GIScussions

Time to move on

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 17:03:00 +0000

This is my last post using Blogger.

Thank you Google you have helped me to get GIScussions read by quite a lot of people and to be honest I have nothing but good words to say about Blogger and I would recommend you to anyone getting a blog started. But now is the time for me to move GIScussions to its new home at

Click on the logo to have a look at GIScussions' new home. It will take me a while to work out how to make the most of WordPress so be patient and if you have advice don't hesitate to leave a comment.

Differing views on the OS consultation

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:53:00 +0000

I have been following some of the responses to the CLG consultation on freeing OS data and future business models. Some of the reactions to other peoples' responses are almost more interesting than the actual responses.

Before commenting let me be open and say that I chose not to respond to the public consultation for a several reasons - I had already been part of the first phase pre consultation so I had said my bit and I just did not have the time to do any more.

It seems to me that many of the the responses split into a few groups:

Those who say give me as much free data as possible now and fund it through taxes (or even don't bother me with the technicalities of how it is funded) but basically keep OS going as the data collection agency.
Those who say that there is a whole business ecostructure built around OS and that the consultation has been too superficial/quick/limited to find a better model. Oh and perhaps the damage to existing businesses might be larger than the gains from these thrusting newcos that will flourish and innovate on the back of this free data
Those who have a long standing sense of injustice in their brushes with OS and want to see OS dismembered.
Those who are more concerned with derived data than the free availability of a few mid scale data sets
Bits of 1-4 above

I am paraphrasing liberally with tongue firmly in cheek before you start fuming at me. With the exception of 3 I have some sympathy with all of the above views.

More importantly though, if the consultation is to be taken at all seriously I believe that anyone who contributed has a right to express an opinion and for it to be factored into the process and decisions. The responses on twitter and the FOD blog to the letter from the MD's of ESRI, Intergraph, 1Spatial and Cadcorp seems to me to go a bit over the top in deconstructing and critiquing their views. They are expressing a valid concern on behalf of businesses that employ several hundred people that needs to be balanced against social and economic gains that may arise from the changes.

If you were one of the organisations that posted a response that questioned the haste of the process (or any other response) perhaps you would like to let Charles Arthur have a link that he can add to the growing list at Free Our Data and on Ed Parsons' site - the more the merrier.

I don't know how you balance the range of views from individuals and numerous different sized organisations in the public and private sector responding to the consultation. Whatever is decided (and many think the decision is already pretty much made) you can be sure that a lot of people will be unhappy (put the thousand odd people working at OS in that list for a start).

I have a feeling that in a few years time we might just look back on this process and say "if only ...." Babies and bathwater, broken eggs and omelettes come to mind.

So when the decision is announced (and expect it to not be as clear cut as many fear or hope) expect the debate continue. I very much doubt that this will all be over on April Fools Day.

STOP PRESS - you might want to start by reading James Cutler's megarant - hope he does this as a georant at AGI Soapbox this year.

A few BHP's on the Horizon

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:02:00 +0000

Fridays have been fun recently, last week wherecamp eu and this week the Horizon theme day in Nottingham. A few of last week's wherecamp crowd were there in cluding Gary Gale, Ed Parsons and Muki Haklay

Horizon is one of the hubs of the Digital Economy Research program

"Horizon will focus on the role of ‘always on, always with you’ ubiquitous computing technology in the Digital Economy.
Building on the Digital Britain plan, Horizon will investigate the technical developments needed if electronic information is to be controlled, managed and harnessed — for example, to develop new products and services — for societal benefit."

There is lot of interdisciplinary research going on here and some exciting ideas bubbling away in the program. I had a lot of fun talking to linguistics and ethics doctorate students on the Horizon program a few months ago and learnt a lot from them (apparently some of them even got a few ideas from me)

Some disjointed observations from my scribblings today:

There are three sectors that they are focussed on - Creative Industries, Transport and Service Industries and three challenges that they want to address - Innovation, Human Factors/Interfaces and Infrastructure. I like the idea that human factors and infrastructure overlap.

