Bytes Bite

An amazing video as a precursor to Steve Coasts Keynote. It showed a year in edits. [insert link here].

OSM started at UCL with a need for playing with mapping data of the local area. This was not possible due to licensing restrictions. Once I make an area of my map and you make an map of your area, and we put it together we have something that can be used. This growth has been exponential ever since.

OSM community does not just map, the community provide software, services, hardware management and maintenance. OSM collects mapping data using mapping parties. These provide information on how to collect mapping data. Using a varied collection of devices people collect GPS traces, these are nothing but breadcrumbs of lat and lon co-ordinates of the path you walk, drive, ride etc. Also collecting metadata as you go along. Street names, parks, hospitals, schools, *pubs*, foot paths etc etc. All *volunteers*!!!

The US effort started with the import of Tiger Data. This is public domain data created by the US Census Beurau. Add OSM to this mix and now the US OSM Maps are as good as any other source and in many cases more POI rich.

Germany now has a *complete* map in the space of two years. OSM there started in 2006 and at the end of 2008 was feature complete. Ongoing efforts now continue to fix errors and add features.

The main reason why OSM is POI and Feature rich is due to the mapping technology used. The likes of Tele Atlas use trucks with equipment to capture data rapidly. This model does not scale to collecting Foot Paths and Parks and the like.

[The thing I find strange here, there is still NOT ONE SINGLE MENTION of cloudmade by Steve Coast. This was supposed to be a Cloud Made developer program launch, not a OSM sales pitch.]

Cloudmade Mapping API and Services launch in London.

Craig Nealson talking about the night and launching the evening.

I will be heading to the Cloudmade Developer Program Launch this evening. Wifi access permitting, I should be live blogging the event.

Presented by Russell Middleton from Google

Few things to talk about

Location detection 

• Until user had to center map to location desired, bit of a pain, even with cookies
• Now built into the AJAX API. When an application uses the AJAX API loader, the laoder attempts to geo locate the client based on its IP address. (Flawed, but 2/3’s of the cases it is right …. )

On the mobile

•  Google Gears is now available on Android
•  obtain the users current position, address and altitude
•  watch the users poition as it changes over time
•  quickly and cheaply obtain the users last known position
•  open’s a can of worms around permissions
•  location is found using onboard gps, or triangulation and reverse geocoding

Google Web Toolkit - allows developers to build and maintain rovust JavaScript front-end applications in Java. The GWT compiler translates your Java code into JAvaScript for the browser.

Geocoding has been available for a long time. But Google now also Reverse Geocoding available on the web and also on the mobile (iPhone works somewhat).

What’s really relevant to mobile tho is the static maps API. The API reduces load time by displaing a static image, rather than the full JS Maps interface.

[This is turning into a sales pitch ...]

Google Earth API

API allows developers to embed Earth into the website. It is a plugin, but it only needs download once, much like the Flash plugin or Silverlight etc. Graceful download is also available via the API.

[Yup, sales pitch ...]

AJAX API Playground is now getting a mention.

Organize the world’s geo-reference information and make it useful and accessible. Google has indexed various GeoRSS and GeoTagged data available on the web allowing users to search for more then just addresses from the maps interface. This includes all Google MyMaps created by users.

So the GeoIndex API is both AJAX and RESTful. It is the same as the local search API with a geo context.

AJAX local search allows you to do everything from maps.google.com. The API allows users to indicate what type of results you want returned. There are a few types of results you can ask for.

Any content that Google indexes which contains a Geo Context, I guess either via lat,lon or placenames is now available via this API.

Also another thing they have released is a new type of SiteMaps. Something called a GeoSitemap. If you have geo content on yourwebsite then you need to put a geo sitemap in your website and then it gets indexed. How to create such a sitemap is documented on the Google Code KML documentation page.

Search ranking algorithm is a question that Google is not providing detail on yet. They are saying that this is not a solved problem, implying results may not always be accurate and relevant.

Search queries used in examples seem to always have ‘near’ and ‘in’. Sounds like these are keywords and are used as intelligence parameters in the backend.

GeoServer has started an attempt at combining the various GData APIs with the GeoIndex API. (http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Exposing+to+Geo+Search)