Free data - sign of times…

It’s official. Starting from April 2010, UK citizens and the rest of the world will be able to openly access maps from Ordnance Survey as well as plethora of interpretive geographical data such as crime, health and education statistics by postcode. After many years of significant revenue from a successful commercial model of licensing government geographical information to value added resellers, UK government has decided to change its approach and make the information available online for free.

Ordnance Survey monopoly on GIS data in UK will end although some may argue that its position was already heavily undermined by the success of OpenStreetMap project – a community driven initiative to provide free high resolution vector data in competition with OS. Smaller players and website developers will be the winners as this opens up new opportunities for mashing up the information into myriads of specialised online applications.

Ordnance Survey is a £116 million a year enterprise and now part of this revenue will be forgone for “a wider good”. And the burden of maintaining high quality geographic information will have to be shifted to the UK Government (ultimately taxpayers) as the activity will no longer be funded by end users. However, the argument is that the overall commercial benefit to UK economy will be greater than the lost revenue stream.

There is similar attempt to liberate government data in Australia with Government 2.0 Taskforce initiative. It is not a first such attempt - Spatial Data Access and Pricing Policy from 2001 is still in place. It allowed free access to quite a range of geographic information in the past but it is rather very difficult to assess its economic benefits.

It is quite obvious from past experience that just releasing the data will not lead to any tangible benefits. There must be a framework put in place at the same time for managing and improving that data (ie. either big money from the government or big crowdsourcing initiatives, as in case of OpenStreetMap project). Otherwise there is a danger that we will end up in a big mess… with everyone maintaining their own sets of data (hence multiplying the efforts) and creating own set of problems (one only need to look as issues with postcode data in Australia to understand what it can lead to... ).

NearMap Goes Live!

When I was writing my recent post about Stuart Nixon and his latest project: NearMap, the site was not yet operational. But today, to my great excitement, I got an anonymous tip that NearMap is up and running! I could not resist and took it immediately for a test drive.

My first impression is that NearMap looks… so familiar! Creators went to a great length to ensure NearMap has the "look and feel" of other online maps, like Google or Bing. It is quite appropriate because potential users will be immediately familiar with how it works… Yet, there is also plenty of unique features. One such feature is a sliding bar across the top of the map which allows scrolling through imagery acquired at different points in time. Perth has the best selection. Currently high resolution coverage is limited to major Australian cities (Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth) but there is enough there to fully demonstrate the quality of imagery and functionality of NearMap. There are a few Landsat mosaics and Blue Marble monthly mosaic series from 2004 to cover the rest of the world for now.

Another unique feature is "Terrain" viewing mode which depicts terrain model derived from high resolution imagery (including buildings!). And when you are in PhotoMap viewing mode and zoom close enough, "Multiview" option is activated which allows observing the object on the ground from 4 different directions. This feature is similar to Bing's Birds-eye view mode.




NearMap street overlay comes from OpenStreetMap. It is worth noting that, unlike other suppliers, NearMap actually encourages users to utilise its imagery to improve the quality of this community generated and maintained vector dataset. There is "Edit" button on the map that takes the user directly to OpenStreetMap site. NearMap can be embedded in other websites with iframe HTML element (as in this blog for example) and specific locations can be bookmarked, shared and/or linked to with a unique URL address.

I am very impressed with NearMap. The level of detail on imagery is amazing and directional views, although not perfectly stitched, are very realistic indeed. You can literary "peek over the fence" and see what your neighbor is up to! I just hope it won't become a big issue that will necessitate degrading of the resolution of publicly viewable imagery. The application is very responsive and there is definitely a great potential for NearMap to carve a big niche in the online mapping market, in direct competition with Google and Bing maps.

I will share with you how to view NearMap images in true 3D but for that you will have to come back next time. :-)

Google enters mobile GPS Navigation Market

So far Google played only on the fringes of the mobile GPS Navigation market with flat Google maps for mobile, integrated with driving directions and live traffic information. But the situation is about to change with the release of Google Map Navigation (beta). This new application comes with everything you'd expect to find in a fully featured GPS navigation system: maps in 3D perspective, turn-by-turn voice guidance and automatic routing. But there is more. Google took advantage of a wide range of products it is already supplying to the public and packaged them together into a potentially very attractive product.

In particular, users will always get the latest maps and there is no need for bulky downloads since maps come directly from Google servers. The application supports simple plain English search, voice search and search for POI along the route. There is live traffic data (an indicator light in the corner of the screen alerts current traffic conditions along your route) as well as high resolution satellite imagery and street view options that show exactly what to expect at the destination.



There is an expectation that Google will release API for Map Navigation to allow developers to build myriad of customised applications and help forthcoming Android phones better compete with the Apple iPhone. Google Map Navigation if free and user only need to cover Internet connection fees to use it. For now, Google Map Navigation can only run on Android 2.0 enabled phones which are very limited in supply. In fact, there is only one handset on the market - Droid from Verizon - on sale since 6th November and only in the U.S.

Originally spotted on: Google Maps Mania

There is money in pictures!

One Australian that is consistently punting on imagery is Stuart Nixon, of ER Mapper fame. He started in 1989 with the invention of the image compression algorithm and creation of software for processing imagery on low cost personal computers. He then followed on with the Image Web Server to enable efficient, and probably still unsurpassed, capability to serve large image files over the Internet to web browsers. The company and all its technology is now in hands of ERDAS Group, after Stuart sold it for undisclosed sum in 2007, but his love affair with pixels has not finished there.

Soon after parting with his old venture Stuart started a new company: NearMap. It developed automated process for fast creation of very high resolution photomaps from aerial imagery (patents pending). The ultimate goal for the company is to cover 700 cities across the World with photomaps updated at least on a monthly basis.

Looks like Stuart Nixon is on the money again with his new idea. NearMap is just about to launch a new service, in competition with Google and other online map providers. Meantime, he sold the company mid last year to Perth based Ipernica for “a job” plus $4 million in cash, plus $12 million worth of Ipernica shares (60 million at a deemed issue price of $0.20 per share) and 12.5 million Ipernica options at a strike price of $0.40, with a two year expiry period. Even with today’s price of Ipernica at $0.12 it is still cool $10 million return. Not bad, not bad at all…