With RTK it is now possible to get down to 1mm accuracy with professional GPS, research is now underway to make this level of accuracy available on mobile devices. I don't know why we need that level of accuracy. A few tiresome comments about mobile services being find your nearest Starbucks prompted Gary to have a little rant (he seems to hate 'bucks) but we'll forgive the academics for their quirky sense of humour (I know I am humorously challenged at times). Some interesting thoughts on internal positioning (within buildings) and the need for positioning without infrastructure (need to revisit this and my old article on vector one)

After a lot of slides up comes the guy in jeans with the mac to do a demo of a car sharing application that they knocked together in 6 weeks - "contextual computing and socially mediated real time car sharing" which in English meant hooking up with people at a meeting or in your office to share journeys. Once you understand the challenges in social, human factors and technology plus the combnination of routing and preference/choice algorithms you realise that this is one of those BHP's (the best acronym of the day, read to the end for explanation). And ignoring all advice about doing live demos, particularly of a proof of concept we get a group of people using web browsers, iphones and SMS all joining a car sharing scheme as passengers or drivers and getting routes and pairings suggested. Neat.

The sessions on privacy were some of the best discussions of the subject that I have heard in the last year. I know the cat is out f the bag theory has many adherents but it doesn't cut it for me and this was some sensible thought about trust, and reasons for sharing your personal data and issues about who controls it and ..... I hope that Jeremy Morley gets the slides up on slideshare soon because they really are worth reading through. The tech solution proposed "Personal Data Stores" in the cloud sounded like a very duff idea to me but what do I know?

After lunch we pondered whether Crowds can be authoritative? Muki Haklay updated his research on the coverage and accuracy of Open Street Map with some good motivational research based on a survey. I still have doubts about whether a map that has gaps really is good enough but then if you aren't interested in Newcastle (where apparently coverage is limited) who cares? I wonder whether people will still be contributing in 5 or 10 years or whether we will have found less human intensive ways to gather and maintain the data. Glen Hart of OS finished the session with a somewhat tongue in cheek view of crowd sourcing and its relevance to OS - bottom line is yes but you need to understand what you are getting (I agree with that).

A good agenda, lots of interesting conversations. I hope there are more Horizon events soon.

Oh in case you wanted to know a BHP is a

Bloody Hard Problem - I might be using that one a few times now I know it.

Goes well with a SLAGIATT (answers to @stevenfeldman or via comments here)

Info Porn

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:04:00 +0000

By far the most uplifting session that I attended at wherecamp eu was Hal Bertram from ito world talking about his work visualising Open Street Map and transportation data. People sometimes dismiss the geoweb as "only visualisation" well this is visualisation as art and there is no "only" about it.

Info porn? You work it out. Not my phrase, Hal's

Just sit back and enjoy (next time I will take my gorillapod with me so there will be a bit less camera shake and no heads interrupting your view)

Recharging my geobatteries at #wherecampeu - an unconference

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:47:00 +0000

Yesterday I was fortunate to have a ticket for wherecamp eu. I say fortunate because this was a free unconference and tickets, which were released in blocks over a few weeks, were sold out within a couple of hours of release. Hardly surprising really if you knew what to expect but I didn't. This was my first unconference and I was a bit puzzled as to how this loosely structured event would work.

After 3 years of chairing GeoCommunity I thought I knew a bit about organising a geoconference - at an unconference there is no programme, you just turn up and stick your name and topic on the wall to show that you have something to say or to talk about and people turn up and join in. Some slides but way less than in the death by PowerPoint or drowning in Keynote days that we have all suffered silently. Spontaneity, improvisation and participation seemed to characterise the day.

There were about 180 people there from across Europe (although to be honest it was largely Brits) enjoying two days of geogoodness ranging from stuff about Open Street Map, location based games strategies, some pretty philosophical stuff about sense of place and capital, map visualisation as art to a heated discussion about the value in Making Public Data Public lead by Eddie Curtis of Snowflake titled "Walking with Dinosaurs" and a presentation called "why metadata is shit" from Charles Kennelly of ESRI. Oh yes and Gary Gale of Yahoo expounded on his "theory of stuff".

