tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84709950593843905712012-01-26T08:50:48.997-07:00Thoughts on geospatial and location technology from Peter BattyPeter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.comBlogger2381100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-52585303116535719732011-11-18T08:10:00.001-07:002011-11-18T09:24:11.080-07:00

Just a quick post to mention that Ubisense is looking for a couple of people to join our geospatial team in the US. We've been growing rapidly and have a lot of exciting things going on. First is a Senior Project Manager.  Ideally we'd like someone with experience managing complex geospatial projects in utilities and/or telecommunications companies, and preferably but not necessarily experience

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-65962836584795132172011-09-04T14:39:00.000-06:002011-09-04T14:44:30.651-06:00

A couple of months ago I gave a talk at the monthly OpenStreetMap meetup in Denver and I decided to try crowdsourcing the content (in the best OpenStreetMap tradition), and it worked out very well. I received a good amount of interesting content from several folks (thanks everyone!). I rashly agreed to do a keynote at the upcoming State of the Map conference in Denver (rashly since I'm chairing

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-38070913289959966852011-08-07T12:07:00.003-06:002011-08-07T12:11:32.432-06:00

As some of you will know, the FOSS4G 2011 conference is coming up in Denver and I am the conference chair. I have only been to one previous FOSS4G, which was in Victoria in Canada in 2007. That event had a profound impact on my perspective on the geospatial industry, and on the software platforms I've chosen to implement geospatial applications on since then. And it has saved my companies a lot

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-49891527234761604902011-06-20T10:01:00.001-06:002011-06-20T10:02:40.205-06:00

As mentioned previously, I'll be speaking at tomorrow's OpenStreetMap meetup in Denver tomorrow, at the cool new MapQuest offices downtown. My attempt to crowdsource the presentation got a great response, and I got lots of suggestions for interesting content. I plan to have something for everyone, along the following lines: A quick intro to OpenStreetMap for any newcomers Some tips on using the

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-85534562001298080502011-06-14T15:58:00.000-06:002011-06-14T15:58:56.319-06:00

I'm doing a couple of upcoming presentations on OpenStreetMap, the first one next week at the very cool MapQuest office in downtown Denver, so I encourage you to come along to that if you're in the neighborhood ... and this may well evolve into a presentation for State of the Map in Denver too! So in the best OpenStreetMap tradition I thought I'd try a little crowdsourcing to help me pull this

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-36809486717477189812011-04-27T08:46:00.000-06:002011-04-27T08:46:47.833-06:00

So my recent posts analyzing the iPhone location data log have gained a lot of traffic and attention over the past few days, from places including the Toronto Star, the Wall Street Journal, TUAW, PC World, MacDailyNews, Apfeltalk (German), Cisco, Pete Warden at O'Reilly, Business Insider, and more. This led to me being invited to participate in a discussion on the Brian Lehrer Show yesterday on

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-85384878571205921942011-04-27T07:14:00.004-06:002011-04-27T07:26:29.001-06:00

Apple rather belatedly issued a Q&A on the whole "LocationGate" saga. This confirms what I said about the data being a cache of cell tower and wifi locations. The fact that this was kept for up to a year was a bug. Within the next few weeks they will reduce this to 7 days, they will not back up the cache any longer, and they will turn off the cache when you turn location services off, which

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-21128247995431046002011-04-24T08:51:00.011-06:002011-04-27T07:48:15.837-06:00

The Summary So in my previous two posts I discussed how the data I was seeing in my iPhone location logs was actually not very accurate, and certainly didn't reveal where I lived or worked or had stayed on my travels - beyond showing the cities I had been to, including general areas I had visited, as well as some I hadn't. There had been some discussion that the data appeared to be, in a number

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-30965336093179093262011-04-23T17:49:00.001-06:002011-04-24T09:29:22.751-06:00

In my previous post I discussed how the location data being recorded from my iPhone actually wasn't very accurate, and certainly not accurate enough to tell where I live or work (based on the data I've examined so far, which is in a table called CellLocation in the iPhone backup, and is the data discussed by Pete Warden and displayed by his iPhoneTracker app, which is what I used for the

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-65405922824784108042011-04-23T14:05:00.002-06:002011-04-23T17:54:23.242-06:00

So over the past couple of days there has been mass hysteria, questions in Congress, etc, over the fact that Apple is apparently recording all the locations you've been to with your iPhone without telling you, and storing it without encryption. The news was broken by my friend Pete Warden at Where 2.0 last week and has escalated rapidly since then. As someone who publishes their location anyway (

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-51228651356349559102011-04-13T15:51:00.001-06:002011-04-13T22:00:43.356-06:00

I just wrapped up the closing panel at the 34th and last GITA "annual conference" (officially known as the geospatial solutions conference these days), which was quite a sad moment for me. I attended my first GITA (then AM/FM, Automated Mapping and Facilities Management) conference in 1992, and have only missed one since then. Especially back in the 1990s, and into the early 2000s, it was always

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-83591600105425140162011-03-28T17:24:00.006-06:002011-03-28T20:20:14.350-06:00

I just had an interesting chat with Pete Warden, a fellow Brit who was living in Boulder for a while and is now out in San Francisco, and who has worked on various interesting development projects including quite a bit of geo stuff. He is most famous for his cool map of Facebook users, which led to Facebook threatening to sue him :( !!He has just launched a new project called the Data Science

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-6719088227084459982011-02-28T16:59:00.003-07:002011-02-28T17:12:10.755-07:00

We have been busy working away on various aspects of Ubisense myWorld. One of the biggest enhancements is behind the scenes, with support for new server options, so that we can run in the cloud or in house.Up to this point we’ve been working with Arc2Earth, which runs on top of Google App Engine, and both these platforms have worked very well for us, and were a great way of getting an initial

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-77265070952917868052011-02-25T16:20:00.003-07:002011-02-25T16:26:06.226-07:00

Very slick future technology vision video from glass maker Corning. Quite a few maps make an appearance. Worth watching! (Courtesy of fellow FortiusOne advisory board member Jeff Harris).

