Locatum

As regular readers will know I tend not to use this blog as a vehicle for emapsite related happenings and offerings and to a broad extent this post continues this approach. However, as someone who almost ended up a surveyor - it is thanks to UCL for putting me on hilltops in Wales and the subsequent opportunity to look through a theodolite for 6 months in the desert that brought me to my senses - I have something of a paleotard fondness for related features in our landscape, notably Trig Points and benchmarks. I am equally aware that the arrival of GPS signalled the ultimate demise of such man made features; we simply don't need them. Try telling that to the legions of surveyors, chartered, engineering or other, who it seems from the flurry of requests, enquiries and complaints we have received, following the withdrawal of benchmarks from OS MasterMap, expect to see benchmarks on their mapping. It would, indeed is, easy to make the case for ignoring them - benchmarks are not maint...

I used Elvis Costello circa 1979 and a Cory Doctorow cover, Jerry Fishenden starts with Jeremy Bentham (godfather of UCL if I recall correctly) and continues so much more eloquently on the issue of data driven dystopia and the understanding required by citizens of the role and purpose of IT as envisaged by political parties. This is the domain in which those of us in location IT (and all that it encompasses, from the geoweb to the GIS, from spatial operations in the database to sensor webs) need to make our voices heard......

Can't believe a month has gone by since last post but then been busy as the world wakes up to new possibilities - can't talk about those obviously! What I can talk about follows on from a theme in my presentation on the geoweb stream at AGI last week in which a call was made for the 'community' to become more relevant not just by talking amongst ourselves - "we're all geo" after all - but by talking to others, by engaging with them and becoming integral to their communities of interest. I prefixed this call with, what may have been seen as oblique, references to data driven dystopias and the surveillance state. But methods/madness etc.... And here comes the link to Elvis Costello (used at AGI too). There I was on the M3 on Friday, mid-morning, half empty, breezing southwards (for once not particularly swiftly) and lo and behold, a hidden speed cop (behind the bridge before the services), then a speed bike cop (Winchester services), then an overhead speed ...

I reckon I have spent more time away from the office this summer than in any time since leaving someone else's gainful employ back in 1993 - reflects strength of and confidence in team and business despite the recession. As ever time away from the office is thinking time, which will please some people (you know who you are!). Plenty of time taken up pondering the dreaded school selection procession for Son #1 and now everything focused on filling in forms correctly by October 23rd - horrible, necessary. Wakeboarding (just, boys waterskied better), swimming and tennis in Menorca ; should have gone sailing given the incessant wind and what was coming next..... The real 'excitement' has been the practice for, build up to and participation in the RS400 Nationals at Mounts Bay Sailing Club this last week. Towbar fitted - check, quality camping - check, surfing lessons for boys - yep, wave sailing rehearsal - whoops, excellent weather forecast (means F2-3 gusting 4) - oh dear oh ...

Interesting to see that Wikipedia considers the neogeography entry to be a candidate for removal owing its potentially neologistic nature - despite use of the term dating back in one context or another to 1922 - not so neo after all! Recently the term has founder common currency more as the rather more web 2.0 corollary to the implicit term of (generally rather gentle) upbraiding of those not aligned with its certain actually rather broad sensibility - the 'paleos' - in that 'if you're not with us...' etc. I'm not going to endeavour to (re)define these terms or to broaden the scope out to include GIS or geoweb or cartography or spatial analysis or, remember this one, remote sensing. It's an irony of the internet's amateur publishing paradigm that the implicit polarisation of different schools that sustains the debate is on the one hand an illusion (in that most commentators are sufficiently familiar with the subject to recognise the shades of grey on the...

Following Steven's post ( http://giscussions.blogspot.com/2009/07/digital-paper-divide.html ) and a recent LinkedIn discussion topic on web 2.0/social networking tools (I think you'd have to be a member of the ASPATech Discussion Group), we are becoming better I think at articulating the 'digital divde' though not necessarily at bridging it. 'Yoof' culture is entwined with converged digital tools in a way that remains baffling to many over even 35; the blogosphere is allegedly already in decline as bloggers migrate to the instant 140 characters of Twitter; the digital literati to a great extent exist in their (our) own self-fulfilling worlds of filtered, customised content streams; 'free' is the future and our right; a new supplier is just a click away....and so on and so on. On the other hand, news stands, bookshops, DVD rental and even music shops continue to exist (but for how long I hear some holler); 140 characters does not a valid opinion make; eve...

With all the clamour over PSIHs in recent months, one TF has been in the spotlight. One can debate the reasons for this - another time. This has rather 'allowed' others (of the PSIH ilk) to carry on apparently regardless or oblivious to the changes going on around them. Say what you like about OS but this is far less true of them and they should be priased where praise is due. But, wherefore the others; if I were them I would be sharpening my channel engagement, developing more attractive licensing and pricing terms, honing my knowledge of social media, looking at metadata dissemination and generally trying to mitigate future onslaught of interest in my behaviour. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places but I sense a head in the sand approach by most - channels are being undermined, licence development is out of kilter with licence agreements, screen scraping has become the modus operandi of choice for many fed up with the vacuum and social engagement is limited to 'conta...