I talked (no slides because screen wouldn't connect to my mac) about business models "Without a business model we are all FCUK'd" The basic premise was that to turn your idea into a successful business you need to know who your customers are, what they are buying from you, how much they will pay (and how much it costs you) and why they will buy from you. It was a lively session with people standing up and giving elevator pitches with feedback from the audience. One guy from Google did not see the need for giving thought to a business model he said "Why do you need money?" - turned out that he had a successful bedroom business (a mobile browser for iPhones and Androids that didn't store your history so your girl friend wouldn't know you had been watching porn) that he was running outside of his day job so maybe I had it all wrong, to be honest I didn't know there was that much demand for mobile porn.

These are the slides I would have used if the screen had worked for me

Without a business model we are all FCUK'd

View more presentations from Steven Feldman.

It was a great day and thanks and admiration go to Christopher Osborne, Gary Gale and a load of other people who got the event together. My geobatteries were recharged at the end of the day and it prompted several thoughts about the conventional approach to running a conference - GeoCommunity could borrow a bit from this unconference.

A simple bit of GeoVating, any offers of help?

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:43:00 +0000

Louise Campbell at Goodfindr sent me a link to her Craft Nations Unite app that she initiated using Google My Maps. She seems to be getting quite a lot of craft businesses to add their info to this app.

View Craft Nations Unite Map in a larger map

The geocognoscenti may be a little dismissive at the simplicity, lack of search, linkouts to other web pages etc. But for me what is exciting about CNU is that it has been put together by someone who is not a coder but has a passion for craft and encouraging small local businesses and producers to flourish. This was the vision that we had when we launched GeoVation last year.

Anyone out there want to offer Louise a bit of help in adding functionnality and scalability to the site so that she can focus on publicity and reaching the small businesses that CNU could serve? You can find her contact details on the site.

Why customer experience matters Pls RT #custexp

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:16:00 +0000

I just signed up for an account with ******* (name withheld, you will see why) so that I could try out their service which I had read about on my favourite social network (begins with t).

To sign up I had to provide quite a lot of information but to be fair the service has a commercial model that probably needs this information. I then waited for my account to be approved, not too long after I get my user name, some quirky meaningless combination of capitals - FAIL 1 - I want to choose my own user name or use my email address not have another one to store or remember.

Move to first try at logging in. Minimum system requirements Windows and IE - Aargh! FAIL 2

OK so that's me off (and about 35% of browser users) but why not warn me about their requirements before I filled in the application form? FAIL 3

Then I thought that if I wasn't going to be able to use their service I would prefer that they did not keep my personal details in their database. Where is the account settings or other link to manage my account and delete if I want? Nowhere (and that is not a pun on my company name) - FAIL 4

So I then sent this mail to their customer services dept:

I registered to use your services only to discover (after taking time to register) that the service only works when accessed from a Windows based machine running Internet Explorer neither of which I have or wish to acquire.

Approximately 35% of internet users now use a browser other than IE and the number of people using operating systems other than Windows is rapidly growing as well. Shame that I won't be able to find out how good your service is or view the quality of ******.

Since I am not going to be using ****** I wanted to delete my account and remove all of the contact information that I provided to you, unfortunately there is no obvious link to manage my account details or to unsubscribe. Could you remove my details from your database and confirm to me that this has been done.

Thank you

Back came this response

Good morning Mr Feldman

I can confirm that the account has been closed

Kind regards

****** *******

Senior Customer Service Executive

Am I missing something here? No apology for any inconvenience caused, no explanation or response to the points made, no regret that I wont be able to use their service or spend money with them. And this person has the title Senior Customer Service Executive! FAIL 5

I sent back this curt response

Thank you

No apology for any inconvenience or explanation of design choices

I get the message

I haven't heard anything else. I won't be using this company, nor would I recommend them to anyone that I know. FAIL 6

You may be wondering why I have not shared the name of the company, I don't want to flame them or cause them undue embarrassment (although maybe they would not care). The reason for posting this is to illustrate how easily a poor customer experience can convert a potential champion into a peeved "detractor" (that's the language of customer experience and satisfaction analysts).