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-27442966173611001822011-02-23T15:58:00.003-07:002011-02-23T16:19:36.657-07:00

If you haven't already signed up for the GITA Geospatial Solutions Conference, which is coming up in Dallas (Grapevine) from April 10-13, you should check it out. There's a lot of great content in the program, including an open source track, which is a first for GITA. I'll be speaking on that track with my colleague Jason Sanford, about some of the latest developments we've been working on with

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-12243531360458279702011-02-11T15:15:00.003-07:002011-02-11T15:28:05.013-07:00

My friend Chris Helm, who is a co-conspirator both at FortiusOne and on the organizing committee of FOSS4G, has been doing a lot of interesting work with analyzing and mapping tweets recently. He produced a cool animated map showing the location of tweets tagged with #Egypt #Jan25 or #Tahrir over time.#maker_map_51058 {width: 100%; height: 400px;}View full mapmaker_map_51058 = new F1.Maker.Map({

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-47442601223894010912011-01-27T17:19:00.006-07:002011-01-27T18:28:24.210-07:00

As mentioned previously, earlier in the week myself, Brian Timoney and Chris Helm did a set of presentations and demos on geospatial technology in the cloud, to the Boulder Denver Geospatial Technologists group. We were aiming to give a quick taste of a variety of interesting geo-things currently happening in the cloud, and we did it as six slots of about ten minutes each, and apart from my

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-37596767275986450272011-01-24T22:03:00.003-07:002011-01-24T22:08:45.550-07:00

Today I was very happy to receive out of the blue a Google Chrome notebook. It's very black and stealth-bomber-like! I've written a short review of it over on my new posterous blog, where I'll be writing about (mainly) non-geo-things, including general tech, photography, videography, travel and anything else that comes to mind!

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-48501524146075215432011-01-24T11:12:00.003-07:002011-01-24T11:27:40.007-07:00

Just a quick post to say that I'll be speaking at the Boulder-Denver geospatial technologists meeting tomorrow, together with Chris Helm and Brian Timoney (and maybe Andrei Taraschuk, though he's doubtful because of other commitments). We'll be doing a pretty informal set of demos and discussions on geospatial in the cloud. Examples we'll cover will include Google Fusion Tables, GeoCommons, the

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-76699032021972609632010-12-21T09:31:00.002-07:002010-12-21T09:39:25.039-07:00

The organizing committee has been working away on various tasks for next September’s FOSS4G conference in Denver. We now have sponsorship details sorted out – you can download the brochure here (PDF). We are offering a 10% discount for any sponsors who commit by the end of January.We also have a winner in our logo contest, which you can see at our new FOSS4G Denver 2011 web site. We had over 800

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-85661050323549176262010-12-12T19:10:00.004-07:002010-12-12T20:03:49.022-07:00

I just did an "upgrade all" on my iPad applications, and happened to notice that ArcGIS for iPad v1.5 includes the following enhancement:We have simplified the experience of identifying locations on the map. A simple tap on the map replaces the Identify Location tool.This is nice to see, since I'd pointed out in a couple of my recent usability presentations that it took a minimum of six clicks,

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-37621490205801913562010-12-08T04:27:00.002-07:002010-12-08T04:33:48.454-07:00

As I've mentioned previously, I'm going to be the chair of the FOSS4G 2011 conference in Denver next September, and I wanted to ask for help in choosing our logo. We've been using a cool site called crowdspring, on which people compete to design your logo, with the winner getting a prize. I have been very impressed at the quality of entries. Please take a minute to have a quick look at these

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-57030031305037994112010-12-01T15:31:00.004-07:002010-12-01T15:35:55.217-07:00

Today I had a guest post about Ubisense myWorld published on the Google Geo Developers and Google Enterprise blogs, check it out! Thanks to Mano Marks of Google for working with me on this.

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-20801633038177776502010-11-28T18:38:00.008-07:002010-11-28T23:21:02.254-07:00

Now that wherecamp5280 is out of the way for this year, I'm getting excited about organizing FOSS4G 2011 here in Denver next September (in case you missed the news, I'll be the conference chair). This will be a rather larger event - we're expecting 1000 or so attendees. I walked down to the Sheraton in downtown Denver the other day to take some pictures for marketing purposes (for the web site

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-86490317051716656452010-11-24T10:40:00.006-07:002010-11-24T13:46:04.157-07:00

Last week we held the second annual wherecamp5280 unconference in Denver, and I think it was a great success again. The first one was organized by me, Eric Wolf and Ben Tuttle, and this year Steve Coast took the lead on organizing the main day while I did the social event, Chris Helm and Sean Gillies organized a hack day beforehand (aka hooky bobbing, courtesy of Sean, a new term to me I have to

