All things spatial

End of year reflection

2011-12-24T10:45:00.000+11:00

This year instead of the usual summary of the past 12 months I would like to share with all my friends and readers of this blog some beautiful music to prompt reflections on all those joyful and fun moments, accomplishments and successes, things that made us proud, personal victories…and failures, sad events and insurmountable loses we suffered. The rollercoaster of fortune and misery… Life.

What would be more appropriate than Kate Bush’s latest Snowflakes and a few pieces from George Winston’s classic album December…

http://shar.es/Wowrw

End of year clearance

2011-12-19T11:01:00.001+11:00

One of well hidden gems on aus-emaps.com is a Thematic Reports Series page which contains a number of free PDF publications for download. Thematic Reports downloads page was developed as an experiment to test user sign-up and file download functionality. It might as well be put to some good use now allowing controlled access to a collection of PDF maps and data files from aus-emaps.com. So, I have just added to the list several PDF maps of postal areas covering capital cities of Australia. These maps show Census 2006 version of boundaries – still relevant for use with official ABS statistics, until the latest Census data is released (sometime in July 2012).

[Persons speaking Vietnamese at home, as proportion of all persons. Source: ABS]

Related Posts:
Australian Postcodes User Guide
Free postcodes with Reference Map

Map of landfill and recycle sites

2011-12-19T10:29:00.000+11:00

Geoscience Australia has just released a new dataset mapping locations of waste transfer stations, landfill sites and recycling facilities across Australia. The database identifies 1,700 locations and provides links to the Australian Waste Industries biannual landfill surveys, which allows users to access detailed, site specific information for a range of policy issues as well as environmental and research work. Information is distributed under Creative Commons licence in PDF, KML and Access Database format.

VicRoads traffic alerts map

2011-12-13T19:36:00.001+11:00

Last week VicRoads announced the launch of Road Closures and Traffic Alerts application. Media release issued by the Victorian Minister for Roads, The Hon Terry Mulder MP, provided background information on the project. In particular, Road Closures and Traffic Alerts is a $924,000 initiative to provide real-time information about detours and traffic incidents, such as crashes and breakdowns, as well as road conditions during emergencies. VicRoads will update information as it receives it from its own staff and agencies such as Victoria Police, Country Fire Authority or local government.

The map-based application is accessible online and can be viewed on web-enabled mobile phones. Alerts will also be published via Twitter (but unfortunately there was no mention of RSS version).

Built with Google Map API, the application offers very familiar user interface and very simple, clean design. The list of published incidents is optimised to show only minimum detail (ie. street name, location and type of the incident) and full information is only displayed in pop-up windows on the map. Sections of closed roads, as well as available detours, are marked on the map with blue lines (visible on closer zoom), adding to clarity of presented information. The only limitation is that data is not refreshed automatically and requires manual reload to show the latest incidents.

“The website will be invaluable to road users, media and other emergency service organisations as it provides a real-time picture of incidents occurring on the roads,” Mr Mulder said. “This will help people plan their journeys in advance and help them avoid major road hazards.”

Related Post:
NSW traffic conditions map

Free imagery for WA

2011-11-28T20:00:00.000+11:00

Earlier this month I reported on the release of new, free 30m DEM and Dynamic Land Cover data for Australia. And now there is new free imagery for Western Australia that will be of great use for mining and exploration industry: Satellite ASTER Geoscience Map of Western Australia.

Quoting from media release, “ASTER, Japanese imaging instrument flying on the US TERRA satellite, launched in December 1999, has 14 spectral bands spanning wavelengths sensitive to important rock forming minerals, including: iron oxides, clays, carbonates, quartz and “Hydrothermal” minerals such as muscovite and chlorite.”

“ASTER geoscience maps provide new mineral information not available from other current technologies. This new mineral information is valuable for more accurate mapping of the regolith cover that blankets much of Australia and finding those often small islands of bedrock materials, such as greenstones that may be associated with gold.”

The project was a collaboration between the Department of Mines and Petroleum’s (DMP) Geological Survey of Western Australia (GSWA) and the Centre for Three Dimensional Mineral Mapping Centre of Excellence (C3DMM) and was led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO).

The State ASTER maps have been carved into 1:1,000,000 mapsheets with individual file sizes reduced to ~100 MB each and can be downloaded for free in JPG2000 GeoTIFF format from CSIRO. The complete data set (~500 Gigabytes), is available from Geological Survey Western Australia product sales.

Coal seam gas exploration map

2011-11-26T10:00:00.000+11:00

The topic of coal seam gas is very popular in media in recent months due to well publicised protests by farmers and overall uncertainty of the impact of coal seam gas exploration on the environment, and ground water in particular. Australian national broadcaster, ABC created an online, interactive educational guide that explains key issues under debate. It is titled Coal Seam Gas – By The Numbers.

As a part of this resource, ABC published a map containing information about location of wells and exploration leases granted to private companies so users can assess what activity is undertaken in their immediate neighbourhood.

Interestingly, it is not only rural areas that experience the coal seam gas rush. As reported by ABC, there are more than 100 wells at Camden, 60 kilometres south of Sydney. The NSW Government, unlike Queensland, has not moved to create no-mining buffer zones around urban areas. However, exploration lease over entire Greater Sydney, granted to Macquarie Energy Pty Ltd, appears to have expired on 22-Oct-11…

Bushfire season is on

2011-11-24T22:22:00.001+11:00

Bushfire season 2011/12 started late but with venging – at least 30 properties have now been confirmed as damaged or destroyed by the fire which started about midday yesterday in Margaret River region of Western Australia. More than 400 fire fighters are battling the fire. Hundreds of people were evacuated but fortunately no fatalities.

Wet weather on the East Coast gave hope that it may be another quiet summer but unfortunately, West Coast doesn’t get much of that rain…

External link: map of current bushfires in Australia

New elevation and land cover data

2011-11-21T21:34:00.001+11:00

Last week Geoscience Australia released a couple of new free data products for Australia: Digital Elevation Models (DEM) at 1 second (30m resolution) derived from the NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (previously restricted only for research purposes) and Dynamic Land Cover, the first nationally consistent and thematically comprehensive land cover reference with 250m resolution.

The following are excerpts from respective media releases and posts on the Geoscience Australia web site:

“The new 30m DEM products improve our understanding of the national topography by producing digital elevation models at more than eighty times the resolution of the current national 9 second (250m) DEM”.

“The models were produced as part of a collaboration between Geoscience Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology (Bureau), the CSIRO and the Australian National University who have produced a number of derived products for applications such as surface water management and floodplain mapping.”

“Geoscience Australia and the Bureau are already working on phase 3 of a national scale dataset that will integrate the new DEM with regional scale (best available) topographic data. The end result will be a more accurate determination of water course activity across the country enabling communities to better prepare for water related natural hazard .”

DEM data can be downloaded for free from the National Elevation Data Framework Portal administered by Geoscience Australia (limit of 400MB per download apply).

“Land cover is the observed biophysical cover on the Earth’s surface including trees, shrubs, grasses, soils, exposed rocks and water bodies, as well as anthropogenic elements such as plantations, crops and built environments.”

“Produced in partnership with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES), the land cover map and dataset will allow users to compare vegetation over time, at a national and local level, to monitor trends associated with short term changes brought on by cyclones, long term drought and bushfires, as well as cropping and broadacre agriculture.”

“Future updated versions of the map will identify actual changes in the land cover which could provide evidence of a need for action in areas such as water management and soil erosion, or that patterns of land use are changing due to economic, climatic or other factors.”

Grasslands are the dominand feature of Australia’s landscape, covering more than one third of the land area (37.1% or 2.8 million square kilometers). Tree dominated landscapes cover 32.1% or 2.5 million square kilometers. Shrubs cover 1.6 million square kilometers (20.7%) and intensive agriculture, including irrigated and rainfed cropping and improved pastures, cover less than 10% of Australia’s land area.

Data can be viewed online using 3D World Wind application (relevant Java framework has to be installed on the computer in order to view the application) or can be dwonloaded free of charge in GeoTiff format (~500MB).

Sydney House Prices

2011-11-15T22:41:00.001+11:00

On Monday Housing NSW published the latest set of housing related statistics – median rents and median sale prices - for postcodes in the Greater Metropolitan Region as well as for Local Government Areas. The information value of this dataset can be greatly enhanced by presenting it on a thematic map. For example, mapping median values allows to highlight the distribution of costly and less expensive areas within the largest capital city in Australia. And the picture is quite interesting… Explore by clicking on coloured polygons!

Direct links:
Sydney Median Prices Jun'11 by Postcode
Sydney Median Rents Sep'11 by Postcode
YoY Change in Median Prices Jun'11

Although this dataset does not attract any media headlines, it can prove quite invaluable for those hunting for a house (to buy or to rent), or for research into housing affordability and alleged property prices exuberance. Its main limitation is timeliness since sales stats refer to June quarter (so, are at least 5 months old) but rental stats are as current as you can get (ie. cover the latest September quarter). The main advantage of this dataset is that, unlike widely publicised median prices that relate to entire cities, it contains information on what is happening within small neighbourhoods around the city. The only housing related information I am aware of that covers small neighbourhoods and is published on a map, is Property Investment Map from domain.com.au

The maps above are the result of a quick exercise in matching attribute data (ie. Housing NSW data distributed in non-spatial format) with spatial boundaries (ie. ABS Postal Areas, 2011 edition), and presenting it visually using Google’s Fusion Tables and Google Map API. And although I haven’t put much effort into defining ranges in a more scientific way, they give a pretty good picture of what is happening with rental and property prices around the city.

Related Posts:
Maps and property investment
WA housing affordability index

Mapping Australian social diversity

2011-11-13T13:32:00.001+11:00

In July I published a set of four maps presenting social diversity in the State of NSW. My post also included basic outline of the concept behind Socio Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA) - a measure developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to describe socio-economic diversity of population residing in various localities throughout Australia. Today I would like to share the results of yet anther experiment with Google’s Fusion Tables – SEIFA indexes for all of Australia on a shareable map.

Mapping the distribution of values of different SEIFA measures gives quite an insight into the composition of population in various localities around Australia. Such maps could be used for all sorts of customer, market, business and policy analysis. Data is getting dated but is still the official version until the results from Census 2011 are released in the second part of 2012. Explore and see how your postcode is ranked against the neighbourhood!

Links to individual maps:
SEIFA’06 - Advantage/ Disadvantage
SEIFA’06 - Index of Disadvantage
SEIFA’06 - Index of Economic Resources
SEIFA’06 - Index of Education/ Occupation

For description of “what it all means”, please refer to may earlier post: Mapping social diversity in NSW.

I am testing Fusion Tables capabilities for creation of dynamic choropleth maps (ie thematic maps) so this time round, the shading of polygons is generated on the fly based on SQL query of attributes. Fusion Tables are quite responsive once it is all setup properly. There are still some issues with creating Fusion Tables with complex geometries and from several input files but that’s a topic for a separate post. I will only mention some frustration with data getting corrupted in Fusion Tables, even if they are not edited – I had to recreate all the boundaries since previous input table suddenly became “full of holes” with no apparent reason.

Related posts:
Postcode Finder featured by Google
Making maps with Fusion Tables
Shp data and Fusion Tables
Fusion Tables yet to ignite

Apple 3D mapping quest

2011-11-08T22:21:00.000+11:00

Online and mobile mapping apps is one area where, to date, Apple’s presence is practically non existent. So far the company is relying on mapping tools and technologies provided by competitors, such as Google. However, with the acquisition of a third company with mapping related IP over a period of 24 months, Apple seems to be determined to change this situation sooner rather than later.

Mapping and GIS capabilities are an integral part of any location based service (LBS) solution and underpin a plethora of mobile applications. The company needs its own set of mapping and GIS tools to further extend its success with the mobile devices, such as iPhone and iPad. It is therefore inevitable that Apple will become a formidable player in this field at some stage.

The acquisition of C3 Technologies, a Swedish company spun out of top secret military related capabilities developed by SAAB, has been kept under wraps for almost 3 months and only now some details emerged as to the buyer. In 2009, Apple bought Placebase, which specialized in customization and layering information on maps, and just last year Poly9 with a Google Earth-like application.

The attractiveness of the newly acquired by Apple technology is best illustrated with the following video.

It is not the first of its kind on the market but definitely the most attractive due to a very high resolution of processed 3D objects. I believe Yell was the first to create a browser based application to supplement its 2D online maps. Ordnance Survey has also declared its intention to create Map of the Future using a similar approach. And Microsoft’s Photosynth offers a “consumer grade” version of the technology that anyone can play with. Let’s see what Apple can do with it…

News claims success with paywall

2011-10-21T20:39:00.000+11:00

As of next Monday News Corp’s flagship newspaper in Oz, The Australian, will introduce a paywall to restrict access to its online content. Online content will be initially free for existing print subscribers and there will be some access to premium material via Google and Facebook but new users will be required to subscribe for $2.95 a week to read the content. Mr Murdoch is determined to continue on the journey initiated last year in the UK with The Times and The Sunday Times to get rid of freeloaders and to ensure continuous prosperity of his media empire.

Commentators are generally very restraint in their assessments of the effectiveness of paywalls so far, probably because of lack of hard figures to verify any claims. However, News Corp is proud to make it known that “The Times and The Sunday Times are generating more revenue from 100,000+ subscribers than they did from the 20 million browsers they had before…” (Hmm, something doesn’t add up here: ~£100 pa per subscriber gives only £10M pa in total revenue… Fairfax makes more in a month from its online assets with only 3.5 million unique browsers! Business must be really bad in the UK…)

The biggest print media pioneers of paywalls, such as Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, are stating officially that “it is too early to come to any definitive conclusions” but they are modestly optimistic. What struck me as a telltale sign of where the things are potentially going is that the companies are claiming they are able to “generate new revenues without adversely affecting their audiences”. It implies to me that what is actually happening is not that paywall model is working so well but rather that the same content is being able to be monetised in new, innovative ways (eg. with paid mobile apps, etc.). In other words, although rhetoric is about putting limits on unrestricted access to existing online content, it all boils down to offering a greater variety of access modes to that content, where some options require payment.

I suggested this could be the outcome in one of my blog posts titled Why iPad will not save newspapers, almost 18 months ago: “iPad can potentially become one more revenue stream for newspaper publishers but I doubt it will improve substantially fortunes of media companies.” In my humble opinion, it is the content portability and repurposing opportunities that is the essence of media industry prosperity in the future. Newspaper circulation figures may be declining but print, although very profitable, is not the only way to monetise the content.

Related Posts: Media Market Commentary

Fairfax starts ad agency

2011-09-28T20:01:00.003+10:00

Ha! Fairfax Media has followed News Corp in setting up a full service advertising agency. I have mentioned the benefits of vertical integration of advertising and publishing services in one of my earlier posts in Media market commentary series. It is a logical extension for any large publisher as it gives more control over clients’ advertising budgets.

The details reported last week in B&T magazine were as follows: “Fairfax Media has formed Fx, a new sales team within the company’s Metro Media division designed to offer integrated, strategic and creative advertising services. The initiative combines the company’s print and digital work into a single, cross-platform unit and will work alongside the Fairfax Metro sales team… The new team of 20 comprises product innovation specialists as well as creative talent and advertising strategists from agency backgrounds with experience across newspapers, TV, magazines, radio, outdoor and digital. “

I didn’t help much Fairfax Media share price but it is another small step towards making the company a better investment proposition in the longer term.

Related posts:
Fairfax: dinosaur or unpolished gem?
Fairfax buys more travel assets
Extinction of journalism as a profession
Media market commentary

Fun with Planefinder.net app

2011-09-28T19:36:00.004+10:00

I don’t know about you but I was always fascinated by planes taking off from the airport. Those “marvels of steel and engineering” look so magnificent when they lift off the ground, with majestic precision, and slowly rise into the air before disappearing in a distance.

I vividly remember my excitement, as a young kid, when I spotted a plane landing or taking off while passing a local airport on the way to or from the countryside to visit my relatives. Now, thanks to Planefinder.net and some clever technology, I can watch planes taking off and landing at almost any airport in the world, also those travelling across the globe - all day long, in real time and without leaving the house :-)

There is also an extensive range of information available on the site about individual planes and their flight details. Flight paths can be downloaded as a KML and/or shared via Twitter and Facebook. And if I miss some action, I can play back a whole day's worth of flights. The playback option allows users to select a date, the number of hours they wish to view and even the speed of the animation. Just try zooming out on the USA, set the time to 23 hours and the speed to 120x and watch. Fascinating… and very addictive! You guessed it, available for all types of smart phones as well.