Now if the detractor has a well read blog (not me) or media access or an active social network the company could find itself facing some pretty poor publicity. I don't want that to happen to these guys but I do hope that if they read this blog or a tweet about it (and they might) then they think about retraining their Senior Customer Service Executives.

If you wanted to share this story with other companies who could learn from it then the tag #custexp would enable others to follow the viral spread of the story and learn how important every customer contact is to the success of a business.

UMapper, geotagged tweets and the late Michael Foot

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:06:00 +0000

Last week UMapper announced a new feature to their service that makes it amazingly simple to build and customise a map that can show geotagged tweets based on any search you choose.

Today I have been following the flurry of tweets about the late Michael Foot (if you are about my age he might be an old hero).

In Less than 5 minutes thanks to UMapper and Cloudmade I was able to put this together. No doubt many of you could do much more imaginative things with UMapper. If Michael Foot doesn't interest you then just change the search term in the bottom right hand corner of the map and search for tweets of your choice, or go build your own twitter map.

Interesting to see how London centric the tweets are. Pan the map or zoom out to see how the density varies.

At one level I think it is incredible that embedding an interactive map like this with social media real time feed is so simple and accessible to non technical people, who foresaw this 5 years ago or even 2 years ago? However in the same week that UMapper announced this new capability Platial one of the original darlings of community mapping and neogeography announced that they were ceasing operations, presumably because they had run out of money (apparently they had been running on volunteers and thin air for a while. One of the founders said

"Platial was a movement and it will be carried on a thousand fold. It is real and irrevocable. It put the power of maps in the hands of people and lets us see the world as an interconnected tapestry of stories and perspectives.

Sincerely, Di-Ann Eisnor"

What does that tell us? Maybe even movements need a business model.

Maybe someone out there will have a view? I feel a couple of posts on business models and sustainability coming on. More soon

The times they are a changin

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:51:00 +0000

I have been looking through the feedback from the AGI GI in 2015 survey that we ran as part of the foresight study that will be published soon (just need to finish my third of the editors intro). One comment caught my attention "none of the big 3 software vendors will still be around in 2015"

Not sure who the big 3 vendors are? Well change 3 to 5 or even 8 and you have pretty much swept up all of the players in UK GI software supply. How many of these companies will be around in 5 years time?

To survive let alone flourish GI software providers are going to need to change dramatically to adapt to the challenges of new business and technical models. Some will be too encumbered by their legacies or their management. Will anyone rember them in 2016?

So who do you think will be the winners and losers?

More thoughts on this in the intro to the AGI Foresight Study in March.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Reading the runes

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 20:14:00 +0000

If you have a LinkedIn account you can get a weekly update of what your contacts are up to including new profiles, pictures and requests for references.

Sometimes you can correlate bursts of activity from multiple contacts in the same organisation with impending restructuring or downsizing (aka layoffs). Try it, you may be surprised.

Now if someone could write an app to do this on a large scale they might have a market prediction tool.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A GeoVating good day

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:46:00 +0000

So we finished the GeoVation Awards Programme with a cracking showcase at the wonderful RGS venue in South Ken on Tuesday evening. I got home late and had to pack to head off to for a series of meetings in another time zone first ting Wednesday so I have not had much time to gather my thoughts or write anything up.

I want to write about the whole GAP, what we achieved, what we can improve, whether it is worthwhile and how we should/could move forward but that will have to wait till I get home.

In the meantime Gary Gale has blogged on his views as a judge and shared some pics & Paul Clarke the papperazzi of the twitterati has posted some more pics

Now the hard work starts for the winning ventures and for the judges and GeoVation team who will be supporting them.

Another nut to crack

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:32:00 +0000

Just as everyone has been getting excited/delirious/innovative over the launch of data.gov.uk (and of course they should be chuffed) a little spanner appears in the metaphorical works.

