Norf London

Well it's a matter of place really - which side of Norf London do you come from? Red or White?

One can apply all sorts of socio-economic and geo-demographic analysis to the regional distribution of excessive proclaimers (sometimes referred to as Keanites or Redknappers) within the northern reaches of London but it does appear this morning that they all seem to be concentrated around N17. Whilst the quietly confident and sometimes gloating will be found in N5.

It would be good to measure the "bragging index" between N5 and N17 but as a substitute I have used the tweetometer to show that at least in the twittersphere it is another win for the Arsenal.

It has been a good weekend

Goodbye PND

Google announced the beta of their mobile navigation application yesterday.



It looks like a pretty fully featured navigation application, with voice recognition, plain English search, satellite imagery, streetview, POI's on your route, live traffic feeds and of course no need to download map upgrades. Downsides - what happens when you lose internet connectivity which seems to happen every few minutes with my mobile service (perhaps service is a misnomer) and a few questions at this early stage about how accurate and up to date Google will be able to keep its own maps. It's currently only available on Android and for North America but no doubt wider coverage and phone support will follow. Can't wait for the iPhone UK version.

I guess this has been waiting for Google to phase out TeleAtlas who had prevented them offering a mobile nav service to protect their lucrative contracts with PND manufacturers (one of whom ultimately bought TA and are now sitting on a turkey). It won't be long before Google extends their coverage - think StreetView vehicles driving round Europe photographing and quietly mapping as they go. Not sure that many people saw this coming, I certainly didn't.

So what is the future of Personal Navigation Devices? Somehow I can't see Google wiping them all out but the manufacturers are certainly going to have to dramatically step up the pace of innovation and deliver some much more compelling interfaces and applications if they are going to convince people to spend ca £100 plus service charges. At the very least we will see some pretty intense price competition over the next few years. How Nokia are going to make a return on their massive purchase of Navteq was always a mystery to me (business as usual was never going to do it) now it looks like maps and navigation will be a costly to maintain low to no revenue must have feature for them.

Respect to Navteq and TeleAtlas CEO's - looks like you sold at just the right time.

GI MSc on the way out

At last week's AGI Foresight workshop Muki Haklay made the provocative statement that he expected Masters programs in pure GI to disappear within a few years and for GI to increasingly be taught as modules within other programs. Quite a few of the participants including several academics seemed to agree with him. When I tweeted this it prompted some rebuttal from my friends at Kingston pointing out that being able to drive a GIS package did not imply an understanding of geographic analysis.

A couple of days later and Peter Batty pointed out this post by Don Meltz comparing GIS to word processing. You probably would not want to take a Masters in word processing but you might want an MA in creative writing or journalism (especially if you fancy a career as an unpaid blogger).

It seems that the geography bit is going to come to the fore again.

Augmented Reality? A bit more reality please

Simon and Tony at mashupevents ran an evening of debate and discussion on Augmented Reality on Thursday night.

I hadn't planned to go to this evening because I didn't think I would find much of interest but a couple of days ago I helped to facilitate an AGI Forsesight study (more on that soon) in which the subject of AR came up and I was struck by the opportunity for AR to supercede cartographic displays in presenting a lot of information in close up situations.

The impression that I got from the evangelists of AR was of a collection of technologies that had come together in the new iPhone and Android platforms which enabled location sensitive information feeds over the current camera view. Maybe it is AR but it didn't appear to be in anyway context sensitive or particularly intelligent. I don't think I want to walk around London holding my phone up and reading tweets from people who were nearby in the last hour or so nor do I want to navigate to the nearest tube by following little arrows in the view of my camera. As some wag pointed out loads of people walking round London with their eyes glued to their phone displays is a recipe for disaster - either collision with lamp posts (painful) or vehicles (worse)!

What got people excited was a description of this aid to a BMW service engineer, shame we didn't have the video at the event.



There will be real value in AR when for example it can be used to present underground asset info (pipes and cables) to someone about to start digging up the road. Prediction - we will see something like this within 5 years.

There were a lot of people asking whether AR was just the new wow factor and someone pointed out that wow was just what marketing campaigns needed. Good point.

The demo that blew all the others away was from Total Immersion who are doing some very neat things. Worth a look and definitely wow.

I pitched for a minute about the GeoVation Awards and the Ideas Forum we are running on 2nd November. I wonder whether we will see any Geo-AR apps submitted for the Awards?

Where do all the Manchester United fans live?

Nothing makes me happier than being able to link geography and football.

As a Londoner I am stunned by the number of Liverpool and Man U fans who live in London (and they didn't all move here).

So if there is a football mad hacker out there maybe you can help me to put together www.wheredoallthemanufanslive.com (good URL?). You can make suggestions or offer help at the GeoVation Challenge

Any guesses which team has the lowest proportion of fans living within 30 miles of the ground?

£21,000 for GeoVators

So we are off and running with the GeoVation Awards Program.

If you have an idea or know someone who has an idea that has been simmering for a while or was drawn on a beermat or the back of a cigarette packet then now is the time to enter the GAP and you could win an award of up to £10,000

You can find details of how to participate at Mind the Gap - it is easy to register and you will get the chance to share your idea with others who may be able to help you turn it into a venture and possibly an award winner.

We will be running an ideas evening on 2nd November at the RSA from 6.30 to about 9.30. Come along, meet some other GeoVators, eat some nibbles, share some ideas, drink some beer and learn more about the GAP. Just let us know that you are coming by registering here as places are limited.

Please Mind the GAP

Legible London

Great evening at BCS this week listening Tim Fendley talk about the Legible London project.

On behalf of TfL his team have been looking at how to coordinate the signs and directions available to pedestrians to encourage people to walk around London rather than use the underground because they don't know the way. In London we have all sorts of people putting up signs which offer conflicting and confusing advice to pedestrians. They have done some great research into wayfinding and how people navigate using visual cues and have produced the new miniliths that are being piloted around Bond Street

They have also produced some stunning cartography which really makes pedestrian navigation easier. If you have an iPhone you can download a copy of their early app for Brighton from the App Store, it is called WalkBrighton (says what it does on the can). At the moment they are just a set of georeferenced raster images that you can pan, no search or navigation but it gives you an idea of what pedestrian mapping should/could be.

It would be nice if we could get something similar for the whole of London but that will take a load more tech than a few rasters. Anyone?