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/

Wheres the path? Mapping Wins Award

The Excellent Mapping Mashup 'Wheres the path' will get more funding to be developed further :)

Congratulations to the author of the map Bill Chadwick

Annoucement:
Show Us a Better Way

"This competition is about how you can help us make better use of your data"

Out of the huge list of submitted ideas
http://www.showusabetterway.co.uk/call/ideas/index.html


Where is the path has been a hugely successful mashup.
(note the yellow bar in the bottom left corner is number of tile impressions - if goes red it is very close the daily limit.)


Now with even more new features:
1) Diagram of Magnetic, True and Grid North relationships

2) Estimated (Naismith) hiking times

3) Sunset calculator (to check if a planned route should end before dark).

Mapping Mashup
http://wheresthepath.googlepages.com/wheresthepath.htm

Another reminder to Ordnance Survey - raise the limit on OpenSpace tile impressions please - even for this one url. (currently OS tiles have a 30,000 limit per 24hrs - it needs to be 75,000 at least).

Mapperz

Map Seeaarch - but who wins?

Seeaarch is a quick fire, map and directions search website that uses 4 mapping solutions

Map Searches

• Yahoo

• Google

• Live

Directions

• Yahoo

• Google

• Mapquest

Though a quick test reveals a clear winner.


note: moving the columns is possible to show each one more clearly.

Yahoo gets confused but tries (finds an American route)
Google does the job - as you would expect
Mapquest failed to find the start location

Mapperz requests directions from
10 Downing St, Westminister, London, UK
to SW19 1AR (Wimbledon)

So there a quick and effective test.
(So why not just use Google Directions?)

When Planning a route, whether it is in the UK, Europe or any other part of the world, don't just rely on one solution.
The AA Travel Planner is more effective than any of the above in the UK. The driving times are more accurate and the congestion travel information is more up-to-date.
For Europe try Yahoo Maps