Over 2000 people signed this petition to No 10 seeking to get postcodes freed up after the Ernest Marples site was closed down and several useful services that relied upon it were forced to close. Now you might have though that after the PM himself announced in November that he was going to make Ordnance Survey midscale data freely available for use and reuse (even commercial) that post codes were a slam dunk. Here is what Gordon Brown said on 17th November:

And from April next year Ordnance Survey will open up information about administrative boundaries, postcode areas and mid-scale mapping.

No 10 has just responded to the petition on the day after opening up 2,500 data sets many of which have a geographic component and guess what?

As access to the PAF is governed under a condition of licence, Postcomm monitors its practice. Royal Mail’s licence obliges the company to make access to the PAF available on reasonable terms. Postcomm allows the company to make a reasonable specified profit margin and monitors its accounts.

Postcomm has previously undertaken a public consultation reviewing how the PAF was managed. The consultation started in 2006 and finished in 2007. Postcomm took all the diverse uses of the PAF into account before reaching its decision in 2007, announcing more safeguards for the management of the address information held in the PAF with the aim of making sure that the PAF is maintained properly and made available on fair and reasonable terms. The findings of the consultation can be found on Postcomm’s website (www.psc.gov.uk).

If any PAF user or stakeholder feels that Royal Mail is not complying with the terms of section 116 of the PSA 2000 or Condition 22 of its licence, they can either raise concerns direct with the company or with Postcomm. Postcomm would consider the merits of any such concerns in the light of its statutory duties.

I think in English that means "No, no no"

Quite how this response fits with the current spirit of openness in government and the plans to free up some of Ordnance Survey's data products after consultation is beyond me!

Perhaps Sir Tim needs to put a call into his friend Gordon to point out the inconsistency. Oh for a bit of joined up government.

UPDATE: This post on the Ernest Marples blog (which I found after writing this post) sets out very eloquently why the response is so inadequate.

GeoVating thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:56:00 +0000

Less than a week to go to the GeoVation Awards Showcase, starting at 1pm on 26th January at the RGS in London.

There will be 9 ventures pitching. Although I did not have a vote in the judges shortlist session I found most of my favourites seemed to get the judges thumbs up and I am not saying which ones didn't.

It wouldn't be fair to mention one or two of the ventures and not others so I encourage you to pop along to the list of finalists pick your favourites and then register for the Showcase next Tuesday (there are still a few places left) and vote for your choice for the £1,000 Community Award and cheer the winners of the 3 main seed fund awards totalling £20,000.

In some regards the showcase is the beginning of the whole GeoVation program not the end. Once we have made the awards the real fun will start as we try to support the ventures and hopefully see their ideas progress and succeed. I am sure they will welcome offers of advice and help from the wider community - hint hint.

I know some of my friends in the coolest regions of the geoplanet are a bit sceptical about GeoVation, who knows you could be right but you will never find out if you don't take an afternoon to come along to the Showcase and see what people are doing.

Oh and don't forget that if you come along the good folk at MapAction will benefit to the tune of £10 per attendee and they sure need every bit of support that we can give them.

What will UK GI look like in 2015? Your opinions wanted

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:44:00 +0000

You may recall me mentioning the AGI Foresight Study that I have been helping to edit.

We are drawing to a conclusion but before we write the final wrap we would like to gather some input from the wider community (a bit late I know but weather, holidays and technology have all conspired to delay us). So hop along to SurveyMonkey and share your wisdom with us.

The survey will be included in the editorial which will be published in February.

And if you can mention the survey to your geofriends or geotweet it that would be appreciated

Thanks

GeoVation Awards Shortlist published

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:32:00 +0000

The judges have met (well virtually) - plans have been reviewed, combed, questioned and debated and finally we have a shortlist of ventures for the GeoVation Awards Showcase on 26th January.

You can find the 8 shortlisted ventures here

The short-listed candidates will be invited to present their plans at the GeoVation Awards Showcase, to be held at the Royal Geographical Society on 26 January. Doors open at 11:30 with a sandwich box lunch before the main event which kicks-off at 13:00. £10,000 is up for grabs for the outright winner, and £5,000 each for two runners-up. A Community Award of £1,000 will also be made, as voted for members of the audience on the day.