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-53859489818374794132010-10-21T13:51:00.003-06:002010-10-22T09:10:50.062-06:00

Denver has always been known as a center for geospatial activity, and we have a great triple bill of events lined up, one in the near future and two back to back in September 2011.The one coming up is WhereCamp5280 on November 19th. Eric Wolf, Ben Tuttle and I ran the inaugural one last year which was a great success, see James Fee's review. I hear a rumor that James will be back this year, so I

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-89983943755553135802010-09-16T13:49:00.000-06:002010-09-16T13:49:45.543-06:00

Readers of my blog will know that for several years I have been advocating that Google Maps and other "neogeography" systems have a strong role to play in more traditional GIS application areas. In recent months I've been quite busy working on making this a reality, and last week at the Smallworld User conference in Baltimore we announced a new product called Ubisense myWorld. I'm really excited

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-17140622632260678802010-09-15T23:22:00.002-06:002010-09-15T23:25:28.515-06:00

Here's my 5 minute talk from Ignite Spatial NoCo (Northern Colorado) last night, on usability for geospatial applications. It was a fun event as usual. Thanks to Glenn Letham for the raw video, which I mixed with my slides to create this version.Don't make me think: Ignite Spatial NoCo 2 from Peter Batty on Vimeo.

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-38728896581632807432010-09-15T23:02:00.002-06:002010-09-15T23:20:55.856-06:00

As mentioned previously, I've had a burst of conference presentations recently. Here's the video of my keynote talk at NSGIC, the latest iteration of my "geospatial revolution" talk. It includes a short demo of our new Ubisense myWorld product, more coming about that very shortly, and a fair bit of new material on topics like usability and the cloud.Got some good feedback on twitter, here are a

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-37276900489686717132010-09-01T14:06:00.003-06:002010-09-01T15:02:27.750-06:00

As a few people have remarked to me recently, I haven't posted anything in a while ... have been otherwise occupied the past few months, between some interesting new work projects and some personal things. But I have quite a few talks coming up, and next week will be launching an exciting new product at the Smallworld User Conference in Baltimore, which is what I've been focused on the past few

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-43942718051136234142010-05-19T11:20:00.004-06:002010-05-19T11:51:40.989-06:00

My friend Greg Johnson found this interesting story saying that Google is hiring 300 people for a year to work "to improve the accuracy of Google Maps", though the commentary is rather uninformed (IMHO!). It doesn't discuss the fact that Google ditched Tele Atlas in the US 7 months ago to use their own data, and were widely perceived as having taken quite a step back in terms of data quality, as

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-5983818360240584862010-05-10T10:40:00.004-06:002010-05-10T10:58:05.916-06:00

One of the cool things about the Ubisense Real Time Location System (RTLS) is that customers come up with all sorts of interesting applications that we would never have thought of. We have had several artists doing cool things with the system - check out the video below showing "Audio Graffiti" by Zack Settel and Mike Wozniewski, powered by Ubisense. Users can "tag" or "spray" sounds at a

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-19543348346752232462010-05-08T13:04:00.009-06:002010-05-10T08:54:07.335-06:00

Last night I presented at Ignite Spatial NoCo (Northern Colorado) in Fort Collins. There was a great turnout of 200 people and some excellent 5 minute presentations (plus a few that I thought were a bit too much "corporate sales presentations" for an Ignite event). There was a fun map competition, in which teams had to create a relief map of Colorado using an assort of supplied materials like

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-14325810367285892372010-05-07T06:59:00.002-06:002010-05-07T07:58:39.868-06:00

As I had mentioned previously, I moderated a panel at the GITA conference in Phoenix last week called "Not your father's approach to geodata creation and sharing" with a distinguished cast of geo-characters: Steve Coast, founder of OpenStreetMap and Cloudmade, James Fee, blogger and evangelist at WeoGeo, Ron Lake, Chairman and CEO of Galdos, and Andrew Turner, CTO of FortiusOne.We had a lot of

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-72428415950882501652010-04-20T23:06:00.003-06:002010-04-20T23:16:27.226-06:00

I will be chairing a panel at the GITA conference in Phoenix next week, on Tuesday at 10:30am, and I am excited to have a diverse group of great participants. We will be talking about a broad range of issues relating to data creation and data sharing, and the state of the industry in general.In alphabetical order the panelists will be :Steve Coast, founder of OpenStreetMap and CloudmadeJames Fee,

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-77513732723905452822010-04-18T12:17:00.002-06:002010-04-18T12:25:17.332-06:00

Apologies for not posting for a while, my new job at Ubisense has been keeping me busy! I spent the last few days at the RFID Journal Live show in Orlando, where we did a fun demo on the Ubisense booth using Thomas the Tank Engine and his sidekick Molly to show how we can do indoor location tracking to six inch (15cm) accuracy in 3D, using just two sensors (most other ultra wideband systems

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-15817899783847729602010-02-15T17:18:00.006-07:002010-02-16T11:17:35.074-07:00

This is part 2 (of 2) of a paper I wrote for the AGI in the UK on the future of location based services, which I have been meaning to publish for a while! This was for their "Foresight Study" to look at where the geospatial industry will be in five years' time. Please read part 1 first!Impact of changes upon the geospatial industry and upon customersBased on all these assumptions, we will have

