Monthly Archives: November 2008

No one could accuse government of being joined up or agile. The conflicting priorities of different departments and initiatives have been exposed in the recent posts on Free Our Data on how OS licensing prevents public sector bodies from publishing “derived data” (data captured using OS mapping as a background or reference) in Google mashups – the problem appears to be around Google’s terms which may imply some rights to the data published over Google […]

Charles Arthur in Guardian Technology pointed out this heat map built from the leaked BNP membership list and how the author had taken down the original mash up that had shown the postcode locations due to privacy concerns. Have a look at the adverts that Google offers alongside this map – BNP Peptide <!– document.write(" “);sl[sl.length]=’View ads about Nick Griffin’;//–> Nick Griffin <!– document.write(" “);sl[sl.length]=’View ads about BNP Canine’;//–> BNP Canine <!– document.write(" “);sl[sl.length]=’View ads […]

It is nearly time to start the planning of next year’s AGI GeoCommunity ’09 conference. Would you like to be involved in planning the conference themes and program? It is an opportunity to contribute to our industry’s leading event and it is a lot of fun. Interested? Mail me through the Kontactr link on the right of this page and I will forward your details to the AGI or answer any questions you may have […]

When I first bought a car it was commonplace for people to carry out some simple repairs and maintenance to their car. it was also the norm that one had some basic understanding of how the various elements of the car fitted together and what they did – clutch and gearbox for example. Today one often hears phrases like “you don’t need to know how a car/dvd/computer works to be able to use it” Maybe […]

Is ESRI now synonymous with GIS? When you visit the front pages of the major vendors websites there is an acronym that seems to be missing from most – GIS. Autodesk has no mention of GIS or Geo (although a search does offer numerous entries deeper within the site)ESRI heads the page with GIS and Mapping SoftwareIntergraph uses Geospatially Powered SolutionsMapInfo has coined Location Intelligence, of course the company name, while it lasts, does rather […]

Do you twitter? When I first saw twitter I just didn’t get it – it seemed like a Facebook status post without all the other Facebook stuff. Then someone used the term micro-blogging and I started to see how it could be useful to me, actually Facebook Status without all of the other junk is quite an attractive proposition. Despite the many wonders of the iPhone I cannot use the virtual keyboard to type a […]

Tiny Geocoder is a simple geocoder (and API) that returns lat long surprisingly well if there is no ambiguity. Not sure if this is a simplified front end to Google’s API or whether they have their own geocoding database behind it. 

Navteq announced an increase of 40% in the number of users updating the maps in their navigation devices. That level of growth might suggest that they are coming from a pretty low level of users.  I wonder how many people are driving around with out of date maps and speed camera databases? Perhaps it doesn’t matter. 

In case you haven’t seen this already it may make you smile and shows that not all navigation errors are down to satnav. According to BBC News Wales  When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed. Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”. The blunder is […]

In a great presentation on Neogegraphy and Spatial Data Quality Mike Dobson decribed the phenomenon of User Generated Content as “It’s all about me”

A friend sent me this neat example of how the Obama campaign are using technology to reach the voters. I promise I would have voted for Obama if I had been a registered US voter

Never mind the wisdom of the crowd, this article points out the potential gullibility of the crowd. Although it is written from a B2B sales perspective, it does prompt some thought about trusting what you find online.