Links (30th June 2008)

• Review of the new Local Priorities web service from the Dept of Communities and Local Government
  Nick Booth likes the idea (but not the execution) of a new web service from the Dept. of Communities and Local Government.
  
  
• Weather Tweets
  Walter Rafelsberger has created a weather map which uses an analysis of tweets to determine current conditions.
  
  
• Why local and digital is better for the environment
  Alex Lockwood explains why local journalism is the best place to report environmental
  
  
• Google Signs 5-Year Deal With Tele Atlas
  Search engine giant Google has signed an agreement with Tele Atlas that gives Google access to the firm's maps it was announced today.

The State of the Map Conference 2008

The second international State of the Map conference from OpenStreetMap takes place in Limerick, Ireland on 12th-13th July, 2008.



Ed Parsons won't be attending but recommends everyone else does so if you are interested take a look at the schedule.

Lots of useful information on openstreetmap for those that are going this year.

Links (25th June 2008)

• Y! Geo
  A new Yahoo blog focusing on geo technologies. The Map Room reports that "it replaces the mapping side of the now-defunct Yahoo Local and Maps blog".
  
  
• The MetaCarta Blog
  Metacarta have launched their own blog which they aim to be "a community forum to discuss the evolution of the Geoweb".
  
  
• Google Releases More Map Crowdsourcing Tools
  For the first time, Google has released to the public a big part of the map creation tools which they call Google Map Maker.
  
  
• Nokia to Acquire German Social Networking Co. Plazes
  Mobile phone giant Nokia announced today that it plans to acquire German mobile social networking startup Plazes, which has plans to release an app for Apple's iPhone, a Nokia competitor.

Media coverage of the BBC Local Video PVT

Here is an updating list (thanks to the miracle that is del.icio.us) of links to media coverage of the BBC's application to provide a local video service on bbc.co.uk.

(Disclaimer: I am involved in this application as part of my day job at the BBC.)

The PVT began on 24th June 2008.

BBC Trust begins public value test into local video proposal

The BBC Trust has today started its public value test (PVT) of the BBC's local video proposal.

(Disclaimer: I am involved in this proposal as part of my day job at the BBC.)

The Trust has published BBC management's application as well as supporting documents, a service description and a full timetable for the PVT.

Details of the public value test (PVT) process can be found here.

Ofcom have also issued a press release on their market impact assessment consultation.

You can read the proposal on the BBC Trust website and any interested party is welcome to submit their thoughts as part of the public consultation - the deadline for responding is 5pm on 22nd July.

Links (24th June 2008)

• Online, all journalism is potentially local | Online Journalism Blog
  This month’s Carnival of Journalism is asking whether journalism is better the more local it is.
  
  
• News aggregator Topix adds six new content partners
  News aggregation service Topix has signed deals with six new content partners to expand its local information offering, TechCrunch reports.
  
  
• Newspaper Society launches site to aid advertisers understanding regional differences in the UK
  The Newspaper Society has launched a website aimed at aiding advertisers understand of social, behavioural and political differences between regional communities in the UK.

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 initial report, quite rightly pointing out that "spell-checking doesn’t make you less literate; it removes the requirement for you to be more literate. Ditto here: GPS isn’t making us dumb; it’s making it easier for us to stay dumb."

ITV Local has 4 million video views in May

Media Guardian reports that ITV's web video figures rocket.

ITV Local, which offers news, weather and entertainment content to different regions, recorded four million video views in May.

The four ITV regions where video has taken off the most are Meridian, which accounted for 16% of views, Central at15%, Anglia with 11% and London at 11%.

ITV's London region saw the biggest month-on-month growth for May recording a 50% boost in video views.

These numbers in the context of "12 million views of programmes or clips on ITV.com in May" - although it's not clear whether the 4 million to ITV Local are included in the overall 12 million or not.

If this is the case then it would seem a solid endorsement of the value of local content on the web, particularly given that the overall figures for ITV.com are led by such high-profile output as Coronation Street, Britain's Got Talent and Euro 2008 football.

Huffington Post goes local

From Media Guardian article - Huffington Post starts local news push.

The Huffington Post is planning to expand into local news across the US, founder Arianna Huffington said last night, beginning with a site edited for the community of Chicago.

