonable comment

So what does all of this mean?

Well let's forget about this particular data set, your view on the BNP and their place in the UK democratic process is not relevant.

What is relevant, and important, is the eagerness in this digital age with which a dataset that happens to contain location information is so readily displayed on a map.

The developments by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, OpenStreetMap (and the rest) have opened up some fantastic opportunities for displaying content with improved geographical context and given us the tools to make huge or complex data sets much more accessible and viewable.

But if you make something more accessible then more people will access it, or at least that is the aim, and people generally believe what they see.

It should be obvious, but if you put a pin on a map - make sure the pin is in the right place!

Are you pointing at a person? Or a house? How sure are you that the pin is in the right place? You have to be pretty damn precise to get each individual building correct.

If you are pointing at a postcode area, a district, even a street, then do you have the correct marker device?

So much of our data is not at the level of accuracy whereby you could literally stand on the spot marked 'x' but, largely due to the way these tools currently work, we still use pins to suggest a level of precision and accuracy that might not be there.

Maptube is one example of a tool that is looking at better ways of displaying this data, although by allowing full use of the navigation tools on applications such as Google Maps users may still derive an inaccurate message.

For example, is it really fair to assume that the people living in houses on the right are not affected by the Greater Manchester Congestion Charge proposal whereas those on the left would work or shop elsewhere if the charge was introduced? Zoom right in and even next-door neighbours appear to have a very different view.

The problems are varied and the solutions not always straightforward but I suggest remembering a couple of simple points would be very useful.

Always, always ask yourself, does this content really need to be on a map? Does the map provide something that other methods for viewing the data don't?
Are you using the right mapping tool, the best visual markers? There are so many geo-related applications available on the web right now, so why is it still always a Google Map mashup?
Are the markers/points/lines in the right place? Even when you zoom in to high levels of detail? Is there anything potentially misleading about the visual representation? Do you need any supplementary text explaining the map?
And finally, to be sure, does this content really need to be on map?

Links (17th November 2008)

2008-11-17T20:14:00.002Z

Still catching up with my backlog of links...

Welcome to Geography Awareness Week
It's the third week in November, which means it's time again to celebrate Geography Awareness Week.
Where 2.0 2009 Call for Participation
Next year's Where 2.0 conference (May 19-21, 2009) is accepting proposals until December 2nd.
Improve your relationship using web mapping tools
Kevin Burke explains how he used Finder! and Maker! to plan that perfect night out for his special lady.
Operator Demands Berlin Subway Maps Removal From iPhone
GeoCarta reports on how the operators of Berlin's subway system don't want iPhone users to be informed of the closest subway station.
Google offer grants for compelling ideas based on Google Maps.
Non-profit organisations can apply for grants of between US$5,000 and US$100,000 for using maps to enhance their work.
New York City Rat Map
The "a one-stop resource website for New Yorkers’ rat prevention needs." now includes a map.
UpMyStreet turns 10 and gets a re-design
The UK local search site UpMyStreet celebrates it's tenth birthday with a new design, improved business listings and better search functionality.

Links (12th November 2008)

2008-11-12T21:41:00.007Z

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post, largely because I've been far too busy working on this.

To make amends, here's a round-up of recent activity in a more conversational style than the usual list of links.

The beginning of this week saw The Society of Editors gather in Bristol for their annual conference. The local newspapers opposition to BBC plans to introduce video content on 65 local websites across the UK was once again raised by Sly Bailey, although former Trinity Mirror editor Chris Rushton had something different to say. Journalism.co.uk has a good summary on the overall discussion theme of What next for local media?

Moving away from newspapers, Ed Parsons reports on the news that Microsoft's Windows 7 will have a core location API. How long until the question of how to let your digital world know where you are currently located in the physical world is no longer a question but almost effortless?

Still on mobiles, if you have any interest in the collection or use of live traffic data then check out the Mobile Millennium project, an interesting collaborative project taking place in San Francisco involving Nokia, NAVTEQ, and UC Berkeley.

Andrew gives an insight into his election night experience and also posts a recent presentation given by him and Mikel Maron on the Trends and Technologies in Where2.0.

Having previously mentioned the Show Us A Better Way competition it's good to see that a number of location-related ideas are included in the winners. I know I will be using the Location of Postboxes service as soon as it has launched - I still don't know where my nearest box is and I've been living here for 8 months.

...that'll do for now... part 2 coming very soon, promise!

ITN puts news on the map

2008-10-28T10:15:00.003Z

Following Trinity Mirror's experiment with the Liverpool Echo, journalism.co.uk has reported on ITN's use of Google Maps to provide users with geo-located news stories.

The simple interface currently allows you to specify a minimum number of stories, a central location point and a time period over which you are interested in news content.

Upon entering this data the map view refreshes to display standard Google pin-points to illustrate stories nearby.

The above screenshot is the result of searching for a minimum of 5 stories nearest to Bristol from the last 7 days.

The fifth nearest news item that appears on the map is actually located in Portsmouth, nearly 100 miles from Bristol, so it's not exactly a local news service - but then ITN is not a local news provider so it would be wrong to expect too much content at this level of granularity.