First spotted on: Google Maps Mania

Street View imagery API

2011-09-21T20:37:00.004+10:00

If you “like what you see” on Google’s Street View you can now access/copy that image via a simple API. Last week Google released a new, free service that allows anybody to add a static image of a Street View to a web page, email to friends for reference, or clients, or else.... Travel and real estate related sites will probably be the first to take advantage of this new service from Google but I am sure creative developers will find many more ways to put that imagery to a good use. Time will show.

Unfortunately, it is not an easy task to “take the snap” exactly how you want it if you don’t know how to work out the heading and the pitch of a Street View. But help is on hand. Keir Clarke from Google Maps Mania has just created a very simple Static Street View Wizard application that automatically generates the URL for a static Street View image. Once you have generated the URL of a static Street View, using the wizard, you can just copy it and add to an image tag in HTML page, etc. To change the width and the height of the image, just adjust manually “size” parameter with relevant values (in pixels), eg. size=600x300 will return image 600px wide and 300px high. Street View images can be returned in any size up to 640 by 640 pixels.

There is a limit of 1,000 unique (different) image requests per viewer per day. However, since this restriction applies to end users/viewers, most developers should not need to worry about exceeding their quota.

Update: alternative Google Street View Generator

Postcode Finder featured by Google

2011-09-06T20:56:00.002+10:00

My Postcode Finder mapping application, recently upgraded with Fusion Tables at the backed for serving the latest 2011 postcode boundaries, has just been featured by Google in Fusion Tables Example Gallery. It is a small token of recognition of aus-emaps.com innovative approach to utilising Fusion Tables functionality. I would also like to think that it is also a prime example of early adoption of Google’s free, cloud based spatial service to address real life needs of various communities of users, who otherwise would not have access to such information in spatial format. Postcode Finder, and its companion Postcode Finder widget, serve over 10,000 unique users every month, helping to answer a variety of simple questions like, “where is postcode X?” or “what are the postcodes next to postcode X?”. Spatially enabled applications do not have to be complex to provide maximum utility for their users.

Google’s Fusion Tables are still in early stages of development and, as mentioned in one of my earlier posts, there are still some limitations on their use. However, a lot can be accomplished even with current functionality. Postcode Finder is an excellent point in case. Just consider that without Fusion Tables, the task of displaying 80MB of boundary data on a map, in full resolution, would require setting up and managing my own IT infrastructure, comprising as a minimum a fully managed server (shared hosting option would not do), MapServer/GeoServer to convert data into images (eg. via WMS) and map tile cacher to serve them efficiently to a mapping application. If you work for an institution you would have to add tens of thousands of dollars in the cost of servers, security, bandwidth and professional staff to manage the infrastructure. Time and effort (and cost!) to set it up is hardly justified when you can achieve the same result with Fusion Tables in “just a few minutes”.

It all boils down to this simple fact: aus-emaps.com is the only online publisher offering an interactive map with the latest 2011 version of Australian postal boundaries. You can’t get it from Australia Post or Google, neither from Bing nor from Sensis, not even ABS who created the data… yet it is made available by an innovative “garage” operator, thanks to Fusion Tables! Ready access to free or inexpensive GIS solutions in the cloud means it doesn’t have to cost a fortune anymore to spatially enable your data or your entire organisation…

Google drops Maps API for Flash

2011-09-03T09:37:00.001+10:00

Google is continuing with rationalisation of its product portfolio. This time the axe has fallen on Google Map Flash API. Although the overall number of sites using Flash version of Google Map was relatively small, these were mainly sites offering rich display options, thematic rendering or BI-like dashboards (www.geocommons.com comes to mind as an example). Maps API for Flash applications will continue to function in accordance with Google’s deprecation policy but no new features will be developed, and only critical bugs, regressions, and security issues will be fixed.

I only recently commented how choosing to work with Google provided technology can be a risky business since you never know when Google may decide to drop support for it. Unfortunately, unlike with open source code, due to “cloudy” and proprietary nature of many of Google products developers cannot get the source code and continue on their own.

Weather on Google Map

2011-08-20T11:17:00.008+10:00

Last week Google added weather layer to its official version of Google Map. Information is coming from weather.com and includes current temperature, humidity and wind data as well as 5 day temperature forecast. Weather icons on the map represent today’s forecasted conditions and background map is simplified when weather layer is selected to make icons more visible.

There are many sources of local weather information with global coverage so, the addition of this data layer should have been expected sooner or later. Weather information is extremely popular – these days any larger portal has at least a weather widget if not the entire weather forecasting and publishing arm (eg. Yahoo7 and weatherzone.com.au). Weather apps are amongst the best sellers on iTunes. My simple weather widget is the most popular “page” on aus-emaps.com - with over 800,000 pageviews per month.

The goalpost has moved again as weather information became another commodity item. Listing a current temperature and/or forecast is an expected norm from any news or local community focused portal or blog. Tabular listings of detailed weather information are increasingly being supplemented with maps showing all sorts of details, including animated clouds, rain intensity, lightning strikes etc. (as per example from weatherchannel.com.au below). So, mere presentation of information will no longer be a distinctive feature. Intensified competition will only foster innovation and specialisation – to the benefit of all users!

Related Posts:
Weather widget take 3
Free weather widget upgrade
Weather map

Business - spin and gimmicks game

2011-08-19T21:28:00.002+10:00

In an online business, not everything is gold even if it shines from a distance. A sad reality is that all sorts of spin and gimmicks are deployed by aspiring “entrepreneurs” to create “a success story”, vital in promoting the business to prospective clients and investors. It appears everything is a fair game where big money is involved…

It is not a secret that one of the easiest (not sure if entirely ethical) ways of making money online is selling advice on … making money online. But it is not only a dodgy end of the market where skillful and well connected sales “spinsters” can create mirages of success with smoke and mirrors. Take, for example Groupon, with their claim of “hundreds of thousands” of registered users – acquired, mind you, in a very unethical way where the advertised deals require a sign up, only to reveal that these are really only “examples of future offers”. I bet many of those “hundreds of thousands” feel conned, especially since the is no way to opt out from Groupon’s mailing list, leavening the only solution - blocking emails from Groupon as unwanted spam. I doubt investors are interested in this part of the “business” as long as numbers are rising…

Another example I wanted to highlight today is ourpatch.com.au I referred to in one of my earlier posts. On paper, the “success” of this venture could be an envy of any start-up: run by a serial entrepreneur, on track to earn $1 million in advertising revenue from (merely) 140,000 unique monthly visitors, operating in an attractive niche (regional Australia). It was mentioned in 2009 as one of “The digital dozen - the next big things online”. It also received NSW/ACT Regional Business of the Year award that year and there were high hopes to “…break into the US to take a slice of its US$97 billion local advertising market”. Well, it turns out it was all a mirage…

A frank admission by van Wyk, a key person behind the venture, in a recent interview puts things into perspective. The idea wasn’t his own: “We started the business when somebody phoned and said, ‘I’ve been running this site and all you have to do is copy what I’ve been doing and the rest will be easy’.” – a big score for the spinster who sold him on this concept! The opportunity was never properly researched: “We started the business based on the belief that our model had already been proven in a number of towns… Unfortunately, the model – and the success of the model – had been fabricated.” – hardly an exemplar of how to start and run a business. The spinster was probably long gone by then but it didn’t stop van Wyk to put his own spin on things… earning in the process $695,000 from advertisers (thanks to association with another of his businesses). However, there is a hint in the interview that those advertisers have realised things are not as they seem (no mention of revenue outlook so, the chances are, things are not “looking bright” any more). Publicly admitting a failure is brave but rare so, van Wyk deserves a credit for sharing his story...

A simple conclusion can be drawn from the above examples that business is not a fair game where the best one always wins. Prospective investors seem not to care about ethics too much, as long as they can find dummies who will pay more than they did. So, the lesson is that “talking up” your business, even if it is flaky on the edges, is a vital part of building your brand. Others do it without any scruples. Just try not to overdo it, not to lose all of your credibility if the future doesn’t work out the way you let everybody to believe it will…

Now, talking about the unashamed spin… did you know:

aus-emaps.com is the only online publisher offering an interactive map with the latest 2011 version of Australian postal boundaries. You can’t get it from Australia Post or Google, neither from Bing nor from Sensis… Next time you need a useful map - think aus-emaps.com!

Why you would need such a map is a different story… read more about it in the Australian Postcodes User Guide

Postcode Finder upgrade

2011-08-16T20:51:00.010+10:00

Last month Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released the latest version of boundaries for use with Census 2011 data, including the so called non-ABS structures: postal areas and suburbs. It also coincided with a major upgrade to Google’s Fusion Tables, prompting me to redevelop the somewhat clunky version of Postcode Finder served from aus-emaps.com.

Postcode Finder is quite a popular tool. However, I was forced to degrade the functionality of the application after a significant hike in the cost of data service. The first version of the application was built with free postal boundaries data service provided by a third party as a Web Map Service (WMS). I wore the initial cost when the supplier introduced charges for the service but could not justify a subsequent hike in fees, opting instead to build my own version with KML data.

I wanted to avoid implementation and maintenance hassles associated with managing my own GIS infrastructure but the compromise was less than optimal solution in terms of performance and useability. Fusion Tables now offer a great alternative to WMS since it comes with own version of an “image service”, capable of real-time rendering of geographic data (eg. note the shading of a searched postcode on the map).

Functionality of Postcode Finder remains very similar to the previous version but there is a significant improvement in performance and useability (not to mention that the application is now built with version 3 of Google Map API as well). I would like to add more boundary layers over the coming weeks but it is not a straightforward task. Unfortunately, Fusion Tables suffer from some limitations in terms of handling complex polygons so, it is all subject to finding some work around, or Google sorting out the issues.

For example, in case of postal areas, I had to generalise boundaries with the Douglas-Peucker Simplification Algorithm (using 10m tolerance which reduced the file by some 30% without noticeable degradation of the boundary details however, unfortunately, not preserving topological consistency between boundaries) but it was still not enough to import postal area 6740 in WA and 0822 in NT into the Fusion Tables. I had to use 50m tolerance for those two polygons to further reduce their complexity. Google applied its own generalisation algorithms on top of it on import. The side effect is less than perfect match of adjoining boundaries at a street level resolution.

All issues aside, I hope you will find the new version of Postcode Finder much more responsive and better suited to a wider range of requirements.

Related Posts:
Mapping social diversity in NSW
Fusion Tables yet to ignite
Postcode Maps and population statistics
Large format PDF Postcode maps

ArcGIS software for $100

2011-08-15T19:45:00.003+10:00

You may be interested to know that ESRI, developer and supplier of one of the most popular commercial GIS software, also offers a home use licence for a suite of its products. For a $100 annual fee, the ArcGIS for Home Use 12-month term license includes:

ArcView
ArcGIS 3D Analyst
ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst
ArcGIS Network Analyst
ArcGIS Publisher
ArcGIS Schematics
ArcGIS Spatial Analyst
ArcGIS Tracking Analyst

This offer is available to anyone. The catch is that the software is supplied only for non-commercial, self-education purposes. For any other use, you have to pay many thousands of dollars to acquire the software.

This is a similar program that Microsoft introduced a long time ago for its Office suite of software products. For example, if your employer has purchased Microsoft Office for use within the organisation, you can obtain the same software package for home use for under $50.

The ArcGIS for Home Use program is available worldwide. Customers in the United States can order it online. Customers outside the United States should contact their local distributor .

Visualising correlations on maps

2011-08-11T19:32:00.001+10:00

Correlation is a statistical technique very often used in data analysis. It can show whether and how strongly pairs of variables are related. It normally involves lots of mathematical calculations but a quick insight into the phenomenon under investigation can be gained by simply superimposing the data on a map, if both datasets have a common spatial component (eg. location).

Take, for example, a case of recent London riots, mapped on MapTube. Overlaying locations of civil commotions with Index of Deprivation (ie. a measure of poverty) allows drawing a hypothesis that poverty and propensity to violent demonstrations are related. The correlation may not necessary be obvious when analysing each dataset in isolation and in a numerical form.

A point to note however is that, if the two variables are said to be correlated they may or may not be the cause of one another. In other words, correlation does not imply causality. The correlation phenomena could be caused by a third, previously unconsidered phenomenon, called a lurking variable or confounding variable. For this reason, there is no way to immediately infer the existence of a causal relationship between the two variables. Hence, one should not jump to the conclusion that “poverty is a major factor contributing to London riots” without examining the phenomenon in more detail.

As a side note, I am very surprised to see so much “red” on the London map, implying that the majority of central suburbs are poverty stricken areas - with only a few pockets of wealth on the city fringes. This picture is in big contrast to Sydney where underprivileged areas are concentrated mainly in the south-western part of the city and, most importantly, account only for roughly a quarter of the overall metropolitan area. Australia indeed seems to be a very lucky country…

London Riots Map first spotted on Google Maps Mania

Related Posts:
How maps can improve sales
Bad location can send you broke
Tracking things with maps
Maps in Viral Marketing
Mapping social diversity in NSW
Interactive Atlas of NSW

Apple, Google and Microsoft

2011-08-09T21:20:00.001+10:00

Market rivalry between the three most prominent technology companies Apple, Google and Microsoft (listed here in an alphabetic order, without any bias) has been well documented in the media. Each organisation has its loyal group of followers but also equally large group of critics. The reality for most of us is that we have to use bits and pieces of technologies, tools and services from all three suppliers. Comparing financial metrics gives an interesting perspective on each competitor but between the figures, my very biased and stereotypical view of those three companies…

Rank	Company	Market capitalization($ B)
2	Apple	319
5	Microsoft	233
16	Google	195

My impression of Microsoft is that it is ubiquitous in the personal computer world since overwhelming majority of desktop computers and laptops run on Microsoft software. You may not like Microsoft, or even totally hate it when their software crashes on you, yet you have no other choice but to use it. Microsoft software is a memory hungry beast and impossible to tinker with (forget trying to separate the pieces!) but that integrated “package” is so loved by “project manager” type of developers - just click on a few tick-boxes to configure individual pieces and “it all should work” (never mind how efficient it is and what it does under the hood).

Rank	Company	Total enterprise value ($B)
4	Apple	289
18	Microsoft	202
30	Google	164

Apple, on the other hand, is “cute and flashy” (pun intended), and practical to the point of pain (you can’t do things any other way but the Apple way, but they put a lot of effort into interface design and user interaction functionality so it kinda grows on you over time). The development environment is limited to a “toy world” of smart apps and is not a domain where any “serious stuff” can happen. For now, but who knows how far Apple will be able to push the boundaries with their “cloud initiatives”.

Rank	Company	Total physical assets ($M)
748	Microsoft	7,800
750	Google	7,760
931	Apple	5,870

Then there is Google, very plain (in comparison to Apple) and messy (in contrast to Microsoft) but still mostly free and “unbounded” (although sadly, things are starting to change on that front). You can totally get lost in the maze of Google products and services. The downside is that you may never own the “fruit of your hard work” if the company drops support for a specific product (due to “cloudy” and proprietary nature of many of Google products, unfortunately you cannot get the source code and continue on your own). But oh my, when it works, it works. If “it” doesn’t do something now, there is a good chance that this extra functionality will be added sooner or later (pity you never know when…).

Rank	Company	Revenue ($B)
78	Apple	76
100	Microsoft	67
365	Google	30

All in all, each company has its strengths and limitations, and their respective successes can be measured in different ways, as those financial metrics demonstrate…

Rank	Company	Total employees (thousands)
40	Microsoft	27.6
51	Apple	25.4
102	Google	15.1

Making maps with Fusion Tables

2011-07-28T20:46:00.000+10:00

Inspired by the Guardian Data Blog I decided to explore Fusion Tables and Google Maps with Australian data. To start with, I selected a set of Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas, created from 2006 Census data, and postal area boundaries from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The results are presented in an earlier post titled “Mapping soci al diversity in NSW”. Today I would like to share a few observations regarding creating maps with data from Fusion Tables.