Huffington said the Chicago site would aggregate news, sports, crime, arts and business news from different local sources as well as contributions from bloggers in what will be the first of a series of projects in "dozens of US cities". The Chicago site will initially be curated by just one editor.

Maybe it's a reflection of the popular discussion topics in Chicago but I found it interesting, and slightly amusing, that the proposed content is listed as "news, sport, crime, ..."

Mapping public information

An interesting post from Andrew Turner with his thoughts on the Beyond Broadcast Conference, this year looking at Mapping Public Media.

It is quite obvious the very prevalent impact and interest in mapping and geographic visualization of data. The tools have become approachable and the public comfortable, even expecting, rich cartographic interfaces and exploration. Also, being a US Election year, voting maps are obviously in high supply.

There's no denying that many forms of visualising location-based data, particularly mapping, are becoming very prevalent on the web and mobile platforms.

However, I'm still yet to be convinced that the tools are approachable to the majority of users, or that the public are comfortable with interfaces that are often complex and require more than a little effort to explore.

There are obviously plenty of good and bad implementations of maps/mapping on the web so it would be wrong to label them all with the same criticism - and, for the time being at least, I'm going to avoid picking out my own examples.

People are familiar with using maps in the context of finding their way from place A to place B, or for checking the location of a particular place. When it comes to browsing and searching content on a map then this is still a new process for many people and user experience designers need to remember this when designing new applications.

Don't forget, it's not about the map - it's about providing the best and simplest access to the content and underlying data.

One particular example can be seen in the recent interest in putting crime data onto maps - taking a lead from the original Chicago Crime Map (which has interestingly expanded into EveryBlock and is much less reliant on maps to display the data than the old site).

• BBC NEWS | Politics | Online maps to show local crime
  Online maps with crimes plotted on them every month are set to be introduced in England and Wales, Gordon Brown says.

Two examples of existing 'crime maps' in the UK:-

• www.beatcrime.info - Get The Picture of Crime in Your Area
  Welcome to Beatcrime where you can find out about crime on your beat and your street

• MyNeighbourhood - West Midlands Interactive Crime Mapping Application
  MyNeighbourhood provides a unique and interactive community safety experience for residents of the West Midlands. View the latest crime in your neighbourhood, learn about crime prevention and have your say.
  

Lessons learned from hyperlocal

While we are on the subject of news becoming 'more local', here's an interesting post from Rob Curley on the experience of running the hyperlocal project LoudounExtra.com, developed by Washington Post Newsweek International.

"...I thought the two biggest problems with LoudounExtra.com were poor integration of the site with washingtonpost.com and not enough outreach into the community … ala basically me speaking with every community group that would have me."

Northcliffe re-vamps local websites with geo-coding on stories

Northcliffe Media have begun geo-coding stories produced on their "thisis" websites as the group prepares to introduce geographical targeting on the "next generation" of local news websites.

The 10 remodeled sites, including thisiscornwall.co.uk, are part of the plans to re-vamp the 55 existing sites and to add 35 new regional websites under Northcliffe's 'thisis' brand, by September this year.

Unfortunately the localisation functions are not currently visible, but should be available in a few months when there are enough geo-coded stories available to support the service.

This is a shame, and potentially missing a trick, as enabling users to watch the service develop from the ground up might have provided the opportunity for useful feedback on how the stories are being tagged.

Robert Hardie (Northcliffe content strategy director) has highlighted the difficulty in knowing how to tag an individual story with suitable location data - seemingly postcodes in this case - to ensure it is found in the right place by the right people.

In my mind the success of the service will depend on two key areas, neither of which is easy to get right:

1\ How flexible can a journalist be in tagging a story? Can multiple postcodes be associated with the same story if it affects multiple areas? Can a group of postcodes be used to illustrate a story is relevant across a whole region? How much granularity does the postcode tagging allow - postcode area/district/sector/unit?

2\ How will the visual design of the site allow users to access this content? The same questions apply as in the point above, but this time relating to the user. Can I search for stories purely on my street? Or across a wider area? And how will the editorial prioritisation of a big news story be reflected if I am searching by location rather than by size of story or time of publication?

I guess we'll have to wait a couple of months to find out!

From the Press Gazette coverage:-

The new sites' geographical targeting functionality will allow users to enter a postcode to find all the stories on the site that affect them. The localisation functions will remain hidden until journalists have built up enough stories with postcode data.

