GeoVation Challenge

GeoVation Challenge

This year, GeoVation has been split into three separately themed challenges, the first of which was ‘How Can Britain Feed Itself?’ now closed to new entries, although you can still visit the site to read and rate the 52 ideas that have been contributed.

But fear not, the chance to be involved has not passed you by; for the next Challenge is due to open on Tuesday 28th September 2010 and is entirely focused on how geographic data can help us get from A to B.

Bumper to bumper. Photo by Lynac via Flikr

There are huge and exciting opportunities for geography to be harnessed to solve transport related problems, especially with the influx of open data releases that we’ve seen over the past months. Those include Data.gov.uk; Ordnance Survey’s own OS OpenData portal; a number of local authorities; and most recently transport data from Transport for London.

And, for the second of this year’s Challenges, delighted to have the additional support of the the TSB funded Ideas in Transit project and the National Business Travel Network.

Ideas in Transit is a five-year project that applies “bottom-up” innovation to the transport challenges faced by individuals and society. NBTN promotes workplace travel planning as a cost effective way for businesses to reduce CO2 emissions and benefit staff.

Both are committed to supporting a sustainable future for transport in Britain and with their help we’re really hoping that we’ll uncover something extra special.

We are all users of transport, so if you’ve got a geography based transport idea why not submit it next week? The best entries will be invited to a further develop their ideas at a GeoVation Camp before going on to pitch for funding at a ‘Dragons’ Den’ style showcase next year.

There is a prize fund of £25,000 available to award to winning ideas and whilst entrants aren’t limited to using Ordnance Survey data, there is also an additional prize available for the best use of any of the datasets freely available through OS OpenData.

Keep an eye on GeoVation.org.uk next week for more details on the second challenge and you can also follow the project on Twitter for all the latest news at @GeoVation.

Reposted by request (twitter) from:

http://blog.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/2010/09/geovation-seeks-ideas-to-get-you-moving/

Photospots.co.uk Maps (OS & Google)

Photospots.co.uk Maps (OS & Google)

"A website for amateur photographers to share their favourite photography locations."


Very clean site with direction of the sun and location of the photograph clearly show for each individual shot.

UK photograph locations have the additional maps from Ordnance Survey Openspace


Switching from Google Maps to Ordnance Survey is extremely well implemented no page refreshing required making this very user friendly and usable.

Map and Photographs viewable
http://www.photospots.co.uk/

Blog
http://www.photospots.co.uk/blog/
Well done to Andrew Rickmann http://twitter.com/photospots/

Geograph
A similar and much more established photographic by map location project http://www.geograph.org.uk/ is hugely popular. [1,560,388 images]
"The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland"

Access to these images can be made by the Geography API.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/help/api

Here under educational licence is a slippy map version
http://www.geograph.org.uk/mapper/

See previous mapperz post on Geograph
http://mapperz.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-draggable-geograph-map-beta.html

Free Ordnance Survey Maps for the iPhone

Free Ordnance Survey Maps for the iPhone

iOSMaps v1.0 has launched.
"Get the OpenSpace Ordnance Survey© mapping application for the iPod Touch© and iPhone© from the iTunes© Store for FREE right now!"

"The application is intended to be free, making use of newish technologies to showcase the awesome possibilities/fun of marrying different technologies. I see iOSMaps being used in replacement of paper Ordnance Survey maps. For what every your outdoor pursuit, be it mountaineering, skiing, fell running, hiking, cycling or a good old fashioned walk, just enjoy using the application on your iPhone"
Author of this application

What is looks like on screen? (minus the tile number)


This service is not the fastest, but does work well, though you will find high data transfers costs using this service. But the idea is right, if caching of data is allowed on the phone in theory the user can 'cache os maps' before they venture out with the device.

iOSMap uses the new the mapping data provided by the OpenSpace API from Ordnance Survey, to show feature rich geographic, geotopic and cartalogic data of Great Britain. The application make use of OpenLayers, gmaps and prototype libraries and was written using the mighty iPhone sdk in Objective-C 2.0 and C.