As outlined in my earlier posts, although Fusion Tables is not yet a fully featured thematic mapping, analysis and publishing application however, with a little bit of effort, anyone can create informative maps which are visually attractive and fast to deploy. The best thing about Fusion Tables is that you don’t need to manage any complex infrastructure yourself and that the application is free (however, with some limitations on data storage volumes, currently capped at 250MB per account).

Spatial Data

Since Fusion Tables support spatial data only in KML format you have to convert your dataset before uploading it to the server, or alternatively, find a publicly available table that has already been uploaded by someone else.

Google provides a tool to translate SHP data into KML format and to import directly into Fusion Tables but it didn’t work for me with complex data. There are some free alternatives available (really easy to use one is QGIS, for example) but loading other than KML data into Fusion Tables will always be a multi step process.

If you decide to upload your own data, please note a couple of annoying limitations of Fusion Tables. Firstly, complex polygon structures are not supported (for example, I could not upload postcode number 0822 in Northern Territory at full resolution, yet it works perfectly with Google Maps). Secondly, some larger polygons and/or with many parts get generalised automatically as you load them to Fusion Tables as, for example, postal area 7255 in Tasmania (compare the results below – the same KML file as imported to Fusion Tables, on the left, and as displayed directly on Google Map - note green outlines on all, even the smallest islands):

Table search functionality in Fusion Tables is rather crude so, it may not be an easy task to locate what you are looking for. Not to mention that the concept of metadata is non-existent in Fusion Tables so, it is hard to know if the data you find is appropriate for your purposes.

Numeric data

Upload of tabular numeric information in csv format is very straightforward but if you disallow “Export” option up front, you will not be able to edit the data in Fusion Tables. My suggestion is to import the data as “Private” (default option) and allow for “Export”, then add new columns with formulas (if required), and disallow export only when you are ready to publish the data (if at all).

Table Operations

You can easily create a map based on data from numeric tables if those tables contain a “spatial reference” column, for example, postcode numbers (provided you can find equivalent spatial data set in Fusion Tables). To combine numeric and spatial data tables you have to use “Merge” function. My suggestion is to use “smaller table” as a starting point. For example, to create thematic map with postcodes for Sydney area only, select relevant numeric table first and then merge with a table containing postal areas for the entire NSW. Only relevant boundaries will be included in the merged table (ie. the subset of NSW postcodes). If you do the operation in the reverse order, the merged table will contain all postcodes for NSW but only a handful will have the data that can be used in creating a thematic map.

When you “Create View” (ie. copy the table - your own or from other users to your account) or “Merge” tables with spatial geometry column you will lose map formatting parameters (eg. colour setting for polygon fills, etc.). This is very unfortunate, especially when you need to retain colour schema from the original table.

Styling Map

Handling “No data” fields is not easy in Fusion Tables. The problem is that polygons with “no value” in the table default to red fill when rendered on the map (as in the example below – there was no data for 2006 postcode in the merged numeric table). A workaround is to include some value in the table for the missing record (eg. traditional -9999) if you can. Then you can specify map settings to colour only that value, for example, as white and/or fully transparent.

Fully transparent overlays (eg. if fill is set to 0% transparency) are not clickable – it is a very handy feature for handling polygons with missing data in the numeric table (ie. no information window will be displayed when the polygon is clicked). However, when your objective is to present on the map only outlines of the polygons but you still want to display information about those polygons on click of the map, you have to change transparency parameter to a value greater than 0.

Tutorials

If you are eager to start playing with Fusion Tables, Google produced easy to follow tutorial on how to create thematic maps (note, if you are working with your own data, choose “Map” option and not “Intensity Map” in the relevant step).

Mapping social diversity in NSW

2011-07-26T20:23:00.000+10:00

The concept of relative socio-economic advantage or disadvantage is neither simple, nor well defined. Australian Bureau of Statistics attempts to quantify socio-economic diversity for geographic locations with a suite of four summary measures called Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA).

The four indexes in SEIFA 2006 are:

Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage: is derived from Census variables related to disadvantage, such as low income, low educational attainment, unemployment, and dwellings without motor vehicles.

Index of Relative Socio-economic Advantage and Disadvantage: a continuum of advantage (high values) to disadvantage (low values) which is derived from Census variables related to both advantage and disadvantage, like household with low income and people with a tertiary education.

Index of Economic Resources: focuses on Census variables like the income, housing expenditure and assets of households.

Index of Education and Occupation: includes Census variables relating to the educational and occupational characteristics of communities, like the proportion of people with a higher qualification or those employed in a skilled occupation.

While SEIFA score represents an average of all people living in an area, SEIFA does not represent the individual situation of each person. Larger areas are more likely to have greater diversity of people and households.

A SEIFA score is created using information about people and households in a particular area. This score is standardised against a mean of 1000 with a standard deviation of 100. This means that the average SEIFA score will be 1000 and the middle two-thirds of SEIFA scores will fall between 900 and 1100 (approximately).

To determine the SEIFA rank, all the areas are ordered from lowest score to highest score. The area with the lowest score is given a rank of 1, the area with the second-lowest score is given a rank of 2 and so on, up to the area with the highest score which is given the highest rank, being 2615 for a postal areas (POA) index.

Deciles divide a distribution into ten equal groups. In the case of SEIFA, the distribution of scores is divided into ten equal groups. The lowest scoring 10% of areas are given a decile number of 1, the second-lowest 10% of areas are given a decile number of 2 and so on, up to the highest 10% of areas which are given a decile number of 10.

For more information about SEIFA and its potential uses please refer to the following document: 2039.0 - Information Paper: An Introduction to Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas (SEIFA), 2006

Data tables and maps are available for reference and further reuse via Google’s Fusion Tables:

SEIFA 2006 for NSW Index of Disadvantage
SEIFA 2006 for NSW Advantage-Disadvantage
SEIFA 2006 for NSW Economic Resources
SEIFA 2006 for NSW Education-Occupation
SEIFA for Postal Areas Census 2006 (data table)
Postal Areas NSW Census 2006 Edition (postal area boundaries)

Related posts:
Interactive Atlas of NSW
Free postcodes with reference map
More free data with reference map
Postcode maps and population statistics

Shp data and Fusion Tables

2011-07-25T19:20:00.001+10:00

A lot of geographic data in public domain is distributed in SHP format. However, Fusion Tables application supports geographic data only in KML format. Google has recognised the opportunity and is now providing a link to a “translator/loader” application to facilitate uploading of SHP files into Fusion Tables. Shpescape has been implemented with GeoDjango framework and is aimed at facilitating the process of converting and loading that vast resource of GIS data from SHP format into Fusion Tables. It should potentially improve uptake of Fusion Tables by GIS as well as broader application development community.

The concept behind Shpescape is great but, for now it fails in terms of performance. I tried the application with a modest size SHP datataset (40MB) and the result was not impressive. It took extremely long time to upload the data to the server, process it into KML and load into the Fusion Tables (short of an hour!). I know from my own experiments that converting SHP into KML takes only a few seconds with basic PHP script. Allowing for download and upload time (since 2 separate servers are involved), the whole process should be finished in a matter of minutes and not almost an hour. The biggest disappointment was that the algorithm used in Shpescape enforces generalisation of polygons and does not process “point for point” from SHP to KML [correction, it’s is actually undesirable Fusion Tables feature and not Shpescape fault]. It resulted in some polygons being converted incorrectly and/or corrupted in the process (as per image below).

Shpescape will work with small SHP files, with simple geometries but, as it stands, Fusion Tables are unable to handle full resolution datasets. Therefore it may be better to generalise SHP files before loading into Fusion Tables via Shpescape.

Related Posts:
Converting shapefile to KML
Converting csv data into shapefile

New style for Google Maps

2011-07-21T20:01:00.005+10:00

There is a good chance that you haven’t noticed subtle changes to cartographic design of Google Map that the company is continuously implementing. However, if you put different versions of Google Map side by side, it becomes very obvious how dramatically the appearance changed over the last few years. The key objective behind those changes is “… to make the map cleaner, more focused, more visually harmonious, and easier to use.”

“…Some highlights to look out for are a brighter and more cheerful colour palette, a more integrated and less visually noisy labelling style, subtle improvements to footpaths and minor roads, and cleaner building and land parcel rendering.”

One thing Google cannot be accused of is that it does not put continuous efforts into upgrading of its products and services. In fact, that constant tinkering with features and functionality gives an impression that all Google products are in a permanent state of development. With Google we never know what functionality is coming and when it will be available, or whether the product or service will survive in the long run as the company is not afraid to pull down underperforming applications. The most recent announcement is the closure of Google Labs with 56 experimental products. Product-specific Labs sites, like Gmail Labs, Google Maps Labs and Search Experiments, aren't affected by the decision.

First spotted on Google Maps Mania

Fusion Tables yet to ignite

2011-07-18T21:28:00.005+10:00

Google is making consistent but slow progress with Fusion Tables, gradually enabling various functionality options to turn the application into a comprehensive data visualisation and sharing package. The idea behind Fusion Tables is simple – allow people to upload data in a tabular format, then present that data with graphs or geocode/ match to spatial data and display on Google maps as thematic overlays or location points. Undoubtedly, the integration of tables, maps and graphs is Google’s response to emerging trend for “data marts” and “data journalism”.

I wrote about Fusion Tables with great excitement a year ago, concluding that the application has a potential to evolve into a formidable competitor to PostGIS, ArcSDE , Oracle Spatial or SQL Server for basic GIS applications. Although a recent addition of dynamic styling capabilities takes Fusion Tables closer to that goal, it is still a long way for the application to reach that point. Unfortunately, the implementation of Fusion Tables is in typical, of late, Google fashion – unattractive and rather complex to follow so, most likely only “hard core” developer community will be taking advantage of it. The limit of 250MB of data per account is not helping either. There is no catalogue of available data (although basic text search is enabled) and no metadata for public tables so, it will not facilitate sharing.

Nevertheless, you can already make nice and very responsive maps with Fusion Tables, as in this example from Guardian’s Data Blog:

Related Posts:
Google launches Fusion Tables
Ingenuity of Google Map architecture also its main limitation

HTML5 and maps

2011-06-29T20:34:00.003+10:00

For the unwary it may come as a big surprise - HTML5 is here! More and more online mapping applications are implemented in HTML5 standard, taking advantage of <canvas> element to extend the functionality and presentational capabilities in a browser environment. All modern browsers now support the standard.

The canvas element allows for dynamic, scriptable rendering of 2D shapes and bitmap images. Below is an example that illustrates the benefit of using <canvas> element in browser based mapping applications. This map allows users to specify a minimum terrain height parameter at which to display the layer and the layer is redrawn dynamically to display the information on the map.

With the support for SVG just implemented in Internet Explorer 9, there are now two complementary approaches to drawing objects in all modern browsers: <canvas> and SVG. It is best to think about <canvas> as akin to “raster” and SVG as “vectors”. This way it is easier to decide which approach is more suitable for a specific purpose.

First spotted on: Google Maps Mania

Related post: Is SVG ready for comeback?

Fairfax: dinosaur or unpolished gem?

2011-06-21T20:55:00.012+10:00

I keep a watching brief on the fortunes of Fairfax, one of Australia’s largest and oldest media companies. Fairfax is a very interesting case study for any aspiring media mogul. In fact, for any business operator, since Fairfax’s rollercoaster run illustrates how business fortunes are closely linked to ever changing operating environment and management response to changes. All in all, valuable lessons can be learnt from Fairfax history, regardless of the industry the business operates in.

For many, Fairfax is a dinosaur at the brink of extinction. Changes in the business environment significantly affected its revenue stream and majority of pundits fail to see any growth prospects for the company. It is reflected in Fairfax share price, barely 16 cents above its all time low reached in 2008, at the peak of the Global Financial Crisis gloom. However, last year investment into Fairfax by fossicker / explorer Gina Rinehart may indicate that there is some hidden potential in this company.

An interview with Fairfax CEO Greg Hywood, screened on the ABC’s Business Insiders, prompted a few reflections. The comment that caught my particular attention was a frank admission by Mr Hywood that Fairfax business was never about the news and journalism(!): “…the old business didn't really need the journalism. It created a market around jobs, homes, cars in print, and the company drew further audience into that through the journalism, but it wasn't completely dependent upon it.” Finally someone from the media camp acknowledging what this business is really about – advertising dollars!

Although it is relatively easy for the outsiders to define the true nature of media business, the most prominent industry insiders, like for example Mr Murdoch, still insist it is all exclusively about “quality journalism”. Hence, they are pinning their hopes on locking the content behind pay walls and earning revenue from access fees. But this model cannot replace revenue lost from lucrative advertising deals. What works for Bloomberg will not work for the News, Fairfax and the like. It is simply because they are trading in different commodities, ie. Bloomberg is providing market-moving information for the finance industry participants while others just general news, gossip, entertainment, etc. - primarily for general public. Clearly, the value proposition is so much different.

I believe that properly defining what business print media operators are in is the first and most important step towards finding the right business model which will ensure their long term survival and prosperity in the new environment. Hence, I am encouraged by Mr Hywood's comments as it demonstrates that Fairfax management is not shying away from naming the things as they are: “…what we do is we create audiences, and we leverage that into advertising and digital transactions… not just in print, but across audiences.” And that’s exactly what Fairfax’s business really is! [See my earlier analysis for further insights.]

However, there was a comment that made me question whether Fairfax management fully recognised implications of the above definition for their business: “…Now our business is about the journalism and the content.” If this comment was just to appease unions and editorial staff at Fairfax, it’s totally understandable. However, if it is a reflection on the prominence of journalism in the overall Fairfax business then I have doubts whether there will be any material change in company’s fortune. Why? Because journalism is only a small part of the overall business activity (see my earlier comment above, it’s not about journalism, it never was!).

Let me give you an example. I recently subscribed to a special offer from Fairfax: 6 weeks of daily home delivery of The Canberra Times for $10. Unfortunately for Fairfax, I will not be renewing my subscription. Even at 24 cents per printed and home delivered paper I cannot find enough value there to justify spending another $10. And I suspect I am not alone with such assessment of the local newspaper. There is simply “nothing there” for me… Building business around such defined “journalism” is bound to fail.

In the further part of the interview Mr Hywood went on to say “…fundamentally, those little print classified advertising which made up the Sydney Morning Herald, The Age for a hundred-plus year, that business has gone online, and Fairfax has captured a portion of that, not all of that.” Well, this is another frank admission that Fairfax failed to adjust to new environment quickly enough to capitalise on its dominant position in classified advertising. But what is a worry now is that Mr Hywood failed to reiterate company’s commitment to fight for the dominant position in that lucrative market segment.

With hindsight, it is easy to see what went wrong in the past. The company had too good with printed classified ads business and was reluctant to sacrifice part of the revenue to compete aggressively in an emerging online environment. The result is that, after all, they lost on both fronts: in print and online. Their online competitors (seek.com.au $2.17B, realestate.com.au $1.6B, carsales.com.au $1.12B) are now worth collectively more than twice as much as Fairfax ($2.2B). Fairfax has a range of quality assets to use in competing for higher market share in those segments. I have no doubt that more focused and aggressive approach would bring substantial results. After all, it would be the easiest strategy to adopt, with the largest pay-off potential for the company.

Fairfax silence on strategies to regain market position in classified advertising is even more surprising if you consider that the company is under new attack, and this time round in print segment. Again, I would like to quote a local example. In Canberra there are two free magazines, Canberra City News and Canberra Weekly, that are published and distributed around the city once a week. They contain almost exclusively advertising material from local businesses, as well as real estate listings. And Fairfax is doing nothing about it. It is a re-run of the online scenario: the company is reluctant to undermine its current revenue stream so, it allows competitors a free reign with weekly magazines. If these publications grow in prominence, Fairfax will lose again since advertisers and real estate agents will use those alternative publications and not Fairfax assets. And the same is happening in other cities as well. Again, journalism has nothing to do with company fortunes.

Meantime, Fairfax is distracted with consolidating eg. holiday rentals transactional services. It is a good side show activity but not the main game. Again, it has nothing to do with journalism. Then there is a talk about disposal of radio assets. The company has fingers in many pies, and some “pies” are more attractive than others, some even offer great potential for the future, but it is hard to see where Fairfax is going with them.

