A New Idea

I have been without an operating system for nearly six months now. I've got to say that I really don't miss it. 

OK, yeah, Google takes a bit of getting used to and OK, yeah it doesn't do absolutely everything that my old laptop did. But what I spend 99% of my time doing (email, meetings, notes, docs, presentations) it does it really fast. 

Added to this all of the real time collaboration tools that just amazingly work really really well and I am totally converted. 

A new idea. 

I am in the business of making maps though so how do I survive? I have had to be inventive at times, this has even included me borrowing other's computers for their use of QGIS or setting a trial account of a legacy GIS vendor's online platform, but for the most part I have found I can enable my knowledge worker customers using Google Maps for business. All online, all through Chrome OS. 

Google fusion. One small step...

So I have been on a project working towards examining what information is available open source now. The idea was to use a proprietary software program to display this data as it allows the geocoding and visualisation of tabular data.

That was until Google Labs just blew me away.The below map was created with absolutely no GIS knowledge or Data manipulation required. It shows country of origin of UK citizenship applicants. The data comes from the Guardian Data blog and the geocoding and visualisation comes from the newly released Google Fusion tables from Google labs.


I have just realised that some readers do not show the map. You may have to visit my blog page to see it.

What I like is that you can watch the points being added on the map as they are geocoded and that there is no input from the user. The Google geocoder even deciphers US to mean United States of America and displays it accordingly. Interestingly though when I tried to geocode the Guardians local council votes the Google geocoder recognised many of the councils as being in the US (I suppose this is our own fault for lack of originality in New World town names all those years ago).

Check out the fusion tables. I offer one final thought and that is when will we see the first online geospatial analytics engine? We have JUMP (an open source JAVA based GIS) so when will we see something capable of bridging the gap of what Google fusion does and what mainstream GI systems do?

Thoughts?

The future?

Interesting (and short) video describing cloud computing here with Dave Chappell at Microsoft Tech Ed. Basically the premise is that cloud computing is a coming. But how will this affect us? Well I am being the ranting optimist and say that the sooner we move to online operating systems, online desktops, online everything then data will follow. Once people get used to the idea of a new online paradigm then hopefully a paradigm of complete interoperability and sharing of data can follow.

The cynic in me says that we are a very long way off this at the moment. There are huge problems to over come first.

The geek in me wants to embrace all this....

Google Monopoly

Paul Ramsey has blogged an interesting point about Google monopolising the Internet market.
Historically monopolies have been for tangible goods. As history has progressed we are seeing a transition form the tangible to the intangible (salt, cars, baseball, Microsoft and now Google?).

Should we worry about this?

My last blog spoke to a market versus provider led market. Google are chucking out huge volumes of data and tools for us to use. Tim Berners-Lee is waiting for a time for a consumer led market where we are asking for specific data (linked data). Google are now providing us with online proprietary tools (Google docs, Google Profile, Google Maps, Picassa) which must be used in unison to derive the most value from them. In the process we are adding to the information available and thus perpetuating Google.

Is this healthy? When comes the time that this monopoly of choice becomes a monopoly of necessity. One can all opt into and opt out of these services (think Google Latitude). But what happens when Google becomes the only viable option for deriving the most value from our Geographical Information. A flick of a switch and the Service Level Agreements change and Google start charging for services.

Oooo errr.

RAW DATA NOW!

An ever interesting source of innovative talks, TED has a new Tim Berners-Lee video advocating a new evolution in the use of the Internet.



Tim Berners-Lee is calling for the availability of raw data on the Internet. He suggests that the first growth of the Internet was the ability to link document from anywhere to anywhere. What we now need to do is move beyond documents and make the raw data available. This has created his new idea of Linked Data.

What I find interesting about this is that he insists that it not just be the features/objects of the data which are available but the relationships around it. The way I think of this is that a WFS currently supplies a feature. it gives you the attributes and the geometry. It does not give you the relationship with other objects; the topology: this is what linked data is providing.

Where is this going? Well, where is it not! Let's explore one of his examples: Social networking. We have Facebook which is one giant E-R diagram of people. If we start to expose the relationships as data behind facebook and social networking sites then we have a seemingly never ending supply of data about people. Just imagine the value which could be derived form making that information available!

Now this is where he discusses the silos which are created around each of these social networking applications. Imagine if linked data took off and the ability to link all information offered through each social networking site became available.

We would end up with a mega organisation which hasn't been suggested since the days of googlezon!


Now onto GI. Tim actually brings openstreetmap into the fray at the end of his talk when he advocates the grass roots approach to making data available. By everyone doing their bit to produce a little bit, a lot is created.

Now finally I can say my thought:
We are experiencing an explosion in The GI industry which had been stimulated by the provision of data. What Tim Berners-Lee is advocating (and what we are seeing with openstreetmap) is a collaboration, customer led economy where we as a collective are calling for the new direction of information provision. Are we at this next stage of economics? Google shows no sign of slowing down their information provision. As long as they are chucking data at us we cannot catch up enough o start demanding any data let alone RAW DATA NOW!

TiltShift - continuing to evolve

Continuing on my theme at the moment of making data/tools available and seeing what people can do with them I want to bring in Tilt Shift photography. This is something which has been featuring heavily on the Digitial Urban blog over the last few months.

Tilt Shift t is an online application for an old photography trick. What is nice to see is the recent proliferation of new applications to this. Mustardcuffins has used a mixture of tilt shift and time lapse photography to produce a really quite nice video. This is similar to my most favorite recent online video (below).


Bathtub II from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Now the point of this all in my mind is once again showing that there really is a innovative and imaginative audience out there. The increasingly large amount of tools, methods and information which is being provided, bombarded some may say, onto the public is producing some really nice results.

Wouldn't it just be lovely to see some online GI tools and data, produced in an innovative and easy to use way which could allow these sorts of users to develop off. Who knows what may be produced. UCL have achieved astonishing success with their maptube which I would suggest is the first application of such sorts.

Is there no end of Google's index?

One of the things I want to explore on this blog is the rise of Google's absolute insistence in making information public and accessible. Important to this is making information discoverable.

On this topic, this recent post from Dave Bouwmann illustrates my point a little. It is not enough that Google is making an index of books available but they are now indexing within those books.

So what has this to do with GI? Well I think that this perhaps illustrates the distinction between making a data collection available versus making data itself available. If we will strive to start sharing data, we need a mechanism which will allow the actual data to be indexed and made available rather than worrying about the context which delivers this data as information.

Enough theory, lets talk practical.
Here is a Google map of hospitals.
This presents us with a collection of data as information. Maps, Aerial photos and point data (hospitals).
But why when we type in Edinburgh Hospital should we get this collection of data presented in this way. Why not provide us with the referenced/indexed location of the data itself. Let us develop off that!