Spatial Miscellany » News

What would you create with Public Information?

Rob — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:16:11 +0000

…the Power Of Information taskforce is asking that question; and is prepared to stump up £20,000 to take your idea to the next level! The reasoning behind the competition is to get an understanding of the data and information the government needs to share to move things forward. To get the competition underway they’ve just released some new government datasets; for example, a list of all 22,000 schools.

Their website to harvest ideas (showusabetterway.co.uk) has been up for just over a day and seems to be getting a terrific response, I ran the ideas to date through Wordle to get a flavour of the requests being made, here are the results:

Congratulations to the POI taskforce; it’s a great step forward for the Free Our Data campaign. So if you’ve got ideas, get over there and jot them down. I’ve thrown my hat in the ring with the suggestion of a Road Works API…

GeoWebServices live webcast:

Rob — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:20:24 +0000

There will be a live webcast of the Geospatial Web Services workshop held at the University of Nottingham today:

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/geography/geowebservices/

Microsoft aquires Multimap…

Rob — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:28:51 +0000

This week news broke that Microsoft have acquired Multimap, a UK based web mapping company. Multimap is a popular website for looking up an address and\or finding travel directions. As a company Multimap have a proven business model based on selling location based advertising (long before Sergey met Larry at Stanford), and a consultancy service for the provision of bespoke web mapping solutions. But why do Microsoft want Multimap, and what do you get for $50 Million?

The obvious answer is clients. With a client list in excess of 1200 companies, which reads like a who’s who of business, the acquisition gives Microsoft a big foot in the door to sell similar services based on their Virtual Earth platform.

Perhaps Microsoft may find use for some of the datasets acquired by Multimap, who recently pulled off the remarkable feat of displaying OS mapping data online via their mapping API. In addition, one suspects they’ll also pick up some canny developers, some of whom even blog (here and here).

But for a company whose name is often spelled with a dollar…Micro$oft, and whose nickname is that of a small rodent (The Vole), could their intentions be somewhat more sinister? In acquiring Multimap, and their intellectual property, one assumes Microsoft now has that all embracing patent for displaying a map online…

#6,240,360 – Abstract
A map of the area of a client computer is requested from a map server. Information relating to a place of interest is requested from an information server by the client computer. The information is superimposed or overlaid on a map image at a position on the map image corresponding to the location of the place of interest on the map. The information (or “overlay”) server may contain details of, for example, hotels, restaurants, shops or the like, associated with the geographical coordinates of each location. The map server contains map data, including coordinate data representing the spatial coordinates of at least one point on the area represented by the map.

I don’t think I’m alone in thinking this patent borders on absurd, firstly for its breadth of coverage, and secondly its filing date- long after maps were displayed online alongside textual information. Multimap never had the deep pockets required to defend this patent, and perhaps not the inclination, can the same be said for their new owners?

Related posts from James, Kirk and elsewhere.

The Economist, mainstream media, and the geoweb meme…

Rob — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 10:55:18 +0000

This week The Economist has picked up the baton for propagating the ‘geoweb’ meme that has rippled through mainstream media this summer. Obviously, it’s great the see the importance of geography, and geographic information systems (GIS), recognised in such an authoritative publication…but for such a fiercely independent newspaper, I’m a little disappointed with their article ‘The world on your desktop’. Frankly, it amounts to little more than a rehash of material published previously elsewhere…and is no more than a brief introduction to the plethora of Geobrowsers.

The Economist prides itself on informing (and challenging) business, political and financial decision-makers. It was first published in 1843 to take part in ‘a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing progress’. With such a marked purpose, I really think they’ve missed the economists’ story in their coverage of the much talked about geoweb…

How has the emergence of Google Earth changed the business model of data providers? How have geospatial markets responded to such disruptive innovation? What can these markets expect in future? Specifically, I’d be interested to read an article from the The Economist that discusses the present accessibility of UK geospatial data and it’s impact on the geoweb; the merits of the free our data campaign, or a private alternative; and the adequacy of the trading fund model that currently underpins the Ordnance Survey? But then I guess I’m not really the business, political and financial decision-making audience they have in mind…oh well.

NewStatesman New Media Awards

Rob — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 11:54:30 +0000

The NewStatesmen have announced the winners of their 2007 New Media awards; congratulations to everyone at mySociety who secured an award for their ‘contribution to civic society’ with their exemplary website… FixMyStreet.

FixMyStreet is easy to use and demonstrates the benefits of online mapping. Residents can report, view or discuss local problems by locating the issue on a map. The magazine supplement can be downloaded (or viewed online) by following this link…New Media Awards, and you can discover other mySociety projects here…mySociety projects.

Britain – a spatial analysis…

Rob — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:18:34 +0000

Earlier in the week, the BBC reported on the latest research findings from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF). The JRF has been investigating poverty and wealth across Britain, and how its spatial distribution has changed between 1968 to 2005. Despite a heap of academic research having been undertaken looking at poverty and wealth in the UK, apparently little work has been undertaken that investigates the geography of rich and poor; with their latest research, the JRF have aimed to address this.

Buried deep inside the report are a whole host of maps that illustrate a spatial analysis of Britain’s changing poverty and affluence over the last 40 years. The report and supporting data are available for download, as a combination of pdf and xls files; with a little manipulation this data could make for some attractive Google/Yahoo/Microsoft online maps.

The JRF concludes that the most significant change in the spatial distribution of wealth over the last 40 years has been the clustering of wealth and poverty. Urban clustering of poverty has increased, while wealthy households have concentrated in the outskirts and surrounds of major cities, especially those classified as ‘exclusive wealthy’, which have been steadily concentrating around London.

Pretty much every map in the report suggests the overarching spatial distribution of wealth in the UK, the north-south divide, is as pronounced today as it was 40 years ago. As the gap between rich and poor has increased, the report concludes…and I quote…‘average households are gradually disappearing from London and the south east’!

I wonder what other spatial distributions of wealth and poverty have emerged elsewhere throughout the world, over the last 40 years?

Free Our (Geo) Data…

Rob — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:32:04 +0000

Great news for the FreeOurData campaign…new Minister of State for the Ministry of Justice, MP Michael Wills, whose responsibilities include Freedom of Information, has asked to speak to them…read more here.