“It should only take month or two until we’ve built up that bulk of stories with postcode data attached to them,” said Hardie.

Because not all stories affect only one specific point, the company is finding geocoding challenging, Hardie said.

He said that while a traffic accident might affect only one location, a story about bed-blocking in hospitals would affect people over a wide area.

“On the one hand it’s opening up a major opportunity for us, but it also means we’re going have to learn new skills and make value judgements about how we tag stories with postcodes,” Hardie said.

“It’s a new skill that we’re going to have to get used to doing very cleverly,” he added.

The story is also on journalism.co.uk and Media Guardian.

Links (16th June 2008)

• Google Maps - More, Not Richer Data
  Work to do for Google when it comes to searching on the map.
  
  
• iPhone GPS and Google Mobile Search
  More on the GPS capability of the iPhone.
  
  
• Is GoogleMaps GIS? :: High Earth Orbit
  Andrew Turner discusses the definition of GIS and the relationship with mapping technologies/services such as Google Maps.
  
  
• The AnyGeo Blog - Anything Geospatial: iPhone 2 - GPS, WiFi, Bletooth, 8GB flash (or 16) only $199... nice
  iPhone 2 is on the way with plenty of location relevant tools included, not least GPS at last.

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, but in the meantime here are my postings from the conference (on my personal site).

Tutorials: Session 1 - Geo-ify your website - Andrew Turner, Steve Coast
Tutorials: Session 2 - Geo-ify your website - Mikel Maron
Tutorials: Session 3 - Exposing your geo data to search engines - Mano Marks/Lior Ron (Google)

Day 1: Session 1 - Everyblock / Finder / Google / Nokia
Day 1: Session 2 - Loopt / FreeEarth / Autodesk
Day 1: Session 3 - Yahoo! / SAP Labs / Bug Labs / Geotate / Earthscape / Microsoft
Day 1: Session 4 - Earthmine / Pict'Earth / Everyscape / Tele Atlas / Chris Anderson

Day 2: Session 1 - Eye-Fi / Merian Scout / Dash Navigation / Navteq
Day 2: Session 2 - Flickr / Skyhook Wireless / Groundspeak / PlanetEye /
Day 2: Session 3 - Google / Venrock / openlocation.org
Day 2: Session 4 - InSTEDD / Google / Giswebsite / Ushahidi /

All posts can also be viewed on one page.

More news and coverage from the conference, including a selection of speaker presentation files.

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 this report, Andrew Turner and Brady Forrest map out the new generation of geo products and services, identify the major players, and show how your business can leverage the power of Where 2.0.

The full report will set you back $399 (roughly £200) but you can download an excerpt for free.

About Me

I am currently Development Manager, Interactive for BBC Nations & Regions, responsible for overseeing the development of regional and local interactive services across the UK, as well as new national services for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I also have responsibility for coordinating the use of maps/mapping technology on the BBC's interactive platforms.

I've been working in regional and local broadcasting in the UK since 1998 when I began as a strategy analyst for BBC English Regions, covering the audience reporting and strategic positioning of regional television and local radio services across England.

In the right place at the right time, I designed and built the initial pilots for the BBC's local web service in 2000 and have since worked in a variety of editorial and technical roles as the service developed.

I subsequently spent four and a half years as Assistant Editor for the local BBC websites in England, working on many new editorial initiatives and overseeing advances in technology during this time.

In need of a rest I decided to take some time out, packed a rucksack and booked a one way ticket to Sydney, Australia.

One year later and I was back at the beeb and getting stuck into the work to revamp the BBC's website, project-named BBC2.0, under the guidance of Tom Loosemore (now working at Ofcom Channel 4). During this time I focused on plans for developing localness on bbc.co.uk which led to my current role within BBC Nations and Regions.

Originally from Devon in the South West of England, I moved to Birmingham, England, in 1995 where I gained a BSc (Hons) in Mathematics and Computer Science from The University of Birmingham and have been living there ever since (gap year aside!).


...and if that wasn't enough to satisfy your curiosity then you can find out more about me on LinkedIn, Facebook and Flickr.

Just testing...

I'm still a couple of weeks away from being able to say that this site is fully up and running.

However, for future reference, and in case you care, this post shows that the website was first published on Friday 13th (June 2008).