DIY UK Webmaps

The UK OS OpenSpace Mapbuilder application helps registrants make a local map, add localised information (links, pictures etc.), save the code and post it on the web. Anyone must be qualified, however, because the output is HTML code... that relies on user knowledge to post the webmap! Here is my favorite walk in the village outside Cottenham, north of Cambridge UK, with a mix of my own pictures and those found on the web.

A tale of two approaches

Continuing on my "tale of two" series - conferences, cities and systems - here are current affairs promised in my previous blog. Two events displayed contrasting approaches in finding novel ways to solve old problems.

Standards & Metadata - Part VI

A fable by Paolo Coelho inspired this post, a follow-on to Part V. Here is an excerpt from his e-book Stories for Parents, Children and Grandchildren - Volume 1.

Webmaps, history, climate and geology

Chatting with local history buffs brought up amazing facts about climate change and sea level rise since the Middle Ages in East Anglia. One book's sketch map relates how the North Sea coastline differed from today, and how that affected Anglo-Saxon socio-economics there before and after the Norman conquest and the Domesday book.

2D or not 2D, that is the question

Friends went to see Avatar the movie in 3D, while I saw it in 2D. We met to compare and contrast, mostly in regards to how technologies have evolved. My own interest is if immersive technologies will affect mapping and the web, as devices get smaller and smaller from laptops to mobiles

What is next big thing?

Recent groundbreaking news abounds, and both an exciting and challenging times lie ahead.

"Who you gonna call?"

"Geo busters!" (apologies Ghost Busters).

Geodata access and availability is the real story behind the flurry of news around UK government freeing up some data, vs. Google collecting it and returning it for free, and many others. And this happens against a backdrop of various SDI (spatial data infrastrucutre) intiatives. I joined a UK government data developers mailing list, to educate myself on the ins-and-outs of data provision at the coal face, so to speak. And RDFa emerges as the way to resolve this - the more metadata one provides within any given dataset, the easier it is to classify and maintain internally, and to discover and distribute externally.

Fun with Maps

I had planned a GIS Day project, but my schedule got way ahead of me, so here it is instead. I twittered a few spatially-related jokes to ask for some more, and I post here its beginnings on my website (click on the image). It combines a feed-back form to send suggestions, and a map to post the country, the joke if it's appropriate, and the author if given.

Digital ghost towns

Issues with Google's maps are aplenty, as Peter Batty, James Fee and others piped up amidst flurry of crowd-sourcing and free-sourcing etc. In quiet rural Northwest of England, however, Argleton appears to be an enigma - not only is that non-existant locality posted by some web streetmaps, but also searching can post images and businesses nearby - truly a digital ghost town! Having just compared various street maps in my home town, I did the same in the British postcode area: L39 5.

A tale of two systems

The last picture in my previous post was in fact a teaser - the basic premise is that with the right technical tools and business plan, an entire system can be assembled today for the cost of just the software of yesterday. So basically a sports car can be had today, for what it cost to just get the chassis a few years ago. How then, you might ask?