I believe Fairfax is like an unpolished gem that with proper treatment can be turned into a precious and glittering stone that anyone will want to own. Unfortunately, the company was unlucky with continuous strategic reviews that came to nothing and subsequent lack of clear direction for the future. It behaves like looser, chasing scraps on the media market, rather than like a market leader it used to be, aggressively defending its prime position and fighting for every user/customer with its competitors. The focus on preservation of the old business was the main cause of its demise and unless this approach changes, it is very unlikely that Fairfax will return to its former glory. There is some hope that Gina Rinehart will take on a more active role within the company structures, instigate setting the proper strategic direction for Fairfax and reinvigorate the management team to implement the new vision with a greater zeal for success. Otherwise, I would not be surprised if sooner or later Graeme Hart or other suitor buys the company for next to nothing and cuts it to pieces to extract maximum value from individual parts. Fairfax has so much potential… it’s such a pity to see it all going to waste. But what do I know, I am just an “outsider”. I would gladly contribute to improving Fairfax fortune, or at least cooperate on some content generation projects, but this is very unlikely to happen without a sizeable investment in the company. So, back to my online experiments and keeping under the radar…

Related posts under: Media Market Commentary

Weather widget take 3

2011-06-14T21:24:00.002+10:00

This week I released another version of a free weather widget with information on current temperatures and weather forecast for close to 200 locations around Australia (as in the right navigation panel of this blog). It is powered by the same database as the second version of the widget but information is presented differently to make the widget more suited for blogs and blog-like websites. For detailed instructions on how to set it up on your site please visit aus-emaps.com.

The latest weather information is from a local database that is updated twice an hour from official data and web services provided by the Bureau of Meteorology. Unfortunately, it is not possible to match all localities for which the Bureau releases forecasts with locations of weather stations hence not all selections display current temperature. Similarly, not all localities have a weather forecast for more than just a single day.

The widget displays weather information for a single location at a time and the default location is Sydney. Webmasters can easily set the preferred location by adding a reference code of that location at the end of the widget’s URL address. End users can change the displayed location by clicking on the location name and selecting an alternative location from a drop-down list. One to seven day weather forecast information for a specific location can be accessed by clicking on “This week” link in the top right corner of the widget. Weather description for individual days of the week can be obtained by moving a mouse over the weather icons.

Version 2 of the weather widget became quite popular. It now has over 200,000 displays/loads a month (and close to 1M page views, by 38,000 unique visitors) and brings a steady flow of traffic to aus-emaps.com home page. I hope this version becomes equally popular and widely used. Any feedback greatly appreciated.

Interactive Atlas of NSW

2011-05-30T20:22:00.001+10:00

The Atlas of New South Wales is an initiative of the Land and Property Management Authority and it was created with the objective of providing detailed statistics across a range of topics to educational institutions and the broader community. It is built with Bing Map so, provides very familiar to many, simple and intuitive interface to government information.

All the information is presented as a series of thematic map overlays in four categories:

People (eg. population, health, housing, religion, indigenous population, indexes of relative advantage/disadvantage, crime);
Economy (eg. labour force, taxation and revenue, and production of fruit and vegetables, oils and grins, and livestock);
History (eg. information on settlement, State elections and boarders); and
Environment (including vegetation, geology and soils, and locations of national parks).

Users have a choice between satellite image or roads map as a base layer and can adjust transparency level of thematic overlays. Each overlay is accompanied by a comprehensive legend, explaining the meaning of presented data. A click on individual region brings up a pop-up window with information about the region, presented as charts and gauges.

The Atlas of New South Wales is quite responsive considering the amount of data that is required to present thematic overlays. It would benefit though from a bit more legible charts and access to source data in a tabular format and/ or for download. Overall, the application is well built and very simple to navigate through.

Free data a GFC casualty

2011-05-26T20:04:00.004+10:00

The US government has been a proponent of free data for quite a while now and over the years it established a number of national programs to allow easy access to wast resources of public information. However, the annual budgets for e-government initiatives were slashed by 75% last month, putting in question the survival of such programs like data.gov (it is the repository for publicly available data that was promised as a platform to power software and analysis created by and for the public). Comments from federal CIO Vivek Kundra indicate that data.gov will not be shut down but “…there will be no enhancements or other development to address needs for improvement”. So, although the policy of free data remains unchanged, significant cost of delivering that policy may be its ultimate “undoing”.

Meantime, in Australia, the progress towards opening up government data vaults has taken another step forward. Earlier this week Australia's Information Commissioner, John McMillan, unveiled eight new rules for Federal agencies to adhere to when considering the publication of government data. These rules are:

Open access to information – a default position,
Engaging the community,
Effective information governance,
Robust information asset management,
Discoverable and useable information,
Clear reuse rights,
Appropriate charging for access, [So, not entirely free access!]
Transparent enquiry and complaints processes

The Principles are not binding on agencies, and operate alongside legal requirements about information management that are spelt out in the FOI Act, Privacy Act 1988, Archives Act 1983 and other legislation and the general law.

Despite the launch of data.gov.au portal, there is no federal program in Australia to facilitate access to public data on a large scale (ie. the US style) and the onus so far is on individual agencies to manage the dissemination of public information in their possession. State and Territory governments are pursuing their own initiatives. This “piecemeal approach”, although slower in implementation, may prove to be a more sustainable model for enabling access to public data, considering the vulnerability of large scale initiatives to budgetary pressures of the government of the day in these uncertain times.

Geospatial Revolution continues

2011-05-23T20:15:00.008+10:00

Pennsylvania State University has just released another short video in the series titled “Geospatial Revolution”. This is the fourth 15 min. episode outlining virtues of geospatial technologies and how they can assist scientists and local communities.

Episode 4 is divided into four chapters. The first chapter explains how experts studying climate change use digital maps to monitor glacier ice melt, deforestation and carbon emissions over time. Another chapter explains how geospatial technology can help aid workers anticipate food shortages around the world. The following chapter explores how geospatial technology helps track the spread of disease. And the closing chapter highlights the Map Kibera project, which empowered the people of an unmapped area of Nairobi, Kenya to map their essential facilities and provide a voice for the more than 200,000 residents.

Bookmark and share all 4 episodes via aus-emaps.com YouTube video player.

Related Posts:
Geospatial Revolution

Mapping feral animals in Oz

2011-05-19T19:51:00.008+10:00

Over the last two centuries Australia has been plagued by many feral animal brought in by settlers from Europe and other parts of the world. This includes rabbits, foxes, camels, pigs and many, many more species. FeralScan is a collaborative project between Federal and State Governments, private organisations and community to map and monitor distribution of various feral animals on Australian continent. By mapping the damage caused by these animals, FeralScan can help to identify when, where and how to control these animals in order to reduce their impact on the environment.

For example, there are more than 1 million wild camels currently roaming the Australian desert and causing damage to water supplies and disturbing Aboriginal communities. CamelScan, a crowdsouced initiative under FeralScan project, allows anyone to report sightings of feral camels in Australia on a Google Map. Thanks to this initiative scientists involved in the project will be able to develop regional maps, as well as national picture of where feral camels occur, and work out where they congregate in different seasons.

First spotted on : Google Maps Mania

Maps and property investment

2011-04-07T20:02:00.001+10:00

There is an old adage that the three most important rules for selecting a property for purchase are: location, location, location. So, maps should be one of the primary tools in making the purchase decision. With the advent of Google Maps, Bing Maps and plethora of other online mapping applications, all real estate portals integrated mapping based search options into their websites. However, mapping applications presenting analytical information on the state of the property market in various parts of the country are only starting to be brought to life.

Property Investment Map on domain.com.au is the first analytical map released by the major Australian real estate portal. It contains a set of thematic overlays presenting information on gross rental yields, capital gains, vendor discounts and top performing areas - by suburb, for the entire Australia (excluding ACT). Information is available separately for houses and units, as 1 year or 5 year trend measures.

Property Investment Map provides invaluable insights into the dynamics of the property market on a local scale. For example, using the map investors can pinpoint suburbs with good rental yields and capital growth prospects. These areas are the most desirable for investors as high rental yields imply attractiveness of the location to renters as well as availability of properties at prices still offering good value. At the same time, high capital gains yields over short as well as longer term imply consistency in appreciation of properties in a given area over time. Eastlakes in central Sydney is one suburb displaying such characteristics in relation to units -median price increased 17% in 2010 and further rise of 3% is predicted for 2011.

Totally different market dynamics can be demonstrated on example of Rozelle, a suburb just west of the CBD. Despite showing high gross rental yield for units in the last year, it has relatively low rates of capital gains over one as well as 5 year period. It could imply this suburb was overpriced in the past and only now rental yields for units have increased to the level that makes them attractive again for investment purposes (median price dropped 4% in 2010 and prediction for 2011 is 0% growth). If history is to repeat, there is a good chance prices could overshoot again if Rozelle is suddenly “rediscovered” by investors. Property Investment Map cannot give all the answers so, the picture would have to be validated with local knowledge before making any decisions.

Property Investment Map should be in the toolbox of not only investors but also anyone serious about purchasing a property. The only limitation of the map is lack of details on how the information was derived (eg. methodology for data range determination). It is a good starting point for deciding on alternative locations for investment, although it would also be nice to have a numerical version of the dataset available for more detailed comparisons.

Related Post:
WA housing affordability index

Spatial services directory

2011-04-06T07:24:00.000+10:00

The task of finding the right supplier is never easy, especially when services are concerned. Industry specific directories can be a good starting point for preselecting potential candidates for contact and further evaluation. SpatialSource.com.au is the leading portal for the Australian spatial industry. It publishes a directory of suppliers of “all things spatial”. There are over 200 providers listed in a variety of categories, divided into five main groups: Data Supply, Geospatial Services, Hardware Supply, Services to Spatial Industry and Software Supply - from top tier multinationals to small operators like aus-emaps.com. Bookmark the following link for your future reference: http://directory.spatialsource.com.au/

If you are a local supplier of spatial products or services consider registering your company in Spatial Source Online Directory - listing is free. The directory offers good exposure to potential customers. Help your prospective clients find you!

Related Post: New spatial industry news portal

Disasters and maps

2011-04-04T19:08:00.001+10:00

7 February 2011 marked the second anniversary of the worst bushfire tragedy in Australian history - 173 people died and 414 were injured as the result of infernos raging around the State of Victoria. The Black Saturday Bushfire was a very traumatic event for many Australians, those directly affected by the fires but also those thousands who got emotionally and personally involved in post event forensic studies, clean up, counselling, rebuilding, Royal Commission and general assistance through voluntary work or collection of donations. The whole nation felt the pain and helplessness in the wake of such an enormous tragedy.

After a period of a relative calm over the last two years Australia has been struck again by several major natural disasters, such as flush floods in Queensland and Victoria, tropical cyclone Yasi, or bushfires in Western Australia. Events like these bring online crowds of people: those caught inadvertently in the incidents, or those concerned about safety of their family members and friends, but above all, “curious onlookers” from around the world who just would like to know what is happening. All those people are looking for basic information, such as maps of places to identify where “these things” reported in commercial and social media are happening, as well as anything that relates to progress of the event, likely scenarios it may evolve into and the impact on people, infrastructure and the surrounding environment.

In the first instance they turn to official sites run by State authorities - those that issue the alerts and warnings - and of course the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. When they can’t find what they are looking for, or the information is not in the format that is meaningful, they turn to online search engines seeking more details about the event. It is therefore not a coincidence that during the times of natural disasters the traffic to sites providing information on maps goes through the roof. A question comes to mind if there really is enough tools in the public domain to keep general public fully informed. Has anything changed since Victorian bushfires of 2009?

In an ideal world, all the relevant information would be provided by the authorities, along with alerts, warnings, evacuation orders, road closures and detour routes, situation briefs etc. And through all possible channels: online, stationary and mobile phones, radio and TV, and in all formats: text, audio and video broadcasts and online streaming, printed as well as static and interactive maps, and above all, web services for republishing the information through media and social channels. But that is still only a distant dream. The reality is that information is very fragmented, differs in formats and content from State to State and ultimately in reliability, accuracy and timeliness.

So, what information is actually available, in spatial format, to an average person interested in a particular event? Let’s start with bushfire related information as there is quite a few resources available...

Part 1: Mapping Bushfires

Detection of fire hotspots from satellites has been around for quite a while and Australia has two systems delivering such information that pre-dates Victorian bushfires of 2009: Geoscience Australia’s Sentinel and Landgate’s FireWatch. Both are using data obtained from the NASA Earth Observation Satellites Terra and Aqua which pass over Australia up to three times a day (although a revisit of the same area is only two times a day). Although data has some limitations, like timeliness due to infrequent revisit cycle or inability to detect hotspots through thick smoke and clouds, these applications provide excellent location reference for larger fire outbreaks throughout Australia. Geoscience Australia publishes the data in KML, WFS and WMS formats. I use those in my Hazard Monitor Bushfire Incidents map to publish an alternative view of the information. FireLocator from PitneyBowes provides yet another version of the same data in Silverlight format and with Bing Map in the background.

North Australia Fire Information is an application dedicated to monitoring fires in the northern part of Australia. In addition to satellite detected fire hotspots it also includes information on fire scars from past bushfires. Some of the information available on this site can be accessed in KML and WMS formats.

State authorities responsible for emergency alerts and response to natural disasters are publishing on their respective websites summaries of information on the latest incidents. Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) publishes a summary of incidents in a tabular format and on a Google Map. The information is also available as RSS feeds (locations are not georeferenced, hence cannot be directly imported into maps).

In NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) publishes its version of summary of incidents - as a list and a map. Georeferenced RSS feed is also provided.

Both Bushfire Incidents map and FireLocator (developed in late 2009) are using the above feeds to display information about the latest incidents on the maps. During the peak of Victorian bushfires Google released its own application that mapped these feeds and showed satellite imagery of smoke and cloud cover.

Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) is another agency that publishes fire incidents information and a map as well as distributes the information via RSS (non-georeferenced) and KML. And South Australian Country Fire Servic e (CFS) publishes map and incidents in a similar fashion to already mentioned States (their RSS feed is also not georeferenced).

There are no interactive maps with the latest incidents for Queensland and Western Australia and those states do not publish RSS feeds in the format that could be easily reused for displaying the information in third party mapping applications.

The most recent additions to the list of online bushfire related information sources are BushfireConnect and everymap.com.au. Built with Ushahidi, these online mapping applications aim to publish information supplied by the public located in the affected areas, either by lodging reports online, or via SMS or Twitter (ie. crowd sourcing). They also republish RSS alerts from State authorities. Not the easiest and the most intuitive tools to use but these initiatives are attempting to engage a wider community in reporting of incidents so, deserving all the support.

At the time of major disasters media and private individuals create maps and various applications to share the information about a particular event. Examples include a Black Saturday feature created by ABC that allows users to explore timeline of events on an interactive map, or Google’s MyMap version created by a private individual as a static record of events (presented here on aus-emaps.com shareable map).

[to be continued…]

Related Posts:
Perth Bushfires

Advertising, paid links and Google

2011-03-30T20:50:00.000+11:00

I never paid much attention to discussions about the legitimacy, or otherwise, of paid links. On the face of it, the logic is very simple and straightforward: Google search algorithms use links to rank websites and to decide on their relative importance and keyword relevance so, anybody who wants to exploit that aspect of Google search service by selling or buying links to gain prominence in search results should be banished from web forever. Right? Well, not quite. The issue is much more complex once you think about it – it goes to the heart of the concept of online democracy and liberty to do what you want with your site (without breaking the law of course).

Does the fact that Google uses links in their algorithms to rank relevance give them the right to infringe website owners right to place on pages any links they see fit, whether free or paid? That’s Google’s problem to figure out whether links are relevant or not for their search results – they created imperfect solution in the first place (based on wrong assumptions perhaps?) so, what gives them the right now to behave like “internet police” and say:” No, you can’t take money for placing the links on your site without ‘nofollow’ flag - that’s our rule”? Sure, the size of Google and its dominance give them the power to do that but not the authority to judge and dictate what people can or cannot do. Yes, it is in the interest of small players to follow Google rules to rank high in search results and not be “penalised” but it goes against that basic democratic principle.

