Everything GIS

It’s not just the Guardian that are fighting for ‘Free Our Data’. Ernest Marples set up a site offering postcode data for free, sourcing the data from Free The Postcode and utilising them in two key (free) services, PlanningAlerts.com and Jobcentre Pro Plus. Both services targeted at making public services more accessible and geographically relevant.

Ernest Marples got a cease and desist request from Royal Mail (the controllers of the postcodes in the UK), since they’re in breach of copyright and numerous other licenses for using it in the way they are. So the service has been shut down and they’ve now launched a campaign to petition for Royal Mail to create a new (free of charge) license for use of the postcode data for non-profit purposes. This new license, if created, would help give developers of free services (like myself) the opportunity to provide more geographically-relevant data to UK users.

What can you do to help?

Sign the petition on the Number 10 site or write to your MP and request them to sign EDM2000.

I’ve done my bit, by both signing the petition and writing to my MP – (Shailesh Vara, Concervative MP for North West Cambridgeshire).

Having been on a road trip to Lapland in the summer and used a lot of different ways to track my location and share content (I know, I still need to write about it), Both Nicola and I are going to the Ice Hotel in Swedish Lapland for 4 days.

The main issue we had was keeping our mobiles logging our trip. They lost the satellites fairly often (and in the case of my N95 didn’t get much signal to begin with) and of course with GPS turned on constantly they didn’t really last that long on battery. So for this next trip I’ve decided to look at a dedicated device for location tracking.

After looking at Garmin and other devices I found two good possibilities which were around £50:

i-gotU (GT-120 & GT-200)

The site for this device is pretty, and they have some nice software for geotagging photos sending to Flickr/Picasa, although it’s Windows-only. Other than that, it’s pretty hard to find information about the devices, compare the differences in specifications and even to see how many points it can record or how long the battery lasts and how to recharge it.

The device looks really nice though and for the average user it would be a great, small tracker to fit in your pocket. Especially at £45.

GlobalSat DG-100

Not quite as pretty as the i-gotU, but has lots of details about the huge battery life (37 hours at 10 second interval captures) and more status indicators on the front of the device, as well as a hardware interval selector on the side.

Since the shops I looked at didn’t have any i-gotU in stock, and for the known brand of GlobalSat, I decided on the DG-100.

For this trip I’m planning on doing most of my photography using my Canon 350D SLR and Canon MD235 MiniDV camcorder, so there won’t be much live content apart some rare photos from my N95 and some Jaiku updates.

After the trip I’ll make sure to bookmark some time to posting what I used, as well as how they coped in the freezing temperatures.

Google Latitude allows users to share their location with their friends using their mobiles.  Powered by Google Maps, Latitude uses the same ‘My Location’ mechanism, so it will show your location to the nearest mile if it can’t get an accurate fix from the device’s GPS.  This also means that Latitude should be able to be used on devices which don’t have in-built GPS, which lowers the barrier to entry for many potential users.

Users can also add an iGoogle widget, which gives the same ‘tracking’ ability directly from the iGoogle homepage.

Quite a while ago, Nokia created Friend View, a very similar application, but focusing on support Nokia devices.  Google’s attempt covers a whole range of devices including S60, Android (of course) and will soon support iPhone, which is sure to raise the profile of the new service above Friend View.

If you have a barcode reader on your phone, you can use the code below to download the application.

Glenn Letham of GISUser attended Nokia’s Open Lab event and hosted one of the sessions, naming it Join the Journey. It got me pretty excited to see others voicing the same opinions on the possibilities of location based services and embedding automatic sensing into mobiles.

His session is split into 4 videos:

I’m going to Finland on Thursday to go on a road trip around Lapland and I’m planning to keep track of my location (and post something online automatically too). I’ll update this post soon with more information about how I do that. At the moment I’m thinking of using the following:

• Nokia Sports Tracker – This should track my location as well as photos and videos taken along the way… A little more than a ’sports’ tracker.
• If I can get my GPS tracker up and running again I’ll use that too.
• General GPS logger so that I can add the location metadata in post-production.

Nokia’s newest viral marketing is based around the N82 and it’s integrated GPS. Stavros, an artist in Position Art, encourages you to make Position Art of your own by tracking your position using an application such as Nokia Sports Tracker, then share the work of art online.

The idea is fun, and if it gets people out and active then it can only be a good thing. As for the N82, having played briefly with one, it’s a solid device with superb build quality and a good GPS. I would even go as far as saying that it’s a good non-slider alternative to the N95. It may not have the 5MP camera of the N95 (only 3MP) but with a xenon flash the indoor picture quality is higher.

For more information about Stavros and his Position Art initiative visit The World Is My Canvas, and for a look at the viral ad that started it all at the Mobile Web Congress conference go to Stavros’ post on Share on Ovi

The latest enhancement to Google Maps Mobile allows people that don’t have a GPS enabled phone to get approximate location (within 1km) using mobile operator cell locations.

This is a good enhancement, similar to the Network-based and AGPS feature in new S60-based phones and also the offerings from Navizon. The questionable thing here though is, what cell location data is Google using to estimate this? Nokia and Navizon have started their own databases (Navizon includes both Mobile Cells and WiFi APs)… is Google starting another? What are the chances of standardising and creating an ‘open location database’?

(brought to my attention through Lifehacker)

Google have started to allow users to correct their address gazetteer. By searching for your address (I think this is US only for the moment) you will be shown the address marker as normal, but now when you click on the marker you will have the object to edit it and drag the marker to where you think it should be. This sounds to me like free labour on the pretence of better service in the future… a cunning ploy by Google, and one which I will probably join in on when I find a business I’m looking for has it’s marker out of place.

For minor changes it’s an instant fix, but if it’s wildly out (200m or more) the change gets put in a moderation queue.

I’ve been wondering about this kind of thing for a while and it’s nice to see more collaborative mapping happening… now, if we could only convince Google to collaborate on OpenStreetMap.

Google have added a new collaborative feature to My Maps. If you are logged in when using Google Maps you will now see an ‘Edit’ button when viewing user generated maps that you have permissions to modify. This is a great addition to the Google Maps feature line-up and should come in handy when you’re planning that next outing with friends.

(brought to my attention through Lifehacker)

If you tried the previous Google Mobile Maps application before and have an S60v3 phone, you might want to update to the new native version. It’s got a smoother display and now supports GPS, so all you N95 (or bluetooth GPS) owners can see where you are.

It doesn’t do satnav yet, but it can’t be too long before Google comes up with something to rival the subscription-only navigation of Nokia Maps and Tomtom. The only benefit Nokia Maps currently has (on top of navigation) is that you can download the maps and store them on your phone.

If you’ve got a mobile barcode reader (and if you haven’t, why not get one?), you can use the barcode below to go straight to Google’s download page.