Geeky info:
client:
iPhone/iPod Touch.

OpenLayers:Map,Control,GridProjection
OpenSpace 0.72:Map, Gazetter, GridProjection
Prototype1.6:prototype.js, scriptalicios.js
Google:gMapsAjaxSearch, googlemaps (check terms of use using google maps api and openspace api together?)

But very promising and will be the future of mapping, though not sure it will replace paper/book maps as they never run out of batteries...
Mapperz

To get the free OS Maps App on the iPhone website is:
http://www.publicfootpaths.com/

Ordnance Survey [resurrects] OpenSpace Mashup

Updated 20/05/2009
An the Winner is.... Gavin Brock - Well done to everyone who contacted the Ordnance Survey about this - now you can be proud of yourselves.


The tiles impressions limit has also been upped to 1,000,000 from 30,000.
[http://www.brock-family.org/gavin/google-earth/osmaps.html]

2009-05-19 (Tue)

We’re back!

"First I would like to thank you all for your support! I believe that your emails, posts and comments, regarding yesterdays blog post, made a difference. It’s great to hear from you – it’s what makes writing software for fun, erm.. fun!

I just received a detailed message from the Director of Products at Ordnance Survey, apologising for the communication regarding the disabling of the service. He explained, that this is not a “derived data issue“, but rather to do with the licenses:"

more here: http://gavcode.wordpress.com/2009/05/19/os-overlays-re-enabled/

Ordnance Survey Kills OpenSpace Mashup

update: Ed Parsons (former CTO at OS, now Google) mentions this mashup in his latest post
http://www.edparsons.com/2009/05/os-puts-the-no-back-in-innovation/


For a long time this site [http://www.brock-family.org/gavin/google-earth/osmaps.html] was straight forward and overlayed Ordnance Survey Maps in Google Earth.

Users could view the Maps which were overlay-ed on the Google Earth Terrain.
The 3D view helped visualize users with the surrounding features as well as giving them familiar maps as reference. There is no financial gain here, nor any advertising, but Ordnance Survey states

"We really like your project, but unfortunately it will need to be discontinued as soon as you can. This is because it remains our current position that OS OpenSpace Developers may use third party content with our data provided they do no grant the third party any wider rights than those the Developer agrees to when accepting the Ordnance Survey’s OpenSpace Developer Agreement."

OS, Openlayers [the underlying OpenSpace API source code] itself is third party [right?]

and JSR_CLASS.JS is part of Yahoo! SDK Copyright (c) 2005, Yahoo! Inc.
[see http://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/openspace/opensourcelicences.html#anc1]

So what is wrong here?
Ordnance Survey you are not losing out here. In-fact it is a free promotion to use your service.


The web version of the above site worked really well but not anymore - thanks OS.

Read more from the source:
http://gavcode.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/os-overlays-disabled/

Where is the Railway Path? [Old Maps Better]

Where is the Railway Path? [Old Maps can be better sometimes]

Yes it a fact. Here is some proof.
UK Railway networks/passengers peaked in the 1940's
Then there was a decline in the number of the routes and services and therefore passenger numbers.
"desire for profitability led to a major reduction in the network during the mid-1960's"

So where is this leading, well as it happens Bill Chadwick has looked into using old Ordnance Survey Maps [via NPE] to show the original Railway Networks - these are happily out of crown copyright now.

Here is a Map where the network does not get represented with rail spec on new OS Maps.


Both the Google Maps [Right and the New OS Map fail to show an original railway line going to Portland Bill]
The Old Map [shows the course of the railway in full spec]
Digitised to make it clearer.
Mapperz is not saying new maps are bad, just they only show a snapshot of our current time and not the full picture, aerial and satellite images can be used to this but to the general user it would be hard to tell whether this was an existing railway or not.