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-43340912296855468602010-02-14T13:35:00.006-07:002010-02-14T16:31:02.571-07:00

I am sure most readers of this blog have heard about how there has been a huge effort to map Haiti using OpenStreetMap - Harry Wood gave a good summary of efforts a few weeks ago. Currently Schuyler Erle and Tom Buckley are down in Haiti helping out with mapping for the relief efforts on ground - Schuyler's blog has really interesting accounts of what they've been doing. Schuyler tweeted today

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-82756043162565244812010-02-12T17:59:00.005-07:002010-02-12T23:17:22.393-07:00

On Wednesday next week, there will be an informal meetup at the Wynkoop Brewing Company in downtown Denver, to drink beer and discuss OpenStreetMap. Steve Coast, the founder of OpenStreetMap, will be there, and it should be an interesting group of local geo folks. We'll be there from 5:30pm until 9ish or later!If you’re already involved with OpenStreetMap, this is a chance to get together with

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-67697743001388532792010-01-27T11:07:00.003-07:002010-01-27T11:36:37.001-07:00

I am excited to announce that I have decided to rejoin my friends at Ubisense, where I worked from 2002 until I went to be CTO at Intergraph in 2005. I was a co-founder of Ten Sails, the company that provided early stage funding to and later merged with Ubisense.There are two main parts to the business: Precise Real Time Location Systems (RTLS), and geospatial consulting. I’ll be involved with

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-91236639411578877122010-01-19T12:12:00.006-07:002010-01-19T12:59:06.969-07:00

Today there has been a flurry of discussion about the GISP certification on twitter. I thought I would repost an article that I originally had published in Geospatial Solutions magazine in November 2003 (!!), which I can no longer find online (except in obscure archives). I think that everything there is still relevant (the "grandfathering" provision I refer to is no longer available, but it is

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-34941909420204543262010-01-18T20:39:00.001-07:002010-01-18T20:42:06.177-07:00

A friend of mine has put together a really interesting business plan for a web-based geo startup and he's looking for a technical co-founder. I've been seriously contemplating doing it myself but have some other plans that I think will prevent me from doing so (more on that soon!). He has excellent experience as a CEO and in business development and fund-raising in this space. And he has some

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-12017758109898681972010-01-18T11:24:00.007-07:002010-01-18T18:25:45.916-07:00

Much of the tech world has been obsessing over the rumored upcoming Apple tablet, which is expected to be unveiled to the world on January 27. So I hesitate to add more to that, but there are so many rumors out there that it's hard to wade through them, so I thought I would throw in a high level perspective on what we are likely to see, and include links to some of the more interesting articles

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-15946099410774434202009-12-08T19:47:00.006-07:002009-12-09T14:52:40.652-07:00

If you are involved with OpenStreetMap, you may or may not be aware that a lot of work has been been going on to develop a new license. If you are signed up for any of the OpenStreetMap mailing lists, then you certainly know that this work has been going on, as there has been a torrent of emails containing very heated debate on the topic over the past week or so (although work in this area has

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-67103447861774145492009-11-25T12:21:00.009-07:002009-11-25T14:26:17.727-07:00

The past few days I have been playing around with flook, a new "location browser" application for the iPhone, and I like it. You can access some aspects of it in a regular browser, but it's really focused around the iPhone application. The basic idea is that users create "cards" with a photo, title and brief caption, together with a location, and you can browse for cards that are close to you.

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-55206476037012659542009-11-18T08:39:00.006-07:002009-11-18T10:27:57.981-07:00

So as I talked about in my previous post, Ordnance Survey is going to make its small scale data freely available. I think that in many ways, OpenStreetMap has been a major influence in making this happen. The growth of OpenStreetMap has increased the awareness of the benefits of free geospatial data, and it was becoming apparent that there would no longer be a significant market for the Ordnance

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-84255715649859474672009-11-18T07:07:00.010-07:002009-11-19T08:01:31.716-07:00

So yesterday the UK government announced that some data sets (not all) from the Ordnance Survey (the UK national mapping agency) will be made available for free - 1:10,000 scale data and above is included (so this includes popular OS maps like the 1:25,000 and 1:50,000, in digital form). The more detailed maps (1:1250 and 1:2500) are not included - but I believe that issues related to derived

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-13102715320532084352009-11-17T09:12:00.003-07:002009-11-17T10:00:41.819-07:00

Boulder-based startup PublicEarth, a free wiki for places, has gone live today. I've been on their Advisory Board since they started last year, so am excited to see them launch - congratulations to founder Duncan McCall (pictured below talking at WhereCamp5280), Chairman David Hose, and the rest of the team.Duncan talks about his original vision for PublicEarth here:So the idea for a wiki of ‘

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-3127289263867371962009-11-16T15:26:00.006-07:002009-11-16T15:50:29.214-07:00

I recently came across a nice flickr search tool called ViewFinder (for Mac), which makes it very easy to search flickr for photos with appropriate Creative Commons licenses, and then download a suitably sized version and insert it into a Keynote presentation. There's a way to copy attribution information too, though that's not done automatically with the "insert Keynote slide" function -

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-18131790141075765542009-11-09T10:37:00.005-07:002009-11-09T12:29:40.571-07:00

