Multimap
Crowdsourced street maps for commercial providers
The State of the Map conference at the weekend - organised mostly by the OpenStreetMap Foundation - was a great success. It drew in a broad mix of a crowd, from OSM hackers through to academics, surveyors, cartographers and those in business who are in a position to both benefit from the project and support it in achieving its goals of mapping the world - many of them actually being sponsors of the weekend.
Ed Parsons, geospatial technologist at Google, took the opening speech on Sunday, drawing on his experience as ex-CTO of the Ordnance Survey and his new role at Google. He highlighted just how much of the world is covered by user-created content of some sort, showing hubs of activity in Britain - likely due to the Geograph project - and other places around the world, noting that there were very few gaps in the coverage. Few gaps in coverage suggests there are few places without people who have and interest in geography and the area around them. It'd be interesting to compare Ed's (Google's) map of user generated content with OpenStreetMap's map of user generated geodata and see how different or alike they are in their hotspots of activity.
The main point of this post was to point out Ed's announcement that Google is using crowdsourced map data for some of their maps of India. I don't recall the source of the data (Mumbai Free Map, perhaps?) but I am curious, at what point would Google start using OpenStreetMap's crowdsourced data?
He brought up two issues that were affecting that decision at present: licensing - a big issue in the community - and quality* - something we need to start start thinking a lot more about now that some areas are 'complete' and potentially ready for being used as such, and many others getting closer to that point every day. What issues did they have to work through to get the Indian maps into their transport layer on Google Earth (and Maps?)?
No prizes for guessing which part of the world I'd like to see covered by the major mapping providers...
The closing talk at State of the Map was given by Sean Phelan, founder of MultiMap, about the history of web mapping. He was joined by John McKerrell, senior software engineer and developer of their cool new 'slippy map', to talk about the modern age of web mapping.
Sean's personal prediction (wish) was that they'd be able to use OpenStreetMap as a layer on the MultiMap website by the end of 2007. But with the (possible though ambitious) aim of Steve Coast - OpenStreetMap founder - of finishing the map of Britain by mid 2008, it'll be interesting to see how they deal with the issue of 'completeness' of the map. How will end users feel about an incomplete map? Will it drive more people into the project to fix up the map?
Users aside (for now), there's one thing for sure and that's that MultiMap, the first British online mapping provider, will be viewed as a visionary by those of us building the maps and hopefully also by those in industry who may not be convinced right now of the value of user-created maps.
* actually, looking back through Ed's presentation I think the second point wasn't quality as such, but about the reach of the project... I should've taken notes :)
Update: See Frank Taylor's post on gearthblog.com about Google's maps in India and listen to Michael Jones' (Chief Technologist of Google Earth) presentation about it.
Google embeds rich data in maps
Google has just started embedding rich transport data into their maps, allowing you to click on a transport stop (train station, bus stop, ferry berth, etc.) and see - depending on what information is available for that city - a link to the transit company's website (e.g. in Stuttgart), the services that stop there (e.g. in London), and even the next few departures (e.g. in Manchester or Zurich).
The big G aren't the first to do this, but they are the first that I am aware of to embed information without making it obvious that it's there. Multimap has been allowing their users to overlay local businesses and POIs for quite some time. It perhaps wasn't the best integrated feature in their original site but with the release of their nice shiny new site, it is much better integrated, with the ability to turn on and off different layers of information. Unfortunately it doesn't quite go as far as upcoming departures, but with more and more local authorities providing this information in standard(ish) formats it's something that we could see more of on mapping sites in the future.
Subtly introducing more and more rich information into maps without overburdening the user with information will be a great way forward for online mapping, and something that I'd love to see happening in OpenStreetMap as the database grows.
MSc progress
Well, having started my MSc in Geographic Information Science at UCL back in September of last year, it's now starting to come to an end - or at least the teaching part of it is. This evening I have handed in my last piece of coursework, and next week my final exams begin. This semester I'm taking three modules that have exams and each of them is three hours long. They're basically placed a week apart, leaving a nice period in between for revision unlike in previous years in Manchester where I've had a day in between if I'm lucky.
Following the exams I'll be working full-time on my dissertation for the summer. June to September seems like a long time until I start thinking about exactly how much work I will have to do over the summer. Luckily it's work I'll enjoy doing so there are no real issues. Still, I'm sure the summer will go very quickly, hopefully involving lots of time spent in Regents Park and on Hampstead Heath, both of which are really close to where I'm living. If there are any wi-fi hotspots around there, I can even work while I'm there!
For my dissertation I'm lucky enough to be working with a company I've been fascinated by since the early days of the internet. Earlier in the term a GIS developer (who is also a UCL alumni) came in to give a presentation on the company he worked for, Multimap. With this being just at the sort of time when we should have been thinking about a dissertation to take on for the summer months, two things clicked in my head and I thought I'd get in touch with them to see if they had anything I could help them out with as part of my dissertation. I was very hopeful as they were basically doing exactly what I wanted to do - geographic information for the web. My whole course of education has been based on the fact that I'm interested in geography and computing and especially the areas in which they combine. That desire explains my choice of topics at A-level, BSc level and now MSc level. (If only there was some way of combining photography with them as well!)
I was really happy when Multimap got back to me and asked me to come in and meet them over lunch to talk about the possibilities. So now I have a dissertation topic to work on after the exams, in an area that fascinates me and with a great company. What more could I ask for? After I've researched the area in more detail, I'm hoping to create some geographic analysis software to help them out with some of the work they do. I can't really go into it yet, but hopefully will be able to in the future. I've been discussing non-disclosure agreements with them and my course tutor over the past few days and frankly it's fascinating - if a little scary at the same time. Whilst being aware of them, I've never had to deal with NDAs before at all.
The website I created as the final year project for my first degree (BSc Computing and Geography with Industrial Experience) up in Manchester was designed as a project on its own - not being worked on with any organisations - so there were very few restrictions as to what I could do. Originally I would have had more input from other organisations but sadly that plan never worked out, so it was a complete standalone project in the end. I still managed to achieve a comfortable 1st class mark for the project though, which I was extremely pleased with.
So, next thing on my agenda is to make sure I'm prepared for the first of my final exams on Tuesday...