I admit, Google has quite a challenge on their hands in trying to decide what’s relevant and what’s not in the ever expanding entanglement of web content. It has been reported that the latest target are “content farms” which Google is trying to eliminate from search results. But content farms are not much different in concept to newspapers or other media companies that provide “topical content” and sell advertising alongside. The likes of DemandMedia may be a bit more sophisticated than traditional media companies in their approach to selecting the topics of interest but does it make them evil?

The fact that someone has a degree in journalism and writes for a masthead that has been around for a while does not mean the content is of much better “quality” than that written by thousands of freelancers. The distinction between quality and rubbish is quite subjective and trying to encapsulate “the rules” in a mathematic algorithm is next to impossible. The issue of links pops up here again. If people do genuinely link to “content farm” pages does it legitimise them and make an authoritative source? And where to draw the line what are genuine links as opposed to those SEO driven arrangements?

It gets even more blurry when you start considering what is advertising, and what is sponsored content, and what is genuine testimonial, and whether money changing hands or not plays any role in the definition… Why these considerations suddenly came to my attention? Well, I want to start accepting advertising on my sites directly form advertisers, without involvement of Google or other intermediaries, maybe even to create my own advertising platform, but that game seems to have certain rules that make me uneasy. Don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan of Google and what they do. I use Adsense and think it’s great for small online publishers (although those 1 cent clicks are puzzling – you can’t buy placements on AdWords nowhere near that price, regardless how unpopular the keyword is!). But those who want to move on to “bigger and better” things suddenly face a lot of intriguing questions with no easy answers…

Christchurch earthquake postscript

2011-03-29T22:36:00.006+11:00

Just two days after the 22nd February earthquake the NZ Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management (MCDEM) commissioned acquisition of high resolution imagery over Christchurch to assess the damage of the city infrastructure. NZ Aerial Mapping Ltd used Rockwell Commander 690 airplane and Vexcel UltraCam Xp camera to capture 10 cm resolution imagery over the city. This imagery is now available under creative commons licence – total of 19GB. But it can also be previewed on Google Map at koordinates.com:

First spotted on: Google Maps Mania

Related post:
Christchurch earthquake

NSW election map

2011-03-28T19:42:00.005+11:00

Last weekend NSW voters went to the polls to choose the new State government. As was widely anticipated, coalition parties – Liberals and Nationals have won overwhelming majority of seats. The extent of Labor’s defeat can be best gauged by looking at a map which shows electorates coloured according to a winning party. Blue, traditional colour associated with the Coalition, covers almost the entire State of NSW, with only a few islands of red depicting Labor held electorates. The map was created by Sydney Morning Herald to report on the progress of election results.

The map is quite intuitive to use – just move the mouse over the polygon to reveal electorate name and click on a polygon to bring additional information about the electorate in a side panel. As polygons are created from point data they can be highlighted on mouse over. The downside of this approach is that, because of the limit on how many points browsers can handle, developers had to sacrifice the quality of boundary outlines, keeping points to a minimum. The effects are gaps and overlaps in individual polygons when you zoom too close.

As noted in GIS related media, this was the only map used in reporting election results in NSW. Why this lack of interest to commit resources and present “the battlefield” spatially? I suspect that it may have something to do with the availability of State electoral boundary data – a quick search on the Internet did not yield any results. Creating such boundaries from secondary information sources may have proven too big of a task.

First spotted on: Communica

Extinction of journalism as a profession

2011-03-24T20:17:00.003+11:00

Two bits of information caught my attention this week. The first one was published by AFP and referred to the call by 26,000 strong union of US media workers, The Newspaper Guild, on contributors to The Huffington Post to stop providing free content to the site (!).

"Just as we would ask writers to stand fast and not cross a physical picket line, we ask that they honor this electronic picket line," the guild said in a statement.

"We feel it is unethical to expect trained and qualified professionals to contribute quality content for nothing," the guild said. "Working for free does not benefit workers and undermines quality journalism."

Wow. They must really start to feel like dinosaurs, reverting to desperate measures to defend their journalistic turf. For those who haven’t heard about The Huffington Post, it’s a collection of free blogs, on a variety of topics, that attract a huge worldwide audience which in turn allows monetisation of the content with online advertising – so works on the same basic principle as any newspaper, but in an online environment. It was recently acquired by AOL for $315 million.

Don’t get me wrong. I really feel for the individuals who may have been involved in the industry for many years and now are facing rapidly changing environment to which they don’t know how to adapt. The business model their bosses are running is under extreme threat and it may mean many will have to leave the industry and search for other work. Sad indeed but that’s the price of progress and it happened to many professions in the past.

This news item went relatively unnoticed but it highlights the attitude that media industry, as a whole, has towards other participants in the media/publishing sphere: dividing them into “the real journalists” and the impostors. And again, demonstrating a failure to understand that the changes are the result of globalisation and underlying structural changes - resulting in reduction in profitability and revenue levels in comparison with the past.

Journalism is becoming a bit of a commodity – the word no longer describes an occupation but rather an activity that anyone can do in a spare time. (Anyone who has an opinion! And not necessarily expecting any monetary reward for doing it).

So, what is actually a definition of journalism? Webster’s dictionary defines journalism as: “the work of gathering, writing, editing, and publishing or disseminating news, as through newspapers and magazines or by radio and television”. The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language has a very similar definition. Webster follows the same pattern. Australian’s Macquarie Dictionary is no different… But Collins English Dictionary puts a slightly broader perspective on the term: “1. (Communication Arts / Journalism & Publishing) the profession or practice of reporting about, photographing, or editing news stories for one of the mass media”. That means, if we stretch the definition of mass media to include the internet, journalism can relate to online publishing as well.

And that broader view of journalism is gaining recognition at the highest levels, at least in Australia, which brings me to the second news item of significance. As reported by Mumbrella, The House of Representatives backed laws that will ensure that anyone involved in the production of news – regardless of where they work – can seek to avoid a source being identified. In other words, “shield laws” will give bloggers and tweeters the same rights as professional journalists to protect their sources. And most importantly, the news has been welcomed by the journalists' union, the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, as “groundbreaking”. We may be “down under” but on top in terms of progressive thinking. It is an indication that the local industry seems to be much better in tune with the emerging environment than their overseas colleagues. It also raises some hope that the local media sector has a good chance to adapt to the new market conditions and to find a profitable business model to ensure its long term future. True, with the recent acquisition of holiday accommodation booking portals Fairfax may have overreached a bit in its quest to diversify into transactional services (ie. what does accommodation booking has to do with journalism?) but at least they are actively trying different ideas to find the right model for a sustainable media business.

Related Posts:
Writing is still a good business
Big media waking up to opportunities

Geospatial Revolution

2011-03-16T22:07:00.001+11:00

If you are having any doubts that geography, geospatial technologies and all those spatial concepts developed throughout the centuries underpin almost every aspect of our everyday life, please have a look at this series of short videos. Produced and released by Pennsylvania State University under the banner of the Geospatial Revolution Project.

"The mission of the Project is to expand public knowledge about the history, applications, related privacy and legal issues, and the potential future of location-based technologies.

Geospatial information influences nearly everything. Seamless layers of satellites, surveillance, and location-based technologies create a worldwide geographic knowledge base vital to solving myriad social and environmental problems in the interconnected global community. We count on these technologies to:

* fight climate change
* map populations across continents, countries, and communities
* track disease
* strengthen bonds between cultures
* assist first responders in protecting safety
* enable democracy
* navigate our personal lives..."

The videos are a great testimony to the power of geospatial technologies, today at fingertips of almost any individual with access to the internet, mobile phone and/or GPS receiver. Whether used for your personal convenience or in business, maps are so much more than just pretty pictures... If you have a problem to solve, think maps for a better perspective!

Japan hit by massive earthquakes

2011-03-11T18:06:00.012+11:00

News is just coming in about a series of earthquakes in Japan, the largest measuring 8.9, near the east coast of Honshu and potentially triggering tsunami with waves up to 6 meters high. There was another one measuring 6.8 north of Tokyo and some more further afield.

[Official USGS kmz feed on a map that can be shared]

[Many aftershocks happening as shown on this map]

[Gescience Australia estimates of felt and damage radius]

[Tsumami warning from Japan Meteorological Agency]

Update: It has been 4 days after the event but the tragedy is not over yet… thousands of people still missing, regional areas running out of water, food petrol and survivors threatened by radiation from damaged nuclear power plants… Simply no words to express adequately the sadness and my sympathy to all those affected by the earthquake and the resulting tsunami.

The world’s GIS community has contributed a lot of resources to depicts the events on the maps for all those searching details on the event. A few examples are presented below for information.

[more info on shareable map: shake analysis, epicenter, shelters, social reports (in Japanese)]

Links to more maps:
Google Crisis Response
Animated timeline: main earthquake and aftershocks (in HTML5)
New York Times: Tsunami propagation map
New York Times: Interactive maps with counts of dead and missing persons, building damage
Washington Post: Earthquake in Japan interactive map
New York Times: Forecast for Plume's Path

WA housing affordability index

2011-03-10T20:37:00.007+11:00

Bankwest has just released a report on housing affordabili ty in WA. Bankwest's affordability index is a ratio of average house price in a Local Government Area to average worker's salary. Index values are ranging from 0.9 for Mount Magnet to 49.9 for Peppermint Grove (5 is the upper limit of what is considered “affordable”). The information has been presented in WA Today as an alphabetical list of LGAs with corresponding index value. The paper concluded that workers (defined as a group consisting of police officers, nurses, emergency workers and teachers) “…need to move to Perth's extremities - or even out of it” to find affordable housing.

This is a good example where information could be presented in a more visually attractive and more informative way – using maps! I have converted Bankwest index table to a thematic map to illustrate how this information could be presented to highlight regions which are still considered affordable.

[Bankwest Housing Affordability Index by LGA]

The key to creating an informative thematic map is to pick the right method for dividing values to be mapped into meaningful categories that convey a certain message. In this case, the story is about locations which are considered affordable. The bank has already defined affordability cut-off value as 5 so that information should be preserved and conveyed on the map. There are many statistical approaches to decide on the split of data to create meaningful categories but on this occasion a simple “rule of thumb” approach is sufficient.

There could be just 2 categories – affordable and non affordable – to convey the message adequately. However, since two-colour map would be quite boring, we could also try to highlight “tail ends” of the data, that is cheap housing areas (eg. those with index value of 2 and below) and those totally out of reach (with index value of 10 and over). The values picked to define the two additional ranges are totally subjective but it does not detract from the key message – that is, which locations have affordable housing.

The selection of colours to present the information on the map is also important. I opted here for a combination to convey the message that there are two categories (affordable and non affordable) but also to indicate grading of index values from “low” to “high”.

Concluding, my appeal is, whenever you think about releasing information relating to postcodes, suburb or other spatially defined regions, please consider putting it also on an interactive map to create a bigger impact! And use my free reference map to enable easy sharing of the information for even greater impact!

Related Posts:
How maps can improve sales
More free data with Reference Map

China targets illegal maps

2011-03-09T20:50:00.002+11:00

Yes, it is not a mistake. Maps can be “illegal”. That is, only in countries that have in place a licensing regime – such as China. The aim is to remove from the web maps that have “political mistakes” (I presume it refers mainly to representation of borders and “territories”) and those that disclose State secrets (I remember this rule from the old communist country of my origin, where city maps had big holes where the industrial zones were located). Well, that’s one way to achieve consistency in mapping data across the whole country, just hope no one will have similar ideas in Australia!

What’s really interesting, are statistics quoted by the Chinese State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping: it “…uncovered 1,058 cases of illegal mapping services, including more than 30 relating to foreign organisations and military”, “…3,686 websites out of 41,670 web mapping service websites were found to contain political mistakes, and more than 200 websites were closed”. Mapping must be quite popular there, but that’s China. I wonder what would be the numbers for Australia (total websites of course, not closures!).

On a related topic, Chinese government is not the only one censoring online content. Google created this interesting map that shows world wide statistics about “Government requests directed to Google and YouTube” to remove content from services, or provide information about users of services and products.

First spotted on: Spatial Sustain

Fairfax buys more travel assets

2011-03-07T19:58:00.005+11:00

The consolidation of holiday property listings market in Australia is continuing. Fairfax has just acquired online holiday rental business Occupancy Pty Ltd which runs takeabreak.com.au and rentahome.com.au private listings sites. They will join a stable of Fairfax online travel assets that includes stayz.com.au, holidayhomes.co.nz and bookit.co.nz. It was a cash and shares deal worth $29.1 million ($17.9 million in cash and $11.2 million shares in the combined Stayz/Occupancy business).

In late 2009, Yahoo7 bought totaltravel.com for reported $20m. It had 167,000 paid listings and supplemented the revenue with display advertising. It shows that despite the downturn in travel industry due to floods, cyclones and high Australian dollar valuations of travel related portals, capable of bringing substantial quantity of listings and visitors, are on the high side. My estimate of takeabreak.com.au traffic is 200-300k unique browsers a month, which would mean Fairfax paid a premium valuing each monthly visitor at $95-$145. Fairfax chief executive Greg Hywood said Occupancy was growing strongly and had huge market potential and that was a perfect fit with Fairfax stated strategy of expanding in the online transactions sector.

Update

Fairfax claims that combined takeabreak.com.au and rentahome.com.au audience is 800,000 unique visitors a month. The number seems to be confirmed by Google trends but, who knows…

More of back of the envelope analysis from http://tims-boot.blogspot.com/ – the combined Stayz and Occupancy will have 60-66% of the online market for vacation rental and short lets in Australia , "with Yahoo7's TotalTravel second and Realholidays (subsidiary of realestate.com.au) a very distant third". Estimated size of that market in Australia is $455m per year.

About traffic and web hosting

2011-03-02T20:42:00.008+11:00

Christmas came early this year - it is barely beginning of March and I have already reached 2011 traffic objectives for my main website! Statistics for aus-emaps.com started trending very strongly this year and are showing just over 106,000 unique visitors for the month of February. Well, it’s not time yet to think about retirement since that traffic includes also free widgets that show up on third party sites but there is a good spill over to the main site as well (for example, home page traffic is up by 50% from the previous month). However, it is time to start thinking about attracting higher calibre of advertisers! So, if you are interested in reaching a substantial and growing community of tourists and travellers, or spatial industry professionals, get it touch - spaces are limited!

The biggest contributors to the increase in traffic were my free web widgets. For example, weather widget had close to 800,000 page views in February, postcode lookup widget had 30,000 and YouTube video player just over 6,000.

But all this “success” comes at a cost. I had to upgrade my server for a whole...$5 extra per month. So, for about $200 a year I have a service with unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited databases, unlimited parked domains, up to 5 add-on domains and easily handling my current traffic of close to 2 million page views a month. And all this with 24/7 technical support and server maintenance service as a part of the deal. What a bargain. Especially comparing to the option of purchasing and maintaining your own server that can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year!

I have to give here a plug to my hosting service provider webcity.com.au (and try to sell you on why you should seriously consider that company for hosting high quality websites!). Not only they offer cheap and reliable hosting solutions but also provide great and responsive customer service. I have been with webcity.com.au for 5 years now so, I had plenty of time to form an objective opinion on their operations.

I would like to share with you a couple of examples of how good they are. At the time of Victorian bushfires in 2009 I was only on a basic hosting plan but the site withstood an avalanche of visitors looking for bushfire related maps (reaching over 30,000 uniques in a single day!). My data feed providers could not cope with that volume but my site was running ok. During the most recent floods the traffic spiked again and although this time my site went down, it took only a phone call to get it up and running again. It was really my fault because my server CPU has been running close to full capacity for a while and it could not handle the extra traffic so, the security measures put in place by webcity.com.au kicked in. I was slacking with an upgrade of my hosting plan and was caught totally unprepared to handle the sudden increase in visitors.

The best of all is that webcity.com.au is 100% Australian, with 100% local operations and they have been around for a long time. So, if you are looking for cheap but very reliable hosting service provider, with very generous limits on volume of storage and traffic, I recommend webcity.com.au.

They also have cheap domain registration service (comparable to the US prices) and their hosting plans come with free website builder and $100 Google Adwords vouchers so, you can be “up and running” in a matter of minutes, literary! It will be hard to find a better deal. Please, use this link when you are ready to purchase the service:

Buy cheap website hosting package from webcity.com.au now!