I have been meaning to blog for some time about how useful I find the transit information in Google Maps on the iPhone. It's been around for a while, but I have been using it quite a lot recently and haven't blogged about it before. For those who haven't used it, when you calculate directions you can pick one of three options: driving, public transit, or walking (you also have the same options on

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-86794930886539097272009-11-05T10:16:00.005-07:002009-11-06T09:27:10.391-07:00

So the discussions about the great Google map data change in the US rage on, and we are seeing more and more reports of significant data quality issues. I wrote about how Central City Parkway was completely missing, and I reported this to Google to see how the change process would work. I posted later about how it had been partially fixed, with a new geometry visible but not routable, and with

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-68995733531200455672009-11-04T11:06:00.005-07:002009-11-04T12:18:03.185-07:00

Today it was announced that I've joined the new Advisory Board of FortiusOne, together with Jeff Harris, who has a very distinguished background in the Intelligence world, and Michael Frankel and Wolf Ruzicka, who bring great expertise in Business Intelligence and enterprise software. We actually had the first Advisory Board meeting just recently and it's a great group.I've followed the

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-60071930751296182592009-11-01T17:08:00.005-07:002009-11-02T08:23:21.535-07:00

I talk at quite a few conferences, as regular readers will know, and have been experimenting with videoing some of my presentations for a little while now. I thought I would share some of my experience on techniques I've tried and how they've worked. Basic ApproachesOf course a basic option is just to take a single digital video that includes the speaker and/or the slides. Options include setting

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-15019915653219147422009-10-26T17:46:00.004-06:002009-10-26T20:04:00.392-06:00

Here is a video of my recent keynote talk at the Minnesota GIS/LIS conference in Duluth, which was an excellent event. There were about 500 people there, which is great in the current economic climate. It was mainly a "traditional GIS" audience, and I got a lot of good feedback on the talk which was nice.I talk about current trends in the industry in three main areas: moving to the mainstream (at

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-1506994906469632032009-10-25T22:07:00.004-06:002009-10-26T09:09:56.879-06:00

I reported previously that I found that Google Maps was missing Central City Parkway after their change in street data provider (they are now providing their own street data rather than using Tele Atlas). I reported the error to Google and said I would report back here when it was fixed - Google is aiming to fix errors within 30 days. This evening Tom Churchill commented on my previous post to

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-43719667691228342302009-10-19T21:08:00.008-06:002010-02-15T17:40:04.214-07:00

The AGI in the UK is currently carrying out a "Foresight Study" to look at where the geospatial industry will be in five years' time. They have asked several dozen people to contribute short reports on different topics, and I was asked to write about Location Based Services. I thought I would publish the current working draft here, and I encourage you to contribute comments and suggestions that I

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-66893077067546434712009-10-15T09:35:00.005-06:002009-10-15T10:33:32.066-06:00

I'm a little behind on this - you may have already caught this video of me doing a "georant" at AGI GeoCommunity via Jonathan (who kindly said it was "rather funny") or GeoCommunityLive (who said that the audience were in hysterics, and "at the same time Peter had some serious points to make about the potential pitfalls of the 'free' model"). I basically discuss the fact that many people

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-19235248582848971062009-10-14T13:19:00.002-06:002009-10-14T13:26:32.471-06:00

I loved this quote from Paul Ramsey, commenting on Paul Bisset's blog post about the "Google data earthquake":Right, a black hole isn’t “evil”, but that doesn’t change the fact that it massively distorts the shape of space-time everywhere it goes, which can be a bummer for any object in its immediate neighbourhood.That summarizes rather nicely concerns I've expressed in recent posts.

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-60376956785245855632009-10-13T22:33:00.004-06:002009-10-13T22:44:20.991-06:00

Just a quick post to say that I will be doing the opening keynote talk next week (Thursday October 22nd) at the 19th annual Minnesota GIS/LIS conference, in Duluth. It should be a fun and interesting event, so if you're up in that part of the world I encourage you to stop by!http://www.flickr.com/photos/clairity/ / CC BY 2.0

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-6990822745824758602009-10-13T07:13:00.003-06:002009-10-13T07:31:26.843-06:00

Following on from my previous post about Google shaking up the geospatial data industry, Steve Coast invited me and James Fee to join him for a discussion on the topic. James' blog post on the topic has 138 comments at the time of writing, which is a good indication of the interest in this change! You can listen to the podcast on the "Google data earthquake" here.One topic I talk about in the

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-51068332681632937982009-10-07T17:10:00.005-06:002009-10-13T21:25:33.151-06:00

Well, the big news of the day is that Google has dumped Tele Atlas as the main data provider for Google Maps in the US, and is providing its own map data from a variety of sources (presumably also including its own Streetview teams). They've also added the ability to point out errors in the map, another addition to the crowdsourcing techniques they've been using. The announcement has caused a

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-39782138720447771082009-10-07T16:59:00.002-06:002009-10-07T17:07:16.259-06:00

In my previous post on GeoDesign (and Shakespeare), I was curious about why (it seemed to me) ESRI was positioning design in GIS as something new. Their position was clarified by no less an authority than Jack Dangermond in the comments - I thought that Jack's thoughts deserved a new post of their own rather than being hidden away, so here they are ...Thanks for noticing our efforts in GeoDesign

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-49804863446770167262009-09-17T22:50:00.005-06:002009-09-17T23:12:44.853-06:00