The GeoVation judging panel includes Steve Coast the founder of crowd-source mapping project, OpenStreetMap; James Alexander, CEO of Green Thing, the online service that encourages people to lead greener lives; James Cutler, CEO of eMapSite and Gary Gale, Director of Geo-Engineering at Yahoo.

It should be an interesting and enjoyable afternoon, so why not come along you might meet a collaborator, an investor, an employer or just a plain old friend.

Registration for the GeoVation Awards Showcase is free (but don't leave it too late as the numbers are limited) and you can also help the good folk at MapAction. GeoVation will be donating £10 to Map Action for each registered delegate who attends the showcase.

See you there hopefully

You can't teach an old dog new tricks

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 17:50:00 +0000

But you can repurpose an old video clip with a new humorous set of subtitles

Enjoy

In the wonderful world of free

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:52:00 +0000

In the wonderful world of free you pay (yes pay) London Underground to advertise a free browser. I suppose there must be some logic here, it just bypassed me.

No doubt there is some added value to getting people to click on your ad inventory in your own browser. I wonder what is hidden under the covers of Chrome.

Watch out for the adverts for Maps and mobile directions

Posted via web from Steven's posterous

Civilisation, roaming charges, GPS and holidays (not neccessarily in that order)

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:50:00 +0000

Back from a fantastic holiday in Egypt except ....

Roaming rates in Egypt (or for that matter most places) are so extortionate that you can't use mobile internet services. I cannot see how all of the much vaunted location based services like Rummble, Yelp etc are going to reach the travellers who most need them if the cost of using them is £6/MB! There surely can't be a justification for the current level of data roaming charges, perhaps the EU needs to add this to their list of gripes with mobile operators (not that that would help in Egypt, the US etc) because there is no effective competition on international data roaming packages to my knowledge.

Planning ahead I downloaded maps of Cairo using OffMaps only to discover that for some reason the GPS on my iPhone did not work all the time I was away. Mysterious? I know that Egypt opened up to GPS receivers last year, surely they can't be blocking the GPS signal on my phone? Perhaps it isn't the GPS that is doing most of the locating on my phone but a combination of the cell tower locations and Skyhook (I doubt they are too hot in Cairo). So it was OffMaps without GPS to help me work out where we were which isn't easy when most of the street signs are only in arabic script. Good thing we had a nice old fashioned paper map with landmarks etc.

So forgetting all of that what about the civilisation bit. The Step Pyramid (or Djoser Pyramid) at Sakkara was built about 5,200 years ago.

Within a couple of hundred years the more famous pyramids of Giza were being built, the largest is over 130m high.

About 500 years later the Temple of Hatshepsut had been built

Which makes you wonder a bit about so called Western Civilisation. The only thing that I know of that is pre Roman and of any substance in the UK is Stonehenge which is (depending on who you believe) 4,500 years old which is pretty cool but sort of pales into insignificance when compared with the Egyptian stuff

So how do the pyramids fit into the same blog as a rant about data roaming rates and GPS? Not sure really but perhaps the pyramids and temples of Egypt offer a humbling alternative to my (or our) expectations of technological advancement. They managed to build them without GPS, CAD, modern surveying and materials technology but they did have one heck of a lot of people available, apparently they were paid in beer.

Happy new year. More pictures here if you are interested.

GeoSeasonal Greetings

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 18:03:00 +0000

To all my geofriends and geofollowers I want to wish you geoseasonal greetings.

Whatever your faith and geoinclination (neo, paleo, proto or nono) I hope this time of year brings you and yours peace and happiness.

May 2010 be a geotastic and prosperous year for you

Thanks to Gary Gale a geolly good geogeezer for the use of his great geopic

Come to the GeoVation Awards Showcase and we will support MapAction

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:13:00 +0000

The deadline is drawing closer for submissions for a GeoVation Award, plans are thudding onto the GeoVation virtual doormat as we speak, the judges are panting with anticipation and the award funds are burning a hole in our e-pocket!