Note:The NPE tiles are served by Getmapping.com - there maybe limited time for these older maps to be displayed. Hope this is not the case.

View the Old Maps and New Maps
http://wheresthepath2.googlepages.com/wheresthepathNpe.htm
**Please look at the useage bar in the bottom left corner if going red then tile useage from the OS OpenSpace API will refuse to display after 30,000 tile impressions a day - OS please raise the limit!

Where is the Path? - 3D

Where is the Path? - 3D

A recent update which includes the option of 'Earth' (Google Earth inside the web browser)



Allows the user to create a route of their choice and view it in 3D - attribution of the points is available.
Export to GPX for input into a GPS device.
*Earth plugin must be installed to view the content.
In the drop down list select OS+Earth

There is a limit on the number of Ordnance Survey tiles per a 24 hour period (30,000 tiles) - keep an eye on the percentage bar in the bottom left corner.
OS please raise this limit to 50k or higher.

http://wheresthepath.googlepages.com/wheresthepath.htm
Full credit goes to Bill Chadwick for producing this nifty side-by-side mapping application.

OpenStreetMap Nestoria (Experimental)

OpenStreetMap Nestoria (Experimental)

Nestoria are looking and experimenting with the OpenStreetMap Data and making some very clever and useful additional usability to finding property (to buy, rent or flatshare). In the UK or Spain


With the drop down (more search options) you can be more specific
options:

• Balcony
• Basement
• Dishwasher
• Fireplace
• Furnished
• Garage
• Garden
• High Ceilings
• Lower Ground
• Parking
• Wood Floor

Census information can also be applied and helps locate nearby services.

The Mapping Data does vary in places but it is very good to see that this being used and work very well.

Nestoria also have an API for Developers:
http://www.nestoria.co.uk/help/api

Open Street Map is moving on, lots more data is going in. (09-Jan-2008 20:57 3.1GB)
compared to 2.1GB only a month ago (05-Dec-2007 09:42)
http://planet.openstreetmap.org/

Where is all this new data coming from?
Well the OSM servers are flying as at noted the entire Tiger dataset was getting imported

The entire US will be done in: 1499766 seconds or 17 days or 0.047525 years on Monday January 28th at 17:26:08 2008.
(previous blog post noted Sun Aug 24 12:27:57 2008 as the finish date)


Also in discussion is the "The licence: where we are, where we’re going"
http://www.opengeodata.org/?p=262

Mapperz gives full credit to Nestoria and Open Street Map - People outside the UK don't really understand the expense and difficult/complex data licensing that Ordnance Survey produces.
(but it can afford to build a brand new HQ)
*wonder if their government ceramic discs will go missing in the move?

New Draggable Geograph Map (Beta)

New Draggable Geograph Map

Geograph Map just got easier to use...


New draggable maps using Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 mapping (Landranger series)
What is Geograph?
"The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and you can be part of it."

Draggable Geograph Map of Great Britain (beta)

64% complete for the British Isles
http://www.geograph.org.uk/numbers.php

How is this done?
Servers “Jam” “Toast”, “Scone” and “Crumpet” (a good start to any day)
http://blog.dixo.net/2006/07/28/geograph-servers-coming-to-life/

This site uses an Educational Licence from the Ordnance Survey
"Great Britain 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster Mapping © Crown copyright Ordnance Survey. All Rights Reserved. Educational licence 100045616."

How is the done?
"But basically it just (JUST!?) involved cutting up 12GB of raw tiff files from the
OS, into more manageable png chunks using imagemagick, and then on
demand but cached on disk it cut into png tiles. The overlay is also
generated in php, ondemand and cached with memcached. And of course it
using openlayers as the client library."
Barry Hunter (nearby.org.uk)

Mapperz thanks Barry for sharing his time and tweaks on this. Well done and keep up the good work.




Just a quick note to UK Teachers out there - the 16th November is the last date to get Free Ordnance Survey Maps (for 11 year olds)
http://freemaps.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/freemapsfor11yearolds/