Yes, I will get a $50 commission if you choose to sign up with my id as a referrer using the above link but it is not the reason I am recommending webcity.com.au – I am simply a very satisfied client, and am very happy to provide my testimonial in support of their business. My motives are very simple – the more money they make, the better the service they can provide to all clients. It is only a bonus if you take the trouble to sign up via the link above. Thanks in advance for your support!

Nokia admits defeat

2011-02-24T20:55:00.002+11:00

It's official. Nokia has retreated from the smartphone OS battlefield, dominated by Apple and Android, and announced phasing out of the Symbian OS. But the company is not giving up just yet as it will be joining forces with Microsoft and switching to Windows Mobile OS.

Nokia was once a dominant player in the industry but has failed to innovate and dropped its market share to only 27.1% , according to Gartner. Symbian, an open source operating system and software platform designed for smartphones and maintained by Nokia, is a casualty. The scale is tipping now in favor of operating system providers and away from hardware vendors and the market will now be shared between three giants – Google, Apple and Microsoft.

This new development resembles very much what happened in personal computers market a few decades ago. In 2009 I have written a post discussing the scenario of market power shift to operating systems providers. Android barely registered then in statistics so it looked like Symbian was to become the open source equivalent to Linux. Now it seems rather unlikely and this title will most likely go to Android OS. The only difference between PC and mobile market scenarios is a large dominance of open source operating system but the rest plays out almost exactly like a few decades ago (ie. Apple vs Microsoft vs open source community)! This is one more proof that history tends to repeat itself and therefore we should expect many more similarities to PC market: Dell-like handset customisation, liberation of content and apps on mobile devices as with the advent of the Internet, emergence of new service providers that will eventually muscle out the power from operating system providers, etc. etc...

Update

More details emerged on the Nokia Microsoft deal. It looks like Microsoft it taking a gamble for long term gains, paying Nokia $1B up front to switch to Windows OS…

Related Posts:
2010 The Year of Android OS
Trends and opportunities in mobiles market

Video Street View

2011-02-23T21:32:00.000+11:00

Immersive 360° videos of streets have been around for a while now but I am always very excited when I have a chance to view new and “exotic” locations. Now videostreetview.com site has integrated video content with Google Map to show routes and direction of the currently screened content. Available for viewing are numerous Swiss towns and several locations in the Middle East and South-East Asia.

Google had an option to adopt similar technology for its version of StreetView but settled for a much simpler solution based on static images. I have written about immersive video technology and Google in greater detail in my earlier post from 2009. Immersive 360° video streaming technology is making a progress but at a slow pace. The videos are always fun to watch and interact with – enjoy!

First spotted on Google Maps Mania

Related Post:
Immersive video yet to make its mark

Christchurch earthquake

2011-02-22T21:36:00.009+11:00

No relief from natural disasters in this corner of the world. This time the tragedy has struck New Zealand town of Christchurch. A powerful and shallow earthquake of 6.3 in magnitude, with epicentre just about 10 km south from the town centre, has severely shaken the city knocking down many houses and office blocks. Current death toll stands at 65 but hundreds are reported missing. My heart goes out to all those affected, especially those who lost loved ones.

Spatial community in New Zealand has quickly mobilised and deployed Ushahidi platform to assist with dissemination of vital information from authorities as well as that reported by individuals in the affected areas: http://eq.org.nz/

More maps of the event:
- US Geological Survey site
- aus-emaps.com publishes earthquake information on a shareable map (this link includes shake modelling for Christchurch earthquake)
- Geosciene Australia map with seismograms

Stokes latest media move

2011-02-21T21:42:00.002+11:00

Today’s big news is the latest deal of Mr “Maverick” Stokes: Perth based West Australian Newspaper Holdings (WAN) takeover of Seven Media Group in a $4.1 billion deal to create Australia's largest television and newspaper company. It is a typical complex arrangement Mr Stokes is famous for, allowing some parties to exit while others to consolidate holdings. I didn’t look specifically at figures “before and after” but general media commentary is quite positive for investors, so it must be a great deal for Mr Stokes. He will definitely be in control as his long-time lieutenant David Leckie will be in charge of the new company, to be called Seven West Media.

Only a year and a bit ago I have hinted in this blog that Mr Stokes has created a solid base from disparate media assets to “… launch an assault on top position in media business in this country”. Now he has done it!

Related Post:
Stokes set to shake up media sector Down Under

Where good ideas come from

2011-02-20T12:08:00.010+11:00

I would like to share with you some insights about innovation and motivation. However, rather than writing up an essay on this topic I opted for a more leisurely approach: using video presentations from YouTube. A short introduction first.

You might have come across stories where people “just had an enlightening moment” and invented something extraordinary and became “overnight success”. But the reality is that great inventions are never borne overnight. Steve Johnson, the author of “Where good ideas come from”, explains it in more detail, and in a very entertaining way, in the first video presentation. If you still struggle to come up with that “one big idea” that will move things forward for you, don’t despair! There is hope for all of us “slow thinkers” after all!

The second video, equally entertaining, is about motivation - or rather the secrets of creating an environment that allow the innovation to flourish, increasing the chances of coming up with that elusive “big idea”. Fifteen minutes required to view both video presentations can be a great investment in your future. Enjoy!

If you like it, please share using this short URL version: http://ow.ly/3ZKVz

Writing is still a good business

2011-02-09T22:09:00.000+11:00

If you believe in laments of media moguls, those that complain so bitterly about others “steeling their content” and therefore not being able to profit form the news as they used to, you would be quite surprised to learn that writing and publishing articles can still be a very lucrative business venture. U$1.9B valuation of Demand Media is a proof that writing text and producing short videos on trending topics, and publishing online for free, can be indeed a very good business! The company is making close to $200 million a year in advertising revenue from 22 million daily page views of their free content (or $12.60 per thousand page views). The business can thrive thanks to online search engines that push that content to the top of search results and thanks to online advertisers that pay high price for trendy keywords.

Purist would argue this is “demand driven rubbish” (or close to it) and a lot of negatives have been said about this business model and its “sweatshop like” manufacturing of content where 13,000 contributors are paid from $15 to $20 an article to produce up to 10 pieces a day (hmm… this is actually not a bad price for hobby journalists - I don’t get anything near that amount for what I publish on this blog!). Alan Kohler from Business Spectator (amongst other things) has just published a very interesting commentary on Demand Media and AOL which is another media player embarking on the same strategy (and has just purchased Huffington Post blog for reported $315 million!). I would gladly provide a link to the full article but it is now behind a paywall so, no point...

There is a hint in this story for all the aspiring online media barons – “content is a king” but not in the sense Mr Murdoch and the likes would like to think – it is not quality but quantity that matters the most! I have written about this before and success of Demand Media is just another point in case. I also have some anecdotal evidence that there is actually a negative correlation between the quality of content and a number of clicks on the ads (ie. readers are more likely to click on a related ad if they cannot find all they are looking for on a page). I noticed that the page that gets quite a lot of clicks on my website is one that frequently does not have any content at all (ie. because of third party service data is not working). I didn’t deliberately set it this way and I discovered this phenomenon by accident but it well explains why Demand Media is making so much money… the content does not have to be perfect, just have to have enough trendy keywords to attract visitors and when they cannot find all the information they are looking for, they will click on a well paying ad that goes along with the article. This used to be a tactic applied only by dodgy online operators but now it is filtering through to the mainstream online media portals.

Therefore, one of the most important resolutions for 2011 should be to create more, and trendy, content!

Related posts:
The golden rule of online business - traffic, traffic and traffic
Law of “exponentialism” of online advertising revenue and online business value

Perth bushfires

2011-02-06T20:43:00.006+11:00

From one extreme to another… today top news is bushfires in WA and on the outskirts of Perth. Tens of houses have already been lost. Alerts are published by Fire and Emergency Services WA and the Department of Environment and Conservation. I was looking for online maps but could not locate anything with exception of the good old FireWatch. So, here is a couple of screen captures from aus-emaps.com Bushfire Incidents map:

Interestingly, DEC publishes number of hits on its online reports and numbers are quite surprising… high tens but no more than 200. There is lots of text, occasional situation map in pdf but overall not an easy read… It appears that despite all the initiatives, by the community, the governments of all levels, academics, media and private companies there is still no single “geographic information system” available for the public to see first hand what is happening in near real time. There is still a big void in information. Why? Is lack of funding the main issue or lack of coordinated approach by various authorities? Or lack of enthusiasm to carry on development and support for something that may only be used a few days a year (…every few years!)? It would be interesting to hear from others what do you think …

End Note:
The latest community initiative called Bushfire Connect will be officially launched on Monday 7th February, initially focusing only on Victoria.

Another disaster looming for Oz

2011-02-02T18:29:00.006+11:00

After devastating floods in January 2011 Queensland is now bracing for the impact of category 5 cyclone Yasi. It is expected to hit Australian coast somewhere between Innisfail and Cardwell at about 11pm EST this evening, with winds over 200km/h. Emergency Management Queensland issued warnings that Yasi can cause “extensive damage and result in death or injury caused by flooding, buildings collapsing or flying debris.” The wind has already picked up to 93 km/h at Hamilton Island airport (6 pm AEDT).

Australian Bureau of Meteorology warns about "EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SEA LEVEL RISE [i.e. storm tide]… EXTREMELY DAMAGING WAVES, STRONG CURRENTS and FLOODING" as the cyclone approaches. Between Port Douglas and Ayr the winds will become DESTRUCTIVE with gusts in excess of 125 km/hr. Cyclone Yasi is expected to reach inland as far as Mt Isa.

The latest satellite image of the approaching cyclone and wind speed inf ormation for the impact area can be monitored live on aus-emaps.com’s Hazards Monitor pages (courtesy of free Bureau of Meteorology web services):

[turn on Clouds overlay to view the image, other layers are switched off]

[click wind icon in the top left corner of the map to add wind speed information layer and click/ move your mouse over the markers for details]

Updates:
[02/02/2011 at 8pm AEDT] Latest BOM update on tropical cyclone Yasi: just a crude "translation" of predicted path into kmz format for easy sharing on a map .

[03/02/2011] It is not totally over yet but media reports indicate there was no major disaster: no lives were lost and although there are many damaged houses and almost 190,000 people without electricity, overall impact of Cyclone Yasi will most likely not be as devastating as was initially anticipated. Below some pictures documenting the event, as captured by various aus-emaps.com tools.

[Yasi crossing over to land - 3am AEDT]

[Yasi location at 9pm AEDT on 02/02/20011]

[Yasi location at 11pm 02/02/2011]

[Yasi crossing over to land at about 3am AEDT 03/02/2011]

[Place of impact - very faint background but visible]

[Weather station reading near Halifax/ Ingham at the time of impact showing wind speed of 137 km/h and gusts up to 165 km/h - very high but half of what was anticipated and may explain why the damage to infrastructure was not so extensive.]

Related posts:
Another natural disaster tragedy in Oz
Bushfires (with special feature on 2009 Victorian bushfires)

How maps can improve sales

2011-02-01T21:48:00.006+11:00

There is a saying “Half the money spent on advertising is wasted; the trouble is you don't know which half.” The statement attributed to John Wanamaker, who is considered to be the father of modern advertising, illustrates how difficult it is for a business to come up with an optimal advertising strategy that will deliver maximum results, at the minimum cost, and with minimum wastage.

If you try using “a bit of everything” you are spreading your resources too thinly. Focus too much on a single advertising channel and you are potentially missing out on some big opportunities elsewhere.

For example, online social media engagement for promotion of business is the latest communication channel rapidly gaining in popularity (and hype) but should it be the only channel? Will it deliver in your line of business and for your geographic market? It’s one of those dilemmas: "damn if you don’t engage, damn if you do…" so, one way of prioritising which advertising and promotional options to pursue is to compare alternatives based on total reach, proportion of target population reachable through the channel, duration and timing of exposure, and overall costs involved.

Although the optimal mix of advertising and promotional activities will depend on what you are selling, the target audience you are pursuing (ie. whether global or local) and the scale of you operations, however there is one simple activity that should always be seriously considered – contacting your potential clients directly (either cold calling, sending snail-mail or just arranging for letterbox drops). Why? Because of simplicity of implementation of this option. And not to mention that the campaign can be personalised, can be localised (either for testing or to stage a rollout if your budget or response handling capacity is limited), you can easily measure the results and it can be very inexpensive.

The rest of this article is a case study on how maps and simple spatial analysis techniques can improve efficiency of direct marketing activities and ultimately, sales results. Traditionally, such methods have been restricted to only large companies due to the cost of analytical tools and/or specific skill set required to undertake the analysis. However, with the advent of free mapping solutions and increasing volumes of free data liberated by State and Federal governments with Creative Commons licensing, the capability to undertake spatial analysis is well within reach of business enterprises of any size.

Case Study

Challenge: Your target market is property investors in Canberra and you have a budget for a letterbox drop of promotional materials about investment loan refinancing options to 10,000 prospects. Your objective is to maximise effectiveness of the campaign (ie. get the best return on your bucks!).

Solution: The key to the success of your campaign is to know which are the areas that offer the best opportunity to reach your target audience. The easiest way out would be just to pick the most affluent postcodes and do your mailbox drops there. But is this the optimal approach? And which are those “affluent postcodes’?

There is a good range of free information available from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that could help with the campaign but for this particular campaign there is even better free data source: statistics on personal returns from the Australian Taxation Office that show numbers of property investors in each postcode.

Equipped with that data you can do a simple analysis classifying and sorting the postcodes based on a couple of variables: overall proportions of people claiming rental investment expenses in each postcode and the value of their claims in relation to the ACT average. This will allow to pinpoint specific postcodes with the highest probability of reaching the target audience (ie. the highest proportion of taxpayers claiming the highest loses).

Focusing just on the postcodes with the largest number of property investors is not the most optimal approach since population counts in each postcode vary dramatically. So, the absolute number of investors in a given postcode may be high but proportionally to the overall number of people in that postcode, there may not be many prospects there. And besides, you would also want to find people with the largest mortgages to optimise your efforts. Therefore, that extra analytical step can be very beneficial. This way it is possible to derive a meaningful ranking measure of postcodes based on the concentration of people with sought after characteristics in each postcode.

Mapping the results will help to visualise the location of your target audience and to manage distribution of promotional materials. Thematic map shown below is an illustration of the outcome of a simple analysis outlined above and shows detailed boundaries of target postal areas (dark red polygons indicate areas with highest concentration of target audience).

[full report can be downloaded for free from: aus-emaps.com/reports/ ]

Conclusion: The campaign should focus on postcodes 2600 and 2603 (with approximate number of 10,500 taxpayers and 2,675 total potential clients). Targeting these postcodes will give you the most optimal, 1 in 4 chance, to reach your audience.

This case study demonstrates that running campaigns in an ad hoc manner cannot deliver optimised outcomes. Even if you have limited resources, simple analysis and mapping of the results can help immensely in maximising the return on your efforts.

Google loosing its Midas touch?

2011-01-27T14:35:00.002+11:00

Google will have to add another failure to its list – the company has just announced withdrawal of Real Estate listing service from Google Maps. It is partly the result of discontinuation of Google Base API but the primary cause quoted in the announcement is “low usage”. I appears that “economic reality” prevailed over somehow philanthropic ambitions of Google to provide “free services for all” – at stake was a huge revenue flow from advertising from subscription based real estate portals – and that is the main game for Google.

Real estate listings on Google Maps and via Google Base API service were available for US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Japan. Many anticipated far reaching changes in real estate online listing market as the result of Google’s entry, including the author of this blog, but we were all proven wrong. No hard feelings on my part as it opens up new opportunities since Google left a big niche ready to be explored but it begs a question, what went wrong for Google? I believe that the main cause was the service was just an add-on layer to Google Map and, to my best knowledge, listings were never promoted in online search. Google lacked clear vision for the service and was never committed to push it in any big way, not to upset its largest advertising clients. Otherwise who knows what might have happened…

Google is indeed struggling with creating thematic content for its main map platform so it is no surprise the company decided in the end to leave real estate listings to third party developers. Is Google starting to loose its Midas touch? Initially it looked that they cannot make any wrong move – search engine dominance, online advertising platform dominance, online video dominance… But more recent explorations and experimentations seem not to deliver the expected results.

