James Thornett The views and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of the BBC, my employer.
Archive for July, 2008
I spotted a Google Street View car…
… and, like Jon, I found it strangely quite exciting! The sight of seeing the car driving through the streets of Birmingham did make me ponder one question which I hadn’t really considered before. With the increased awareness these days around climate change and the damage we are doing to the natural world, are Google [...]
Links (29th July 2008)
Crime Mapping from the British Government makes Telegraph Front PageMore developments in crime mapping make front page headlines. Feel like presenting at the 2008 Location 2.0 Conference?SiRF Technology announces details of its second annual Location 2.0 Summit which will be held in San Francisco on September 10, 2008. Mobile use on planes moves a step [...]
Over 200 ideas already submitted in UK Government competition
With plenty of time left until the end of September deadline, over 200 ideas have already been submitted to the Show Us A Better Way competition being run by the Power of Information Task Force. A great deal has already been written about this fantastic initiative – most of which is linked from Nick’s post [...]
My 2004/05 Travel Photo Diary
In October 2004 I left the UK with a rucksack, a one way ticket to Sydney, Australia, and no idea what I was going to do for the next 12 months. Each day I took one photo on my 35mm Fuji compact camera with the date function turned on. I have now, nearly four years [...]
Links (23rd July 2008)
No Entry: 51 places that you can’t view on Google MapsWhether it’s due to government restrictions, personal-privacy lawsuits or mistakes, Google Maps has slapped a “Prohibited” sign on the following 51 places. The Starbucks store closures mapA map showing the locations of all the US Starbucks stores currently facing closure…. I wonder if anyone has [...]
Mapping the Caribbean
A £10 pledge and one hour spent mapping features from Yahoo aerial imagery will give you a 60-1 shot of being sent to a Caribbean island on behalf of OpenStreetMap to complete a map and spread the open-source word. Well, it might do. The deadline is 30th September and 44 people have already signed up [...]
Links (16th July 2008)
I’m on hols this week, attempting (rather unsuccessfully) to spend some time away from the Internet and live in the ‘real world’ for a few days. I have some longer posts on the way but in the meantime here’s another roundup of links. whereyougonnabe to enable more integrationwhereyougonnabe has a new release in July focused [...]
Links (9th July 2008)
Top Innovators in Geospatial in 2008Google tops the All Points Blog 2008 innovators poll in the geospatial field. Is Citizen Media Skipping Small Town America?Steven Clift is looking for examples of user content displayed on maps in the less urban areas of America. PushPins Put Capital One on the MapCapital One’s lastest US ad features [...]
Mapping; for business or for pleasure?
Over at MediaShift Idea Lab, Leslie Rule has been thinking about hyperlocal mapping. Now personally I can’t stand the term hyperlocal, a term that Wikipedia says “…is sometimes used to refer to news coverage of community-level events“. The notion of “community-level” is very confusing in a time when the word community has come to mean [...]
Links (8th July 2008)
The June Carnival of Journalism discusses the potential influence of ‘local’ on ‘digital’ journalismAndy Dickinson asks the question “Is (digital) journalism better the more local it is and what does that do to growth?”. Making Maps Work When Disaster Strikes – from Business WeekCan open source tools react quicker to your mapping and location based [...]
Links (4th July 2008)
Channel 4 ponders move into regional news as ITV retreatsChannel 4 holds talks with Ofcom and ITV over a potential move into regional news. Relief for Torbay as Facebook rave is called offA local event advertised on Facebook has been cancelled as organisers urge people not to go to Torquay after a police chief said [...]
ITV Local adds crime information
More activity from websites looking to improve their coverage of local crime information. This time it’s ITV who are launching a crime section on ITV.com, tying crime data and related news to the eleven regions in the ITV Local network. ITV is working with the charity Crimestoppers to add crime information to the site in [...]
Everyblock experiments with council meeting minutes
Tom Loosemore recently posted about the ability to search video footage from House of Commons debates on theyworkforyou.com, pointing out that: The accessibility and searchability of the web transforms our ability to hold our elected representatives to account for their actions in Parliament. Now hyper-local news mapping site Everyblock has launched in two new US [...]
