OffMaps for iPhone review

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 expensive to use an online mapping application (you quickly get into hundreds of dollars worth of data charges!). The functionality is fairly simple - currently it's basically map display, without routing or search for points of interest (though these things are planned for the future, I heard from Felix Lamouroux, the main developer, who I met at the conference). But it makes good use of the GPS and the compass in the iPhone 3GS, which make it very intuitive and easy to use when walking around. Performance is very good since all the data is local. There is a simple interface for choosing the data to download and store locally (which you want to do ahead of time when you're at home, or connected via WiFi). You can run it in an online mode too, where it will dynamically fetch data over the network if it isn't already stored locally.

The OpenStreetMap maps for Amsterdam were very good quality and nice looking. This application illustrates one of the key advantages of OpenStreetMap over Google Maps and other commercial solutions, which is that Google licensing prohibits you from using the data offline. This fact, plus the availability of the Cloudmade iPhone Maps Library, is making OpenStreetMap data a popular option for mapping applications on the iPhone - just today, Dopplr announced a new iPhone application which also uses OpenStreetMap data (though strangely it uses different rendering from the other applications I've tried, and none of the freeways in Denver show up, though they do in the other applications - but I'm sure that will be fixed shortly).

So I would strongly recommend OffMaps, especially if you're going on an overseas trip - I am currently downloading data for Vancouver in preparation for my upcoming trip to GeoWeb, so if you're there and want to check it out please ask me and I'll show you!

WhereCamp5280 - cool event coming up in Denver!

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 else who would like to help out!

For those not familiar with WhereCamp, it’s an “unconference” on the subject of location, mapping and things "geo". An unconference is basically an informal conference which is organized on the fly by the participants. I’ve attended two unconferences now, both of which were excellent. The first was held by FRUGOS (Front Range Users of Geospatial Open Source), which you could also consider a predecessor to this event – though we intend for this to cover not just open source solutions (though that’s up to the participants, of course!). Here are a couple of reports on the FRUGOS unconference by me and Charlie Savage. The second was WhereCamp in San Jose this year, which I found really interesting and fun. I have to say that based on these two unconferences, the quality of presentations has been at least as good if not better than the “formal” conferences I have been to.

We have already had expressions of interest in attending from a wide variety of interesting geo-people, both locally and from out of town, so I’m sure there will be lots of great discussions. For an up to date list of people likely to attend check here.

If you are potentially interested in participating, please sign up to our Google Group and add your name to the likely attendee page. We encourage you to list topics that you would be interested in talking about or leading a discussion on, but this is definitely optional! While the agenda will certainly be flexible in unconference style, we plan to get some ideas together in advance to help us make the most of our time during the two days.

If you’re interested in helping out, please let me or Eric know. While DU has kindly donated the rooms for the event, we are aiming to get some modest sponsorship to be able to cover other costs including:

• A fun social event on Friday evening (probably either at the Wynkoop Brewing Company, or my loft which is right above the Wynkoop)
• Cost of projector rental from DU (which is not free) – if you have access to a projector(s) that we could use on Friday and/or Saturday, please let me know
• Lunch on Friday and Saturday

Please see the Google Group for more info – your questions, suggestions and assistance are appreciated! We really hope to make this a good venue for exchanging ideas between the “neogeographers”, open source users, and users of traditional GIS (and some of us, like me, fit into all of those camps). If you work in the geo area in Denver, tell your manager that this is the best free education you can get on the latest developments in the space!

My presentation on "Geodata creation: past, present and future" at State of the Map 2009 #sotm09

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 the data. And I discuss how crowdsourcing completely changes things by reducing this labor cost to zero. From everything I saw at State of the Map, I am convinced that use of crowdsourcing in general, and OpenStreetMap in particular, is going to massively grow over the next couple of years.

Geodata creation: past , present and future - Petter Batty (Spatial Networking) from State of the Map 2009 on Vimeo.

Other videos are being posted online at the sotm09 channel on Vimeo - I recommend you take a look. There are lots of great presentations, but one that I guarantee will make you smile is this 5 minute one on Mapping of Historical Sites in Japan - check it out :).

Quick report on OpenStreetMap State of the Map 2009 conference

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 creating and maintaining geodata. Despite all the technological advances over the years, this remains a very labor-intensive process and therefore is just fundamentally expensive by traditional methods (where you pay the people doing the data capture).

Crowdsourcing changes the paradigm by having volunteers contributing their time, and having access to free data (without complex licensing constraints) completely changes the economics of developing geospatial applications. Obviously the first reaction of most traditional geospatial people is to ask whether you can get good enough data quality using this approach. Dr Muki Haklay presented a very thorough and rigorous analysis of the quality of OpenStreetMap data against Ordnance Survey data in the UK, and his conclusion was "OpenStreetMap quality is beyond good enough, it is a product that can be used for a wide range of activities" (not in general - today - for very large scale mapping, but for small or medium scale mapping - the type of applications that today might use today data from Google or Microsoft, NAVTEQ or Tele Atlas).