I've been trying to figure out why ESRI is suddenly trying to make such a big deal of "GeoDesign" - this announcement talks about introducing "the first generation of geodesign concepts, technologies, and tools". But people have been doing design in GIS for decades - the first release of Smallworld in 1991 was really all about design, with features like version management to enable you to analyze

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-15727107958001901622009-09-16T13:37:00.009-06:002009-09-17T09:30:53.240-06:00

I spent the last few days at the Autovation conference in Denver, which is focused on Smart Metering and the Smart Grid, an area that I am becoming increasingly interested in and one where Enspiria is doing a lot of work (where I work part time as Chief Technology Advisor). It was a very interesting conference - there is certainly lots of activity and energy in the space, especially since the

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-72827351547615405912009-09-06T12:56:00.004-06:002009-09-06T16:42:45.889-06:00

I'm very much looking forward to the AGI GeoCommunity conference which is coming up in Stratford upon Avon in a couple of weeks. Apart from Stratford being the birthplace of Shakespeare and a great place to visit, it's also very close to Leamington Spa where I used to live when I worked at IBM UK many years ago, so it will be a chance for me to catch up with old friends. It will also be the first

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-18495444243177409722009-08-24T09:59:00.007-06:002009-08-24T12:54:52.980-06:00

Daratech has published its annual analysis of the GIS industry. I thought there were a few interesting things worth commenting on there. First I should say though that I am generally somewhat skeptical of these type of reports - there is a lot of subjectivity in what gets included and what doesn't. One illustration of this was when Bentley suddenly jumped to the number 2 position ahead of

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-13222704886066387902009-08-19T10:58:00.003-06:002009-11-07T16:46:21.257-07:00

Here is the second (of two) short video presentations on what the Smart Grid is, at a high level. This follows on from my previous one on why we need a Smart Grid - you should watch that one before watching this one.In future installments I'll talk more about some of the IT challenges in making the Smart Grid happen, the impact of geospatial technology / GIS on the Smart Grid and vice versa.The

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-78875415307601979012009-08-10T20:58:00.004-06:002009-08-10T22:07:29.202-06:00

As I have posted about previously, I'm helping to organize a cool, and FREE, "geo-unconference" in Denver called WhereCamp5280 (5280 = the altitude of Denver in feet, for those not from round here!), which is now almost upon us - it's this Friday and Saturday, August 14-15. We've been really pleased with the response - check out the list of likely attendees and potential talks (being an

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-1061154453156889722009-08-10T20:42:00.005-06:002009-09-24T01:15:18.324-06:00

In my role as Chief Technology Advisor at Enspiria Solutions, I've recently been researching the Smart Grid. I've found that even a lot of people working in the electric industry have somewhat fuzzy ideas about it, or understand some aspects but not others. I've put together some short presentations on the subject. The first two you might call "Smart Grid 101" - the first one, below, talks about

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-74967689157628443172009-08-04T15:31:00.005-06:002009-08-04T16:13:47.833-06:00

I have previously discussed Netezza, who produce data warehousing appliances that provide outstanding performance and simplicity for complex analytics on very large data volumes. I did some consulting work with them last year as they added spatial capabilities to their system. Today they announced a major new architecture, which they say gives a 3-5x performance improvement for typical workloads

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-49298823756677975722009-08-04T10:38:00.009-06:002009-08-05T10:34:34.766-06:00

The GeoWeb 2009 conference was very good as usual. The presentations I attended were a bit of a mixed bag - some excellent, a few so so - but the networking and hallway conversations were great. James has done a good writeup. I'll just comment on a few things that I thought were interesting.One trend was increasing acknowledgment that the traditional approach to SDI (Spatial Data Infrastructure)

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-69437247304313313962009-07-30T12:59:00.002-06:002009-07-30T13:08:38.375-06:00

Here's a video of my GeoWeb presentation on "Building a new location-aware infrastructure for calendaring and scheduling". Recorded and edited using ScreenFlow.GeoWeb 2009 presentation by Peter Batty from Peter Batty on Vimeo.I'll post more thoughts on GeoWeb soon - in the mean time you can check out my tweets and the geoweb stream on twitter. And there are some pics of the social event here.

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-28069220785178041612009-07-28T18:05:00.004-06:002009-07-28T19:07:34.974-06:00

So all the discussion about my last post got me to thinking about how to define "neogeography". I was really using it in a pretty broad sense, as a convenient label for the “new generation” of web mapping tools and related technologies that have emerged over the past few years – essentially the “disruptive technology” that Clayton Christensen talks about. These systems include Google Maps and

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-37861224726827905352009-07-28T08:03:00.005-06:002009-07-28T10:31:39.343-06:00

My post yesterday triggered some interesting discussion on Twitter (I guess the cool kids don't comment on blogs any more, that's so 2008!). Here's a quick cut and paste with most of the relevant stuff (the relevance fades towards the end but I figured I would leave some of those bits in!). I will post more thoughts shortly on what I think "neogeography" actually is. If you want to figure out who

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-16836185518044347312009-07-27T09:48:00.005-06:002009-07-27T16:02:12.890-06:00

I thought I would do a post or two to set some context for the upcoming geothought “top 10 most influential people for the next 5 years” list, that I recently posted about. In summary, I see the next 5 years being a period of major disruption for the traditional geospatial industry.As I have mentioned many times over the past several years, Clayton Christensen discusses in his book The