There is still time to submit a venture plan to The GeoVation Awards Programme this blog will tell you how.

All we need now is you to come along to the GeoVation Awards Showcase at the Royal Geographical Society on the afternoon of 26th January. For every registered delegate who attends the Showcase, GeoVation will be making a £10 donation to MapAction.

So come along, grab a geosandwich, listen to some exciting and innovative prospective new ventures utilising geography, vote for the £1,000 community award which will be given to one of the venture teams at the end of the day in addition to the main awards and you will be supporting a very worthwhile geocharity. It should be a lot of geofun.

Have a look at some of the ventures on the GeoVation Challenge to get a preview of what you might see on the 26th.

Registration here is free

New Years Cheer

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:17:00 +0000

It has been a tough year for many who work in UK Geo and uncertainty about the future will be clouding the celebrations for some as we approach the new year. So here is a bit of good news for all of us.

The Guardian is asking readers of its Technology section to pick their top technologies for the next 5 years as part of their final print edition, in the article they include the latest Gartner Technology Hype Curve. Just look at "location aware applications"

So we are pushing up the slope of enlightenment and should be mainstream within 2 to 5 years. Now will that be good news for those currently working in the industry or will there be some new entrants into the market who will reap the benefits of "enlightenment" at the expense of established players?

I can feel an end of year poll coming on if I can work out how to do it on the Blogger platform (suggestions?)

Who pays for our new pavement?

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:10:00 +0000

It's a decade or more since our street was enhanced with the questionable wonders of cable from Telewest or whoever they were before they became Virgin.

The byproduct was our pavements being ripped and then relaid with broken uneven paving stones, patches of tarmac and shoddy workmanship. Why Haringey allowed them to get away with it I don't know. Then recently Thames have replaced the water mains and had to dig up much of the pavement to make the connections to the houses. Loads more tarmac patches.

At long last and after numerous complaints and probably a few accidents we now have a beautiful new flat pavement being laid. I wonder whether Haringey is recovering any of the cost from Virgin and Thames? Or will this be paid for from my council tax?

What's this got to do with geo? Not sure. Oh yes "someone has to pay to fix the mess"

Correction - Poscodes will not be free

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:20:00 +0000

A case of the left and right hands not being connected.

This morning the BBC web site ran an article on the freeing up of the postcode dataset

"Currently organisations that want access to datasets that tie postcodes to physical locations cannot do so without incurring a charge.Following a brief consultation, the postcode information is set to be freed in April 2010.The announcement about releasing postcode data came as part of a much wider plan to use technology as part of the Smarter Government strategy. As part of this push, the government said it would start "consulting on making mapping and postcode datasets available for free reuse from April 2010.""

Within a couple of hours Giles Finnemore, the Head of Mrketing at the Address Management Unit of the Royal Mail sent an e-mail to all the current licensees of the PAF

Dear PAF(r) Customer

You may be aware of a story on the BBC website today that Government is planning to give anyone free access to postcode data.

Access to postcodes is already, and will continue to be, free to every citizen via www.royalmail.com/postcodes4free.

For the avoidance of doubt PAF(r), the Postcode Address File, remains the intellectual property of Royal Mail and is supplied and used under licence. The new and recently published licences come into effect from April 2010. There are no plans for that to change.

Maintaining a world class postal address file requires significant ongoing investment and it is right that organisations who obtain value from using the file pay to do so.

We are aware of no plans for Government to pay Royal Mail for businesses and organisations to use our address file.

Regards

Giles

Seems that Giles listening to Gordon. I wonder whether he got a call from the Cabinet Office today?

Someone is going to have to do some back pedalling here.

10/12/09 Some useful comments on the Free Our Data blog following up on this

Embedding content into Google maps

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:35:00 +0000

Have you noticed the points of interest data that is now incorporated into Google Maps when you zoom in?