However, the amount of content appearing on the map still seems a bit thin for a news provider such as ITN - presumably due to the number of news items that are not being geo-coded as they don't relate to a specific point on the map.

Links (20th October 2008)

2008-10-20T17:56:00.000+01:00

The Guardian publishes first ‘geolocated’ article
Journalism.co.uk reports that The Guardian has published its first article including geolocation data.
Dataset of the Day: Globalizing IKEA
View the global expansion of furniture retailer IKEA on a map.
Mapped Panoramas Viewable in Google Earth
More features available on the panoramic photo site 360Cities.net which allows people to upload/view geo-tagged 360 degree panoramas from around the world.
How Mapping Companies Collect Street-level Data
Interesting insights on how TeleAtlas and NavTeq acquire their local data.
Beyond GoogleMaps (FOWA London)
View Andrew Turner's presentation on web mapping technologies given at the Future of Web Apps conference in London.
USA National Fuel Price Map
Colour coded guide to gas prices across the USA - good visual use of a map to display data.
WAN: 'Newspapers must become hub of local activity'
Newspaper websites must become the "hub of all local activity" if they want to keep growing their audience, according to Newspaper Association of America vice president for business development Randy Bennett.
BBC reports live event with map tools
The BBC uses a series of mapping tools to provide live web coverage of the parade in London of Britain’s Beijing Olympics team.
Interior 3D Building Tour With Google Earth Plugin
Peekspy have used Google Earth technology to go indoors and provide a virtual 3D walkthrough of the National University of Singapore Library.

Mapping and poverty (Blog Action Day 2008)

2008-10-15T00:05:00.002+01:00

The 2008 theme for Blog Action Day is Poverty, a subject that hasn't been out of the papers in one form or another for a long time.

I thought I'd start with a fairly obvious Google image search for "poverty map". Geographic.org appears to come up trumps with the fairly straightforward World Poverty Map (2000) in its collection.

Maps courtesy of www.theodora.com/maps used with permission.

On the surface this appears self-explanatory but on closer inspection it is confusing, even misleading, that the white areas are labelled in the key as "No Data".

This doesn't really help provide a true picture of the world situation given the amount of white space on the map.

A more colourful, and complex, representation of the world's financial state is provided by the Helsinki University of Technology's Self Organizing Map (SOM). 39 quality of life indicators (from 1992) were used to compare countries and graphically align countries with similar characteristics.

In colour coded form it looks like this:-

And in more conventional map form it looks like this:-

There were plenty of other images returned via Google but nothing that really offered me anything of interest or made me feel that I was learning anything new.

Then I came across www.povertymap.net, a website aimed at "Promoting the use of poverty maps in policy making and targeting assistance, particularly in the areas of food security and environmental management."

Unfortunately the section that used to contain selected examples of poverty maps has been removed as the site owners have "not been satisfied with the quality of the entries, nor the technical implementation of the database." If nothing else it is refreshing to see this level of integrity on the web.

Something quite different is the London School of Economics' Charles Booth Online Archive which offers a fascinating insight into poverty mapping in the 19th Century.

The Maps Descriptive of London Poverty are perhaps the most distinctive product of Charles Booth's Inquiry into Life and Labour in London (1886-1903). An early example of social cartography, each street is coloured to indicate the income and social class of its inhabitants.

The lowest classification level, A, is indicated by the colour black on the map and is described in detail as:

The lowest class which consists of some occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals. Their life is the life of savages, with vicissitudes of extreme hardship and their only luxury is drink

Poverty has always existed. There will always be a range of wealth and quality of life within any population group, however big or small. In this sense there will always be poverty, there will always be some people less well off than others.

But gaining a better understanding of the situation, educating all of us about the cause and effect of poverty, and encouraging more people to look for ways to narrow the gap, to help those less fortunate, is becoming increasingly important in the world today.

Improving access to the underlying data and finding much better methods of visualising this information might just help this education process... maybe, just maybe, mapping can play a role.

There are plenty more poverty maps on the web, here are just a selection of my recommended links for further reading:-

How to plan your next holiday

2008-10-13T23:01:00.003+01:00

After I published a post on my personal blog about the lack of decent tools on the web to help plan a holiday a friend pointed me in the direction of Opodo's new AirTools service.

It's not quite the complete answer but it's certainly heading in the right direction.

Within a very short time of playing with the five different tools available I found myself hooked on the EscapeMap feature.

Simply enter your starting destination and a broad idea of where and when you want to go and up pops a Google Map with details of destinations and cheapest available price.

Clicking on a destination provides further details of the cheapest deal with the option to click through and further specify your travel to that destination.

Further filters above the map let me decide what type of holiday I'm after (beach, shopping, history?) and further specify location and price.

The other tools on offer, CombiFlight, CheckFlight, MyAirline and FlexiFlight are all attempts at providing a more distinctive online travel service but don't really go far enough in my opinion and don't feel very different to the websites I'm used to.

EscapeMap is not perfect, it still requires quite a lot of time and effort to assess what my options are and doesn't really provide the answer to my original question, "is it not possible for me to ask for some holiday suggestions departing from Airport X on date Y, returning on date Z, and to view a list of destination options?"

It is a step in the right direction though, and a great, simple and effective use of mapping tools on the web... more please.