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-35020423048531743762009-07-24T07:15:00.004-06:002009-07-24T07:56:01.341-06:00

So this week Directions magazine published the results of their poll on who will be the "most influential people in geospatial" over the next 5 years. I like Joe and Adena and they do a lot of good articles, but I thought this one was a bit silly, and even if you accept the silliness had some glaring omissions (and not just myself ;) !). Though there were some interesting nuggets in the published

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-36182381100912954082009-07-22T17:21:00.003-06:002009-07-22T17:28:53.212-06:00

I have been trying to raise investment funds for Spatial Networking for some time now but despite some interest still haven’t closed anything, unfortunately – it’s a tough time to be raising money. After weighing up all my options, I have decided to stop new work on whereyougonnabe (for now at least) and move on to some new things. I continue to believe that we have a good idea and have developed

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-10088741778828164952009-07-16T14:48:00.003-06:002009-07-16T15:41:15.792-06:00

On my recent trip to Amsterdam for the OpenStreetMap State of the Map conference, I made extensive use of the OffMaps mapping application for the iPhone - which incidentally uses OpenStreetMap data. The big advantage of OffMaps compared to the standard Google Maps application is that it can run offline, which is really important if you are going abroad, as data usage charges make it prohibitively

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-79441843813082214312009-07-15T13:04:00.003-06:002009-07-15T13:17:28.882-06:00

We’ll be holding a fun, cool, educational and FREE geospatial event in Denver on August 14-15 – WhereCamp5280 (for those not from round here, 5280 is the elevation of Denver above sea level in feet – exactly one mile high!). If you’re already familiar with WhereCamp, you probably don’t need any more persuading to come along. The event is being organized by Eric Wolf, me, Ben Tuttle, and anyone

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-71479027318664000152009-07-14T14:17:00.003-06:002009-07-14T14:55:08.019-06:00

A video of my presentation at the recent OpenStreetMap State of the Map conference is now online at Vimeo. There's also a copy of the slides at SlideShare. I talk about the four major business models that have been tried in regard to creating geodata, and how they are all handicapped by the very high costs involved when you use the traditional approach which involves paying the people who create

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-27097612422497557392009-07-13T01:23:00.005-06:002009-07-13T01:57:00.116-06:00

This is just a quick initial report on the OpenStreetMap State of the Map conference, which has just finished in Amsterdam. First I'd say read Steven Feldman's summary, which I completely agree with. As I said in my keynote talk here (see the slides, video should be online at some point soon, and I'll summarize it in a future post), the industry has always been hampered by the very large cost of

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-11321153717242779152009-05-23T23:07:00.004-06:002009-05-23T23:32:26.156-06:00

Here's the (5 minute) video of my presentation last week at the Ignite Where event, part of the Where 2.0 conference. It was a great week - will be posting lots more on my impressions over the next couple of days.Future Location and Social Networking, by Peter Batty at Where 2.0 from Peter Batty on Vimeo.This clip is an extract from the O'Reilly video of the Ignite session (under Creative Commons

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-63911314079711527262009-05-15T07:48:00.004-06:002009-05-15T09:18:00.175-06:00

I am continuing to iterate on the preparation of my 5 minute presentation for next week's Ignite event which is part of the Where 2.0 conference - but it's an evening event which is open to the public, so if you're in the vicinity of San Jose try to stop by even if you're not attending the conference. Brady Forrest's blog has a complete list of what’s on and it sounds like it should be a really

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-1711636443340981042009-04-13T16:50:00.006-06:002009-04-13T18:08:24.659-06:00

There are several conferences coming up that I wanted to mention, some of which I am speaking at.First I should mention the GITA Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference, which is in Tampa next week. I have had strong involvement with GITA since moving to the US in 1993, including five years on the GITA board (which I stood down from last December). I am sure the conference will be

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-48820817872160661812009-04-08T09:22:00.007-06:002009-04-08T13:18:25.069-06:00

Every so often you come across a radically different approach to a certain class of data processing problem which makes you completely rethink what you knew before about how best to develop applications in that space. Systems which I would put in this category over my career include:Smallworld VMDS (early 90s), for its approach to handling long transactions and graphically intensive applications

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-75709340765752026162009-03-19T17:58:00.004-06:002009-03-19T18:10:47.593-06:00

Here's a video of my recent keynote address at the WALIS CIO Forum in Perth, on "The Geospatial Technology Revolution" - it covers a wide range of thoughts on recent and future developments in the geospatial industry. It's an hour long but most of you will save a lot of travel time by not having had to fly to Perth :) !!This was produced using ScreenFlow incidentally, which I think is a brilliant

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-85912205712845023772009-03-07T12:51:00.003-07:002009-03-07T12:58:27.488-07:00

I stumbled on this cool short movie (9 minutes long) and was struck by how "SketchUp-esque" the techniques were that the main character uses to construct his "holographic world".World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-49990214959807600882009-02-25T15:29:00.003-07:002009-02-25T15:39:17.352-07:00

Just a quick note to say that I will be giving the keynote address at the upcoming CIO Forum event in Perth, Australia, organized by WALIS (Western Australia Land Information System) and the Australian Computer Society. It's on March 12 and I'm talking on the subject of "The Geospatial Technology Revolution":Geospatial technology has been transformed over the past few years from a specialised