I know it has been there for a while but I only recently discovered that it is clickable - could be I just missed it or it could be because the click tolerances for some of the tiny square dot icons are very small or it could be that it is one of those neat tiny changes that google just slips in from time to time (well almost every week actually). No doubt Ed Parsons if he is reading this will chip in and tell us when this feature launched.

In addition to restaurants, hotels and cinemas I found Muswell Hill railway station. Hah I thought caught you out Google! There is no Muswell Hill railway station, the line closed ages and ages ago. But when I found the click zone on the item up pops this useful bit of local history from wikipedia

Pretty neat!

Now you can see how Google will start to drive revenue from all those sites using the API to embed maps or develop applications, the adverts will be embedded in the map. Now can they make them context and user dependent?

To privatise or not to privatise, that is the question

noreply@blogger.com (Steven) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:46:00 +0000

Yesterday Gordon Brown announced a "radical plan to put frontline services first by streamlining government". The headlines have focussed on his comments on the pay of senior civil service employees perhaps masking some inconsistency in the aspirations and the detail of the programme Putting the Frontline First.

"Putting the frontline first: smarter government sets out how Government will improve public service outcomes while achieving the fiscal consolidation that is vital to helping the economy grow. The plan has three central actions: to drive up standards by strengthening the role of citizens and civic society, to free up public services by recasting the relationship between the centre and the frontline, and to streamline the centre of government, saving money for sharper delivery."

So what is wrong with that you may ask? Drive up standards, shift focus to frontline and save money - sounds good but is it realistic and deliverable?

Last month the PM announced that a range of data sets from OS were going to be made freely available garnering widespread praise from all who have argued that geographic information is key to opening up public information and allowing innnovators to create new services and activists to hold public services accountable for their decisions and performance. In yesterday's announcement buried in the detail was

"We are publishing an OEP asset portfolio alongside today's report. This portfolio sets out those state-owned assets which government might seek to commercialise over the medium term. The OEP asset portfolio includes a new framework to govern which government activities should be managed as a business and which should be sold. For those activities which are best managed as businesses in the public sector, we will separate the ownership role from the customer and policy role, with a presumption that they should be incorporated"

The OEP Asset Portfolio can be found here. The introduction explains that

"The Government has today established a new policy framework – summarised in Annex A to this document – to guide decisions on how government activities will be delivered. This will facilitate clearer decision making and faster progress in improving business performance and, where appropriate, pursuing transactions"

One might think that pursuing transactions is a euphemism for privatisation or sell off. The section on the Ordnance Survey has some choice but confusing nuggets (my italics below) including

"On 17 November 2009, the Prime Minister announced that Government proposes to make certain datasets from Ordnance Survey available for free, including information about administrative boundaries, postcode areas and mid-scale mapping. There will be a public consultation on these proposals from December 2009, with implementation of any change from April 2010.

The consultation will also cover other issues around the interaction of Ordnance Survey with the market – particularly the regulatory environment and the governance structure around the free offering.

Market studies have identified significant growth opportunities across the geographic information (GI) market, as data is made more available and new technologies are used to support innovation and greater use of GI data and services. The outcome of the consultation above may affect the opportunities available to Ordnance Survey in some of these growth areas and the alternative asset options outlined below. It may also open up new opportunities to work more closely with other parts of the public sector to realise efficiency savings, for example in local government resource planning and deployment, or working more closely with the Land Registry. Similarly there may be an opportunity to collaborate with local government and Royal Mail to provide a definitive addressing solution for Great Britain."

But then at the end of the chapter under the heading of Private Sector we get

"There are a growing number of commercial market opportunities, particularly around value- added services using geospatial information, which Ordnance Survey is not currently well placed to exploit.
A private sector investor and/or partner might bring expertise, new market access or additional capital for innovation. This could accelerate the development and delivery of these opportunities more quickly and successfully than Ordnance Survey operating alone."

So does this mean that privatisation is on or off? My hunch is off (no inside knowledge though).

I wonder how much of this section on Ordnance Survey had to be rewritten after Gordon Brown's announcement on 17th November. Do the left and right hands know what the other is doing? Maybe that is why senior civil servants are getting those high salaries that Gordon is so concerned about!