James Thornett The views and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of the BBC, my employer.
Location Services
The Power of the Placename
At the recent Local Business Summit in Amsterdam I spoke about my work at the BBC on location services and mapping and tried to make the point that, as far as our users/consumers are concerned, the place name is all-powerful when it comes to identifying location. Other means of identifying location (grid references, postcodes, lat/long [...]
Location Business Summit – Day 2
No blogging this morning as I was busy presenting a view of location services at the BBC and then speaking on a panel discussion. Thoroughly enjoyable, and the best panel discussion yet according to @uphamb. Follow #locbiz f you want a rundown of events so far. Now back to sitting, watching, listening and blogging. Joel [...]
The Location Business Summit, #locbiz – Day 1, 28th April 2010, Amsterdam
Some highlights from day one of The Location Business Summit in Amsterdam. Annette Zimmermann from Gartner began the conference with some analysis and survey results on the usage of location services. Unsurprisingly it is expected by 2014 that a third of mobile phones in use will be smartphones – i.e. phones capable of delivering location [...]
Please Rob Me
Fancy a bit of easy (ish) burglary? Obviously I’m not condoning this law breaking act in any way, but should you be inclined then new website Please Rob Me will be just up your street. By gathering information from location aware online apps and posting twitter updates from people who are willingly advertising the fact [...]
Thoughts on Local Social Summit 2009
Last week I attended the first Local Social Summit in London – a day aimed at exploring the space where local content meets social media with attendees from a range of start-ups, directories, media companies, advertisers and media owners. If you’re interested in any of this type of stuff then all of the days presentations [...]
The Perfect local Media Company in 2014
Tomorrow’s Local Social Summit ’09 in London promises to be an interesting and thought provoking day. I’m speaking in a panel discussion on Local Content & Monetisation although coming from the BBC angle my focus will be more on local content and social opportunities rather than commercial monetisation. Some key questions I’d like to discuss [...]
Google Street View in the clear
Following protests and complaints over the introduction of Google’s Street View technology in the UK, the UK’s Information Commissioner has today ruled that it should not be stopped. A spokesman for the privacy watchdog said removing the entire service would be “disproportionate to the relatively small risk of privacy detriment”. More from BBC News.
Google Latitude launches
Google launched it’s own Fire Eagle today, enabling you to ‘See your friends on a map and get in touch‘. I haven’t had enough time to get properly stuck in but from first viewing the Google Latitude user experience is more map-based and the ‘sales pitch’ is much more end-user focused. Whilst all the hype [...]
UK Location Strategy is published
A new strategy to tackle problems from traffic management to flooding, improved policy formulation and decision making by using better geographical information, was launched by Baroness Andrews today in a report Place Matters: The Location Strategy for the United Kingdom. Full details, including a press release announcing the launch, on the Communities and Local Government [...]
How to plan your next holiday
After I published a post on my personal blog about the lack of decent tools on the web to help plan a holiday a friend pointed me in the direction of Opodo’s new AirTools service. It’s not quite the complete answer but it’s certainly heading in the right direction. Within a very short time of [...]
Where 2.0 Conference 2008
The main inspiration for getting this blog up and running was the O’Reilly Where2.0 Conference which took place in Burlingame, CA, from 12th-14th May this year. I’ve been meaning to write up some overall thoughts of the event but have been waiting to get the site live first. So, full review to come along shortly, [...]
O’Reilly release Geospatial report
As spotted on The AnyGeo Blog , a 22-page report on the state of the GeoSpatial web is now available from O’Reilly. Geo functionality is everywhere, and more geo data is being created and freely disseminated than ever before. This emerging technology space, growing in tandem with Web 2.0, has been called Where 2.0. In [...]
where2.0 links
After taking some holiday last week and walking the Great Glen Way in Scotland I’m now back in civilization and enjoying the comfort of sitting down once more. I’ll post an overall review of thoughts from the where2.0 conference in the next day or so but, in the meantime, check out the following information on [...]
where2.0 – Wed 14th May (3.30pm – 5pm)
The last session of the 2008 where2.0 conference, introduced by Tim O’Reilly.InSTEDD: Humanitarian Collaboration TalesRobert Kirkpatrick (InSTEDD), Eduardo Jezierski (InSTEDD) “InSTEDD functions as an ‘innovation lab’ for developing novel approaches to challenges in the field.“ Their approach is to partner with as many other services and technologies as appropriate. “We learn by failing fast and [...]
where2.0 – Wed 14th May (1.15pm – 3pm)
The internet is alive again and it’s afternoon on Day 2. Google Maps = Google on MapsLior Ron (Google, Inc.) Apparently we are about to hear about 9 new launches in the next 9 minutes. As the title suggests, the basic idea here is that Google Maps are all about everything you can do with [...]
where2.0 – Wed 14th May (11am – 12mid)
Going Places on Flickr: The Significance of Geographical Information in PhotosDan Catt (Yahoo!, Inc. ) Dan outlines the challenge for Flickr around selecting location. How does Flickr take a lat/long coordinate pair and decide exactly where a photo has been taken? This is about reverse geo-coding. “Places have meaning… we (Flickr) should be able to [...]
where2.0 – Wed 14th May (9am – 10.15am)
Day 2 begins at 9am with… Disaster Tech: What is Working and What is ComingJesse Robbins (O’Reilly Radar), Mikel Maron (Mapufacture) How innovative tools can make the bridge between consumer tools and saving lives. “It’s difficult to innovate, but there is a way…“. The key seems to be a step-by-step iterative pattern. Within this space:1. [...]
Where2.0 Blog Links
The Map Room has pointed out a couple of other blogs from where2.0.
where2.0 – Tue 13th May (4.15pm – 6pm)
Heading towards the end of Day 1…Mirror World: Using MMOs for Real World Mapping – Wagner James Au(MMO = Massively Multiplayer Online Game) Examples of Google Earth and Second Live mash-ups which merge the virtual world and the real world, including real-time weather data on the globe, real-time LA airport arrivals/departures, and a project Digital [...]
where2.0 – Tue 13th May (1.30pm – 3.30pm)
Ride the Fire Eagle: Open Location for AllTom Coates (Yahoo! Brickhouse) Fire Eagle is there to allow users to:- share their location online- control their data and privacy- easily build location services “Fire Eagle helps sites and services to respond to a users location“ Yahoo Internet Location Platform – if fire eagle is the lens, [...]
where2.0 – Tue 13th May (11am – 12mid)
11:00am: Best Practices for Location-based Services: Privacy, User Control, Carrier Relations, Advertising, and Moreby Sam Altman (Loopt – a social mapping tool to connect, share and explore in the real world) “GPS is the number one requested feature on a phone in the US, more than a camera.“ Location challenges today (what we want) can [...]
where2.0 – Tue 13th May (9am – 10.15am)
Day one proper kicks off with brief opening remarks from Brady Forrest (O’Reilly Media, Inc.) – ‘Where2.0 has now hit the mainstream‘. —– Then Adrian Holovaty the creator of EveryBlock: A News Feed for Your Block. It’s all about finding news relevant to you because you live there – stories that a journalist would never [...]
Watch where2.0 via live web stream
From O’Reilly Radar… If you can’t make it to Where 2.0 you can watch it live-ish via two different video streams. For tonight’s Ignite and Launchpad event you can watch via UStream.TV. This stream will get audio directly from the soundboard. Seero, a geo-broadcasting portal that is focused on events is going to be live-streaming [...]