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-23403537031111972772009-02-21T20:43:00.005-07:002009-02-22T12:43:08.204-07:00

Slightly off topic here, but for a bit of fun I have applied for "the best job in the world", as Caretaker of the Great Barrier Reef Islands. It's a pretty long shot as they are anticipating 30,000 applicants, but it was a fun exercise to do the video! And at the moment I'm in the top 30 "most popular", but it seems pretty dynamic. So I encourage you to please vote for me here (i.e. rate the

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-1534492405194499242009-02-12T13:57:00.003-07:002009-02-12T14:18:07.457-07:00

I have posted previously about Netezza, who make data warehouse appliances, which can perform certain types of complex spatial analysis from 10x to 100x faster than traditional systems - I did some consulting for them last year. On Thursday next week I am speaking in a free webinar hosted by Directions Magazine and sponsored by Netezza, on the topic of data warehouse appliances for Location

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-55601783445987247822009-02-05T09:02:00.002-07:002009-02-05T09:07:31.553-07:00

Interesting 5 minute video on the pace of change in the world. One example is the length of time it took various products to reach a market audience of 50 million:Radio - 38 yearsTV - 13 yearsInternet - 4 yearsiPod - 3 yearsFacebook - 2 years

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-13668186605925077622009-01-29T10:34:00.003-07:002009-01-29T11:19:11.725-07:00

I received my copy of Apple's new iLife 09 a couple of days ago, and being a keen photographer have spent quite a bit of time trying out the new features of iPhoto, especially Places and Faces. This is just a quick initial review - I may do a more detailed one in the next few days. Briefly, I very much like Places, with the exception of a few minor niggles, but Faces, despite an undeniable

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-2111703487125402432009-01-26T17:45:00.004-07:002009-01-27T16:57:37.792-07:00

Last Friday I went to a FRUGOS (Front Range Users of Geospatial Open Source) event organized by Brian Timoney in Denver, entitled "FRUGOS for Managers". It ran for a couple of hours on a Friday afternoon, and around 50 people showed up, which I thought was a great turnout. Brian includes a list of organizations who attended in his summary of the event - they included a good assortment of local

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-12631908614599439542009-01-07T08:22:00.006-07:002009-01-07T09:10:24.355-07:00

For several years now, Microsoft has provided a plug-in for Outlook which provided some nice mapping functionality for calendar entries, contacts, etc, using Virtual Earth aka Live Search Maps. I briefly tried this, and liked it, several years ago but haven't looked at it for a while, not least as I've been using Mac for the past couple of years now.Anyway, we have started work on an Outlook

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-91516785889864206402008-12-21T14:11:00.004-07:002008-12-21T14:29:28.475-07:00

In a welcome change to the recent rush of stories on the theme of "terrorists use Google Earth" (I'm still not sure of the ongoing fascination with that theme versus "terrorists use cell phones" or "terrorists use boats"), there's a story in today's Observer in the UK about how Google Earth was used to "discover a lost Eden" in Africa:It was one of the few places on the planet that remained

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-84207017316933780092008-12-18T13:30:00.005-07:002008-12-18T15:14:10.232-07:00

It was brought to my attention the other day that we have just passed the 20th anniversary of the founding of Smallworld (December 3rd 1988 was its first day). Many readers of my blog these days may not be familiar with Smallworld, which is now part of GE, who acquired us in 2000. I joined Smallworld in 1992 in the UK when it was still a fairly small startup (about 30 people or so I think), was

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-35817105536267866702008-11-14T10:52:00.003-07:002008-11-14T11:01:07.870-07:00

Apologies for the lack of posting recently, lots going on! Just a quick one to say that I will be doing a couple of conference presentations next week. I'll be at GeoAlberta in Edmonton, where I'm presenting on Tuesday afternoon on the subject of "Applications based on Future Location", and on Wednesday lunchtime I'm on an industry panel with a group of the usual suspects - Geoff Zeiss from

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-50516491644003603902008-10-13T12:59:00.005-06:002008-10-13T14:05:47.017-06:00

Just read this article in Forbes, which says:"I laugh when I hear that you can make a map by community input alone," says Tele Atlas founder De Taeye. He says that if tens of thousands of users travel a road without complaining, then Tele Atlas can be fairly certain that its map of the road is correct.The first statement is demonstrably false already (see my earlier post about Oxford University

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-78772161708405077322008-10-12T15:25:00.004-06:002008-10-12T16:50:56.263-06:00

This week we added quite a number of new capabilities to whereyougonnabe, including support for Fire Eagle and GeoRSS, substantially expanded help documentation, improved synchronization capabilities, support for SMS, and exclusive use of Google Local Search in the whereyougonnabe browser application, as discussed previously (having introduced this approach for external sync in the previous

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8470995059384390571.post-63810541915814235672008-10-08T21:57:00.006-06:002008-10-08T22:22:24.457-06:00

Just a quick note to say that there will be a mapping party in Denver the weekend of October 18-19, following on from the first one we had back in July. Richard Weait from Cloudmade will be here to coordinate things, and I'll be hosting it at my loft in downtown Denver, as I did last time. I think we'll be starting at 1pm each day, and migrating to the Wynkoop Brewing Company downstairs at around

Peter Battyhttps://profiles.google.com/109689550787188347960noreply@blogger.com2