News and Fairfax, and their associated real estate portals realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, stood their grounds and did not want to participate in Google’s experiments. REA Group (realestate.com.au) share price more than doubled since Google entered the market in July 2009 and despite growing dissatisfaction with the service from real estate agents. Fairfax shares are only slightly up. If one had “blinked”, the outcome could have been totally different… So, for now, back to status quo - it will have to be someone else, not Google, who will shake the things up for them. Telstra was not so lucky and in the end it opted for tighter cooperation with Google (now not only providing listings for Google's local search from its Yellow Pages but also map data for Google Map).

Another natural disaster tragedy in Oz

2011-01-11T14:10:00.012+11:00

I have just heard the news about flash flooding in Toowoomba and Lockyer Valley, Queensland. In this latest incident eight people died and so far over 70 are missing. Death toll is expected to rise. My heart goes out to all that have lost loved ones in this tragedy.

The overall death toll from floods in NSW and QLD in November 2010 to January 2011 is much higher but statistics are not readily available. As usual, after the clean up is finished questions will be asked: “Was this tragedy preventable?”. Then millions will be poured into a solution “…to prepare us for the next time”, as was the case with all previous disasters. So now Australia has a few hundred million dollar tsunami detection and early warning system to prepare us for another one-in-100-years event. As a result of Victorian bushfires we also have a multi million dollar monitoring and alert system (including phone messaging alerts) for bushfires. Flood warning system will be the next…

Why it always takes a tragedy to motivate governments to do something to improve safety of its citizens? The money is then no objective to find a better approach/ solution… Why can’t there be a proactive rather than reactive approach to disaster mitigation?

What I am about to say is not intended a as a criticism of authorities, rather just a statement of facts. Yes, it is obvious that a bit more proactive approach would save lives but the reality is that it is very difficult for authorities, whether State or Federal to do things proactively. Most often then not, priorities of the day take precedence (just read news headlines and it will become clear what this priority is on any given day). It takes lots of resources and time to get major projects off the ground, then administer them towards a particular outcome. Therefore, there must be a catalyst, a disaster if you like, to shake things up and get politicians to “find” those millions to put policies in place to prevent another similar tragedy.

Don’t get me wrong, not that there are no continuous improvements to current disaster mitigation programs, but still, it takes a disaster to focus the attention of decision makers on things that "should have been done in the first place"… Again, the reality is that Departments and agencies can only work on projects within their allocated range of responsibilities and currently allocated tasks, and money. All in all, it is very difficult for pubic service institutions operating in our existing governance structures to do things proactively, without aligning to specific agendas of the government of the day…

So, who else is there to look after the interests of individual citizens? I believe that community at large should accept part of the responsibility for looking after its own affairs. Even without huge financial resources public initiatives can make enormous impact. And with respect to prevention of disasters, communities can assist or complement things put in place with government funded programs. But there have to be a widespread commitment for things to work…

Just consider a few examples of community lead projects in GIS arena like, for example, OpenStreetMap community response to 2010 Haiti earthquake or Ushahidi community engagement after Haiti and Chile earthquakes. Australia has its own suite of natural disaster focused applications, either community based or maintained by enthusiasts. For example, ABC has just released ABC Qld Flood Crisis Map, built on Ushahidi platform, for crowdsourcing reports on Queensland floods and recovery operations. BushfireConnect is another community lead Ushahidi deployment for corwdsourcing reports on bushfires. Ushahidi platform can be configures to send SMS alerts to registered users. My own Hazards Monitor is yet another example of a private initiative to monitor and report on natural disasters.

There is also The Australian Early Warning Network that republishes Bureau of Meteorology information and sends emergency alerts to mobile phones, home phones, pagers and via SMS or e-mail. It is maintained by a private company.

Lucky for Australia, the disasters are few and far between. But this is exactly what makes proactive investment in natural hazards monitoring and disaster response systems, whether government sponsored or community lead, so difficult. Interest in those systems diminishes as quickly as the tragedy disappears from news headlines. It is so hard to keep politicians and community engaged and supportive for the initiatives when there is no threat present. So, in the end, it is always up to a bunch of committed individuals who work on solutions proactively, and despite all the odds, in anticipation that their effort one day may save a life. Sad reality… So, paraphrasing JF Kennedy: “…ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country…” to limit the outcome of natural disasters in the future!

End Note:
Just to put the extent of flooding in Queensland into perspective, have a look at this interactive map.

More maps on Spatial Information in the 21st Century blog.

More free data with Reference Map

2011-01-10T10:03:00.009+11:00

I am releasing today another batch of free data for Australia, bundled with free Web Application Service from aus-emaps.com – for linking to, embedding into websites or reuse in third party applications. In addition to postal areas I released a few weeks ago I have added a number of other popular spatial boundary outlines, such as suburbs/localities and the latest Australian tourism regions (2010), local government areas (2010) and Commonwealth Electoral Divisions (2009). All in all, over 10,000 administrative regions individually mapped for your free perusal. Only a few months ago I was asked to pay $1,000's for that data to use as part of Postcode Finder application. It took a few hours to compile but now I have free data available for all my projects, and I don't mind sharing it with others in this specific format (ie. as Web Application Service).

In order to generate a map with a region of your choice just follow these simple steps:

1. Download list of available regions from the above table.
2. Look up naming convention for required region(s).
3. List all required regions in the URL, following this pattern (this example shows how to include one of each region, as listed in the above table)

http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?

kmzl= 2000,Sydney_NSW,Sydney__C_,Sydney,Sydney&

svs=2,4,5,6,7

[service codes svs: 2-postcodes, 4-suburbs, 5-LGA, 6-CED, 7-ATR]
[Additional setup options are available, please see full instructions on aus-emaps.com free widgets page]

4. Copy URL to your browser/web page to display the map.

5. If you are interested in adding extra functionality to your site, see also this example of how to script access to the service and embed a map into a web page.

The data is a module of a bigger application I am slowly building over time. So far it includes a reference map, some popular administrative boundary data for Australia and a separate component that is closely linked - user sign up and PDF report download module. So much more is yet to come…

Related Posts:
Free postcodes with Reference Map
More examples of use of Reference Map service
Free Reference Map service

Map pinpoints low cost regions for holiday travel

2011-01-06T20:03:00.000+11:00

This is a complete text of media release for my latest report titled “Tourism in Australia - Insights for the Industry and Travellers”.

A report published by aus-emaps.com shows (literary!) where to find the cheapest holiday accommodation in each State and Territory.

The report is a good place to start particularly for budget conscious travellers, planning their holidays or tourism travel. The information could potentially bring substantial savings to holiday makers who are not fixed on specific locations.

For example, in Queensland, Fraser Coast north of Brisbane offers much better prices than adjoining Sunshine Coast (which is almost 50% more expensive) and the Gold Coast (approximately 35% more expensive).

In NSW, South Coast offers better prices than tourism regions north of Sydney (which tend to be 10-30% more expensive). In Victoria, Gippsland offers the best value for coastal regions and in South Australia, Yorke Peninsula north of Adelaide is cheaper that Fleurieu Peninsula (which is 35% more expensive).

The researchers examined average takings per night by accredited accommodation service providers in each tourism region around Australia and mapped out the results. The outcome is a colourful map matrix that highlights regions with both the cheapest and the most expensive accommodation. Since accommodation accounts for a significant proportion of overall travel expenses, the ranking presented in the report is indicative of the relative cost of holidaying in the particular location.

On a State and Territory basis, Tasmania has the cheapest accommodation while the Australian Capital Territory is comparatively the most expensive ($128 and $163 respectively).

The title of the cheapest region in Australia goes to Victoria's Wimmera tourism region, which has an average accommodation cost of just $83.82 per night. Close second is South Australia's Yorke Peninsula ($85.36), followed by Northern Territory's Barkly ($87.98), Victoria's Upper Yarra ($90.48) and Outback NSW ($93.14).

Not surprisingly capital cities and large metropolitan areas are amongst the most expensive travel destinations in terms of tourism accommodation. However, the title of the most expensive in Australia goes to the Great Barrier Reef tourism region, which has an average accommodation cost of $287.79 per night. The second most expensive is Kangaroo Island in South Australia ($205.52 per night). These are followed by another favourite Queensland location, the Whitsundays ($203.51), Victoria's Spa Country ($195.00) and Western Australia's North West Tourism Region ($186.48).

Since the report is based on June 2010 quarter data and as such visitors to the regions may find the real prices much higher at this time of the year. However, the relative rankings of tourism regions will hold true.

Links to a full free version of the report in PDF format are available at www.aus-emaps.com/reports/ ...

Also featured on Google Maps Mania Blog

2010 in review

2010-12-30T18:47:00.001+11:00

As 2010 draws to a close it’s time for a few reflections. It has been a roller coaster ride for me with sad personal events, a few joyful moments but mostly lots of hard work throughout the year. I will focus on the last bit only as it directly relates to my online adventures.

Good news, and some statistics first, starting with this blog. You have noticed probably increased level of activity in the last few weeks but this was just my attempt to clear the deck - I have a lot of material which I started drafting earlier in the year but never got to finish. All in all I published over 80 posts and the blog is averaging just over 2,000 visits a month. Tiny but more on the “measured value” I get from it below. This year I also updated the design of the blog a bit but it is still "work in progress".

My main mapping site is doing well in terms of visitors and unique browsers. The traffic doubled this year to almost 45,000 uniques, 100,000 visits and 900,000 pages per month. Freebies like weather widget, postcode finder widget and YouTube player delivered the most of the increase but regular pages also are up by 10-50%. But I am constantly battling with fixing broken services and I had to drop some due to significant cost increases. I didn’t really add much new inventory this year so the number of ads served increased only proportionately to the increase in traffic volume for regular pages. The overall ad revenue increased by over 30% in 2010.

On a less positive note, due to disruptions of personal nature I didn’t really get to do much from my list of “to do’s” so, majority is carried forward to the next year. LollyPollies and related sites remain unfinished, reference maps and thematic reports sign up module have just been launched and I only started testing new partnering concept so it’s hard to assess the success of those initiatives as yet.

I would like to finish with some “hard figures”. Just to put a dollar value on some intangible aspects of my activities, I calculated the value of free traffic to my site based on $0.20 per visit, which is equivalent to what I would have to pay on average to Adwords to generate the traffic. I included only what I can specifically account for so, the overall value is probably understated but, here it is:

Blog and my limited so far "social activities" delivered 2,400 clicks or $480 worth of traffic
Associated parties provided 3,000 clicks or $600 worth of traffic
Freebies (mentioned above) supplied 18.5K clicks through to the main site or $3,700 worth of traffic

Total of $4,780 worth of traffic in 2010 came from "intangibles". It doesn't seem like much, but that's the money I did not have to put up myself.

As to the overall revenue, well, I will only say that I am facing a dilemma – it would be a pity to give it all up yet, comparing to a “real job in IT”, I am rather grossly underpaid :-) . Overall, good but not a spectacular year. But now it is time for a holiday…

All the best for the coming year and lots of successes in your endeavours!

Why maps are still a niche

2010-12-20T22:05:00.006+11:00

Two things that crossed my mind. The first issue is that online maps are still not easy to share. Not to mention the challenge of creating and publishing them! All in all, there is not enough good content in shareable format to go around. Google is trying hard but despite, it is not easy and straightforward for anybody to use MyMaps and/or Fusion Tables to create informative maps for sharing. It is also not easy to find user created content, either on MyMaps or via filetype:kml search on Google. Indeed, I am struggling to find content for my reference map – with a few exceptions, like for example USGS earthquakes, there is virtually nothing immediately useable! Flood affected areas in NSW – zero. Fires in Israel – one… You get the picture.

True, there are some nice examples of map creation services but they are not quite yet up to the task – either too clunky for portability (eg. built with Flex requiring a hefty download to run) or can only be viewed on a specific site, or if embedding is allowed, show only a single map at a time. And since there are no communities like YouTube for sharing maps, again with exception of a few tiny by web standards portals, there are no critical mass enabling maps "to go viral"...

The second problem, as I see it, is that the spatial industry participants are looking too much inward rather than reaching out to the broader community. The focus is on selling software, data, services and solutions to fellow professionals and not much effort goes to providing tools for “solving problems and improving lives” of citizens in general. So, beyond a few specific applications, like online street directories or GPS navigation devices, and maybe a few more location aware tools, “doing thing the spatial way” does not have much broader appeal. Majority of people just don’t associate “information” with maps – rather only with text, lists or tables, eventually graphs. An example from the last few days – there are many road closure announcements due to recent flooding but try to find this information presented on a map. Not a chance! Yet without a reference to a map/ street directory/ road atlas, information like “…X road closed between Y junction and Z road” is completely useless for most.

Don’t get me wrong. Google did tremendous job with Google Maps, introducing masses to something otherwise considered a kind of a “black art”. Many valuable and community focused initiatives have been started in the last few years and individual professionals are doing tremendously important job creating, analysing and disseminating spatial information and maps but, as mentioned in the first point above, still much more work needs to be done to make spatial technologies and information widely understood and easy to apply. I hope that my reference map concept can contribute to that objective in some way.

No copyright on databases and maps?

2010-12-16T18:55:00.000+11:00

Telstra’s Sensis has just lost an appeal with regard to Federal Court judgement that said its White and Yellow pages are not protected by copyright law. The key to the decision was that those compilations lack “creative spark” and hence cannot be protected under copyright law that requires “independent intellectual effort” to create the works. This ruling has important implications for all kinds of factual data collections, including listings of real estate, names and addresses or… databases with map data. Sensis will be seeking leave to appeal to the High Court to revert the decision.

It begs an interesting question: does it mean that all that high resolution imagery of your neighbourhood and representation of local roads, or cadastre boundaries, or geocoded addresses, are “free for all”? Google and others who publish such information would have no legal grounds for preventing people from copying it all in droves…

Free data + maps = unique insights

2010-12-15T19:22:00.004+11:00

I am launching today another service which is a part of a bigger development project I am currently implementing. It is called Thematic Reports Series – free PDF download module. There is so much interesting data floating around that can be converted, with a little bit of effort, to insightful information and knowledge! The tools to do that conversion and dissemination are not integrated into end-to-end solution so, I am taking on the challenge with aus-emaps.com site to bridge the gaps. The first module was the reference map service launched just a couple of weeks ago. PDF download is the second piece in the puzzle, and more are yet to come.

I have chosen personal taxation statistics as the topic for the first free report. “Canberra’s Investment Habits by Postcode” is not an easy read but I hope it will generate some interest in the local community. Information is published as a series of interactive maps and as a hardcopy report in PDF format. Users have to sign up with aus-emaps.com to download PDF version of the report but maps are fully shareable. More on the report content in the follow up post.

Web Application Service concept

2010-12-08T21:32:00.001+11:00

Last week I launched a new widget from aus-emaps.com: Reference Map service for publishing and sharing geospatial information. Today just a few details about the concept behind this application - a bit of theory, if you like, to explain what my objectives are and why I am so excited about it.

I believe there is a gap in the market for distributed tools and technologies in data/information access applications space. What I mean is that there is “a piece” missing in the hierarchy of various offerings. In particular, at the bottom of the hierarchy are Web Services, which are primarily to do with methodologies for accessing and distributing content in a raw format. From SOAP, RSS, through to JSON and the latest REST concept, with thematic flavours in between like, for geospatial content, WMS, WFS, WCS, or even processing services like WPS. Unless you are an expert in XML, XPath and myriad of other “concepts”, it is very hard for an average person to make any use of those… it is strictly for programmers and brainiacs!

Application Programming Interface (API) services come second in my definition of the hierarchy. Google Map and plethora of other similar applications are good examples. They hide the complexity of “inner workings” in a black box and expose only certain functionality and/or information content to external users. Great concept as it allows less skilful and resourceful individuals to take advantage of someone else’s intellectual property and computational power. But it still does require certain level of programming skills to put to any good use.

Then there is a big gap (which I will refer to in a moment), followed by Software as a Service (SaaS) concept – that is, for example, your MS Office online type of applications. To use SaaS application you don’t need to know anything about programming. But, if you know a lot – you cannot take advantage of the extensive functionality that could be reused somewhere else! It’s a black box of a different kind – you can only access public interface in the way the original designer intended. Full stop.

