James Thornett The views and opinions expressed here are my own and not those of the BBC, my employer.
Technology
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 [...]
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 [...]
Birmingham Local Blogs Wire
Following my recent post on Will Perrin’s Talk About Local initiative, Jon Bounds has pushed ahead and created a Birmingham Local Blogs Wire by feeding a selection of blogs about Birmingham through Yahoo! Pipes. You can read all about the thinking behind the Birmingham Blog Wire here. Robin Hamman (@cybersoc) and I spent many an [...]
Cake Orchestra
Ever doubted the power of the cake? Here is, to quote, “A prototype of a musical interface, driven by cakes.” http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5165508&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1 cake orchestra (test) from mook studios on Vimeo.
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.
Residents complain over Google street view cameras
Another story from BBC News today on the privacy issues surrounding Google’s Street View technology – residents of Broughton, near Milton Keynes, staged a protest and accused Google of invading their privacy and facilitating crime. Twenty five UK cities went live on 19th March with the Netherlands version also going live on the same date, [...]
Lego Brick Stick
Isn’t this soooo cool? £17.50 for your 1GB lego stick, and four colours to choose from, green, red, yellow and blue.
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 [...]
The Google mobile phone has arrived
The G1 phone has today been officially unveiled in the United States and Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page were present at the launch. Essentially a 3G phone that has been optimised for Google services like mail and maps it is available on the T-Mobile network and requires signing up for a two-year contract. [...]
I really should make more of my Nokia N95…
So I’m sat at departure gate 15 of Glasgow airport, the dark clouds are so low they are literally sitting on the runway, rain is pouring from the sky, I’m drinking lucozade and my insides are full of painkillers that are having almost no effect on the onset of flu, oh, and the plane that [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The effect of GPS on geo-intelligence
Some interesting reaction to an ABC News article titled Will GPS Make Us Dumb?. Geocarta points out that “One problem with Ms. Shasha’s argument is that she presupposes that everyone actually had a sense of direction in the first place. Lots of people, my wife included, don’t.“ The Map Room has similar issues with the [...]
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 [...]