The conference itself had a tremendous buzz about it, with 250 people from thirty-something countries (I think), and great enthusiasm and excitement from everyone participating. The presentations were a great mixture of people talking about really cool and innovative technical things, and heart-warming and moving stories about people creating maps from all parts of the world - in many parts of the developing world, OpenStreetMap is way ahead of any other data source.

Anyway, I'm off to be a tourist in Amsterdam for the day, I will write more in due course. If you are attending the ESRI user conference this week I really recommend you seek out the OpenStreetMap booth to find out more about what they are up to. And thanks to everyone who attended State of the Map for making it such a fun and inspiring event!

My Ignite Where presentation on Future Location and Social Networking

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 license) - this starts at around 35 minutes in.

P.S. No fish in this one :) !!

Ignite Where and Launchpad event on Tuesday next week

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 interesting program. I'm third on the list for the second set which starts at 8:15pm - so the audience should have had a few drinks by then which hopefully is a good thing :) !!

My topic is “Social Networking Based on Future Location”:

This presentation talks about the challenges in building a fine-grained model of a person's future location, and about the range of powerful applications that can be built off such a model. Many applications focus on the current location of a person and their friends - future location is harder to handle but arguably more useful.

I originally proposed this as a 30 minute presentation so it’s definitely both challenging and fun to work on fitting it in to the Ignite format of 20 slides which auto-advance every 15 seconds, for a total of 5 minutes. I have done a few practice runs already and the timing is really critical in this format, so I anticipate several more iterations of tweaking the slides and content before Tuesday. I’ll write a bit more about tips for doing Ignite presentations once I’m done with it all. Brady referred the presenters to this post from Jason Grigsby which has some good advice in it – most especially the one about how you need to adapt on the fly when you stumble. If you are 5 seconds behind then you’re missing a third of your time on the next slide, so it’s pretty hard to catch up.

I believe they’ll be recording the presentations and posting them online, but I’ll also record one of my practice runs just in case - so one way or another we will get a version of it online shortly. I'm looking forward to an interesting time and catching up with lots of people at both Where 2.0 and WhereCamp.

Upcoming conferences (and 25% discount on Where 2.0!)

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 excellent as always, especially with the focus of the Obama administration on renewing US infrastructure providing some topical interest. This year for the first time they will be using Zerista to provide social networking and mapping services for attendees, so I'll be interested to hear how that goes (Zerista is the latest evolution of MapBuzz, founded by my friend Charlie Savage). It is with some sadness that I report that I won't be at the conference this year, the first one I will have missed since 1991!! I am sure I will be back again in future, but with my current focus on whereyougonnabe, and a limited startup budget :O, other conferences are higher on the list for me this year.

Which brings us on to Where 2.0, which I am actually attending for the first time this year, somewhat surprisingly - I have managed to have conflicting commitments for the past 2 or 3 years. I will be giving a five minute "Ignite" talk on the Tuesday evening, which I am looking forward to - I have done one Ignite format event before (20 slides which auto-advance every 15 seconds, for a total of 5 minutes) which I enjoyed, and have recently got into Presentation Zen and those ideas also lend themselves well to the format. I'll be mentioning several significant new developments we've been working on with whereyougonnabe, as part of discussing the challenges of modeling future location for social networking. And as a reader of this blog, you can get a 25% discount off registration by quoting the code WHR09FSP. Early registration ends tomorrow (April 14), so if you've been thinking about signing up now is a good time to do so! You can register here. I'm also planning to stay around afterwards to attend my first WhereCamp, which I'm also looking forward to.

Moving on to July, I am very tempted to try to make it over to Amsterdam for the State of the Map conference, the 3rd annual conference for OpenStreetMap - but haven't quite worked out if I will make it yet. I continue to find the growth of OpenStreetMap, and crowdsourced data in general, to be one of the most interesting trends in the geospatial industry at the moment, and I am sure this will be an excellent event. I am weighing up whether to submit a talk, and may well do so. I think that the (relatively) recent announcement of the Cloudmade development platform / API will help accelerate the growth in OpenStreetMap. In many ways the rapid growth of OpenStreetMap has been even more remarkable when you consider that the tools to build applications on top of the data have been relatively limited - the new Cloudmade development platform makes this much easier, which should result in a lot more applications based on OpenStreetMap data, which in turn will provide greater incentive for people to contribute to collecting and maintaining data.

And last but not least, I should mention the GeoWeb conference in Vancouver at the end of July (also organized by GITA together with Galdos). I've attended the past couple of years and presented last year (watch the video) and really enjoyed it both times - some good content, an interesting mixture of attendees from across the spectrum of the "neo" and "traditional" geo-camps (including a good number like myself who don't care too much for those labels and have a foot in both camps), and of course it's in beautiful Vancouver which as I've said before, I always like to visit. I've had a presentation accepted so will definitely be at this one.