I maybe oversimplify the capabilities and limitations of each of the above but I hope you get the picture. The “big gap” is a middleware service, between API and SaaS. I called this missing piece Web Application Service (WAS). It is not a new term but I am reusing it since it best reflects the concept: web – because it is available via online access; application – because it is a complete package that is fully functional on its own; and service – because it can be consumed in real time without the need for owning/ controlling the back end and what goes with it…

The difference between API and WAS is that, unlike API type of services, it just requires a URL link “to work”. My just released Reference Map service is a good example. Currently it doesn’t have much functionality but it can run on its own in a browser page. No need to program anything to use it. But WAS differs also from SaaS because, unlike SaaS, programmers can use the service to build applications on top of it. So, extending example of my Reference Map service, if you want to add a map showing relevant postal boundaries to you web page, just script a function to add dynamically postal code number to the URL referenced in iframe in HTML code. The content can be your own data as well, and/or any other data from the web that is published in KML/KMZ or geoRSS format. For end users it all feels like the map is an integral part of your web page.

The key point I want to stress is that WAS apps are not “end nodes” in the processing chain, as SaaS applications are and probably the majority of applications on the net built with APIs. WAS apps can be used on their own but also can be further extended to be a part of unlimited variety of custom applications. Several APIs can be chained to create a WAS app for end consumers and many WAS and API apps can be chained to create SaaS apps. Anyway, that’s the theory. The task of proving to everyone it can work will be a bit harder since I don’t know any “third party” WAS applications that I could use straight away for my purposes so, I will have to build them myself. Actually, I have already started on that path long time ago. My first WAS application was a weather widget. It was followed with more advanced version and then a YouTube video player. Reference Map is the fourth such service. And my first attempt to put together a number of WAS apps is a bushfire hazards monitor map which incorporates above mentioned weather widget and YouTube video player. The map itself is WAS that can be linked to and some embed it into their websites (it can be centred on user defined location if required). This is the future of the Internet!

Mapping Above and Beyond

2010-12-07T20:12:00.000+11:00

Maps break all the barriers…Who would have thought that maps and music can go together! Above and Beyond - Trance Around the World site has just released an interactive Google Map application that shows real-time twits referencing @aboveandbeyond tag from all over the world. The maps also shows locations of major trance music related events and comes loaded with plenty of options for sharing via Facebook and Twitter.

I recently started to listen to quite a lot of trance music on the internet - Above and Beyond weekly sessions in particular. Session #343 in my favourite so far. Now that I think about it, “spatial references” are very prominent on this site: “around the world”, “above and beyond”… so the map was a very logical addition!

Free postcodes with Reference Map

2010-12-02T22:17:00.009+11:00

Following on from my yesterday's announcement about free reference map service - just a quick post on how to take advantage of free postal boundaries data that come pre-packaged with it.

To view on a map any of 2,507 postal area boundaries at full resolution (as defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for Census 2006 population and housing data) just follow this simple URL pattern:

http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?kmzl=2000&svs=2

Multiple postcodes can be added to the map as follows (at this stage one at a time only):

?kmzl=2000,3000&svs=2,2

A set of simple instructions on how to configure other map parameters can be found on aus-emaps.com web widgets page.

Since this reference map can be embedded in a website page, a simple javascript code can add additional functionality to render the content dynamically. It means you can now start serving postal boundaries and/or any other data in kmz or geoRSS format directly on your web site! Here is a link to a simple example showing you exactly how to do it.

And this file will also be handy to script the functionality: list of postal areas (Census 2006 version in csv format). Please note, Northern Territory postal area boundary data are named with leading "0" (ie. 0800).

Related posts
More examples of use of Reference Map service
Australian Postcodes User Guide
Post code maps and population statistics
Free postcode search widget

More practical map apps from Oz

2010-12-02T21:59:00.006+11:00

Keir from Google Map Mania blog alerted me about a couple of interesting applications from Australia he reviewed recently. The first is called 'Touring to Australia' and is essentially free online trip and itinerary planner. It allows you to find places to stay and things to do and see on your trip. Just choose your destination and then select from a number of categories of markers to view on the map. You can select from accommodation, excursions, rental services, places of interest and activities. Whilst browsing the map you can add individual hotels and points of interest to your itinerary. Great tool for planning your next trip, business or private.

The second one is called 'Neet Street' and is a tool for reporting community problems which are then passed on to the appropriate authorities. Using Neat Streets you can report road obstructions, vandalism, potholes, fallen trees, abandoned trolleys, litter, and graffiti. You can download a Neat Streets application for the iPhone, Blackberry, and Android based phones. With the apps you can take pictures and submit community problems directly from your smartphone. The latest submitted photos and problems are displayed on a Google Map on the Neat Streets website home page. Neat Streets automatically forwards the reports to the appropriate authority based on the GPS location.

Use examples of Online Business Model

2010-12-02T20:17:00.000+11:00

A few days ago I have presented a basic model that attempts to classify all online business ventures into 4 distinctive types, based on a dominant source of revenue and primary product offering. In today’s post I would like to elaborate on a couple of practical examples of applying this model in analysis of online business operations. Please familiarise yourself with the concept before further reading.

Let’s start with Google. Their primary offering is search service and dominant source of revenue is online advertising, which under the model classifies Google’s business model as category 1: Free Content. This business model is fairly restrictive in terms of future growth potential because most lucrative niches are already well covered so Google has to search for other revenue generating options. (In fact, Google displays signs of frustration of not being able to come up with another killer application and is uncomfortable loosing ground to Facebook). Over the years the company extended its operations into category 2: Free Transaction Services with their gmail and YouTube video sharing sites (and several other less successful initiatives). This was primarily to expand inventory for online advertising. And not to pay third parties for finding and serving advertising, Google also acquired services in category 4: Premium Transaction Services – Adwords and Adsense (best investments they could ever make!). Google also has its fingers in category 3: Premium Content/Goods/ Services type of online businesses, selling commercial suite of its email services, geospatial etc. tools to corporate users but this software as a service market is relatively small in comparison with other revenue streams. Its attempt to be a player in a larger market and sell mobile phones over the Internet was not successful. All in all, Google is becoming a diversified business. Search engine is what made the company famous but the money is flowing from a number of unrelated ventures.

Now let’s consider fortunes of online media portals run by major newspapers. They offer free content and sell advertising alongside hence, like Google, are category 1 type of online business. Some did diversify into category 4 with acquisitions of stakes in classifieds portals (eg. News in realestate.com.au and online job classifieds seek.com.au). Some are also pursuing investments in category 3: Free Transactions Services, (eg. News again with its acquisition of MySpace social network). Now the talk of the town is an attempt to move entire online content to category 2 and locking it behind firewalls. And this is the key difference between Google and online media operators such as The News. Rather than milking their core business (ie Free Content) for advertising revenue and diversifying strategically to expand inventory for advertising (eg. With Free Transaction Services as MySpace) and/or developing further their Premium Transaction Services business (ie. classifieds portals), the main strategic focus seem to be on putting a price on news stories. If News were starting online from scratch and had no other idea for revenue generation that may have been a reasonable business model to start with. But eliminating significant revenue stream from advertising published along free content begs a question about the merits of such a decision. After all, this is how newspapers generate their revenue - not from “access to content”, although newsstand price covers some cost of distribution, but from advertising! Why treating online version differently? In contrast, Fairfax’s strategy to expand its inventory of free content with creation of 160 local websites and an alliance with a TV channel to extend textual coverage of events to video format, appear to make more sense...

I hope these two examples highlight the usefulness of the Online Business Model for assessment of investment opportunities in online businesses as well as for strategic planning purposes to decide on the future growth directions for existing operators.

Related Posts:
How to pick online winners

Free Reference Map service

2010-12-01T21:32:00.000+11:00

I am launching today my newest creation: free reference map service for publishing and sharing spatial information. I am rushing this release since the end of the year is very close! Currently it only supports spatial data in KML/KMZ and geoRSS format and standard Google base map options but I am planning to add a lot more functionality and content over the coming months. Simple instruction on how to take advantage of available functionality is on aus-emaps.com free web widgets page. I will highlight here only one thing you really need to know to publish and share your own maps: just reference publicly accessible KML/KMZ or geoRSS file as follows http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?kmzl= FullURLaddressOfYourFile . It is as simple as that. An example of what you can do with it is below:

Actually, the whole concept behind the service is rather complex (and exciting!) but I will not go into details at this point it time. True, there are many other initiatives, possibly far more advanced, to enable easy creation and embedding of maps but they don’t allow for as much flexibility as I have in mind for my version. My idée fixe with content portability and reusability/repurposing is taking me into uncharted territory… Just consider this option – if you find something of particular interest on a web page, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to “cut it out” and take with you to bookmark just that bit and/or reuse (give another perspective!) in your own online endeavours (whether private or public)? Today I am introducing to the world “detach” concept that will allow you to do just that!

Detach function is a very simple idea, a variation on “link to” if you like, but opens up so many possibilities! If you like the map above, just “detach” it from this page to open it in a new window. Then you can bookmark it or add to favourites for future reference, or shorten the URL with your preferred tool and share via Twitter, or Facebook, or LinkedIn or any other social network – with own commentary and spin! This process can be repeated endlessly… And if you are publishing a blog or forum, you can easily combine a number of layers in a single reference map application to provide your unique content and commentary… Again, this process can be repeated endlessly, and with no need to return to the site where the map was first published…. And if you are a developer, you can insert a script to add content dynamically… Implications of such possibilities are far reaching and will probably be best discussed in a separate post. I will only mention that “detach” is not like “clip content” functionality recently dropped by Google from its range of services when they decommissioned Google Notebook – the emphasis here are on portability of content permitted for sharing by content creator. Various back end services to discover what’s available for reuse are coming in 2011!

I first came up with “detach” concept for YouTube video player app but since it is still in alpha release, I have not widely publicised that option. I intend to enable “detach” functionality for all my widgets so they can be shared and used not only via dedicated personal pages (like iGoogle) or via embedding into web pages but also on their own, without attaching to specific “location” on the web!

As I am yet to make a switch to version 3 of Google Map API this shareable map service is build with version 2 (it has proven quality and reliability although lacks some advanced features of the latest version). Since I am reusing many components from my other applications, it was easier for me to work with that version. I will be switching all my apps to Reference Map platform and upgrade to v3 over the course of next year. Any feedback and comments most welcome!

Generalising geographic data

2010-11-30T20:27:00.000+11:00

It often happens that the dataset you have is very detailed and hence very large. Displaying such volume of data in online mapping applications (eg. as KML on Google Map) is out of the question. The only alternative is to reduce the number of vertices to reduce the overall size of the file (ie. generalise the data). There is an excellent free online tool to do just that and surprisingly it works much better than commercial software that costs a fortune. It is called MapShaper.

It accepts spatial data in shapefile format only. It is an online service and you can upload files up to 80MB in size for processing. There are 3 generalisation algorithms to choose from. Activation of generalisation process itself is as simple as moving a slider “left to right” (from 0% reduction to 99%) – the result is visible on the screen instantaneously. Another great feature of the tool is that you can view original file underneath the generalised version to assess the quality of the process but also to pick the right generalisation level for your requirements.

Processed files can be downloaded back in either shp or EPS format (so it’s is also a great tool for straight conversion of files from shp format into EPS format, for use with vector graphics software!). There is simple edit functionality as well so you can add/delete vertices manually, if required. Generalisation process preserves topology so boundaries of adjoining polygons are generalised in an identical fashion – that is, they still “fit” perfectly. All in all, MapShaper is very straightforward to use.

File size still counts when performance of online mapping tool is the objective. For example, it will not be possible to display electoral boundaries as a single, full resolution file in Google Map application. But original 25MB shapefile can be reduced to just a few hundred KB using MapShaper tool, and then even further by converting shp to gzipped KMZ format. Here is an example of a Google Map application that uses both, full resolution data for close-ups and generalised version for whole of the country view: Australian elections map (work in progress!).

Related posts:
Free map service preview
Converting csv data into shapefile
Converting shapefile into KML
Colours for thematic mapping
Free GIS Tools – Google Map
Free Address Validation Tool
Manual geocoder for 70 countries

Big media waking up to opportunities

2010-11-30T20:15:00.002+11:00

There are two bits of news from the last few days that are worth a comment. Firstly, Fairfax and its new strategy update turned management restructure. Amongst all the details a few points caught my specific attention. In particular, Fairfax has finally recognised the opportunities in becoming a multi-platform company! I have written about the benefit of such approach over a year ago (actually, the whole strategy is laid out there for taking!). Fairfax CEO stated explicitly that from now on the company will focus on “... Greater sharing of editorial content and collaborating across platforms;…Adapting our news assets on all platforms…”. Furthermore, it will focus, amongst others, on “Strategic external investments, partnerships, JV’s” and “transaction services” for revenue (see my comments on online business model – this is where the real online revenue is!).

The second bit refers to News Ltd and its newest initiative to set up an in-house ad agency for clients. “…News Ltd said that it was creating a new creative division that will help advertisers build their brands, and better engage with existing and new audiences… The division differs to the likes of Seven Group’s SMG Red, PBL’s Powered and Fairfax 360 in that those offerings are sales led, whereas we will be creative ideas led”. This is a sign that they are finally getting that the main game is advertising revenue and not necessarily fees for access to content!

News Ltd and other major media companies should have been in creative advertising and media placement business long time ago. Why sharing the revenue with intermediaries? D'oh! Consider this example: ourpatch.com.au is an Australian site with only a marginal audience of 140K unique browsers a month but it claims to have advertising revenue close to $1 million pa. How this multiple is possible? The answer is simple – the company behind the website is an online advertising agency! It is relatively easy for them to push the clients towards that channel and charge big fees for available ad spots... Now News Ltd will be able to do exactly the same!

Another interesting development is that, similarly to Fairfax, News Ltd executives are starting to recognise the importance of multi-channel approach as well: “…The rapid development of new and emerging digital channels means we have the unprecedented opportunity of being the single point of reference for readers wishing to stay informed and inspired throughout the entire day. To realise this opportunity we must excel at acquiring, retaining and servicing customers through numerous channels…”.

If they only read my blog, they could have got the advice free of charge! Maybe my “strategic business insights” have some merits after all (others seem to make lots of money for recommending the same ideas!). Of course no one will give me any credit for it so, I can only beat my own drum… for now.

Related Posts:
The real cause of newspaper troubles...
Why iPad will not save newspapers
Fairfax launches 160 sites
Fairfax signs TV content deals

A word on investors in online startups

2010-11-25T20:54:00.000+11:00

In the previous article in this series I elaborated about an online business model that attempts to classify all online ventures into four distinctive categories - to help in presenting business concepts to potential investors. This is a follow up post to share a few broader thoughts about investors in online businesses. Specific advice on how to sell the idea to potential investors is outside the scope of this article - I will just limit my comments to a few basic observations.

Most ventures need someone to bankroll the idea either to launch it or take it to the next level. The simpler the concept and the greater the potential, the easier it will be to “sell” it to people who will provide the money to fund activities. Personal qualities in “selling the concept” can play very significant role but you still need that clear and simple business model so potential investors can relate to it and say: “what a great idea, it has so much potential, I will put some money into it.” The theory outlined in the previous post can help in achieving that.

Very often startup and operating costs will be significant and revenue may take long time to materialise so, trusting investors with deep pockets will be very important to see the business through the “cash bleeding/burning phase” (hence specific emphasis on capital funding for online startups). They will stick around if there is a perspective of large returns some time in the future. Twitter again is a good example. They only recently negotiated deals with Microsoft and Google to gain some revenue from selling access to Twitter’s real time search capabilities. But the company would not be able to survive and grow without propping up by patient investors.

It appears there are many wealthy individuals and venture capitalist that are willing to take risks with online businesses. Many accept that not all their investments will come off, although there is an expectation that some will make it very big. These people have totally different mindset to other types of investors who need hard figures and clearly defined returns before they give out any money.

The relationship between investors into online ventures and entrepreneurs is really a symbiotic arrangement. Investors get the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon of the "next best thing" while entrepreneurs not only receive the cash to pursue their dreams but also gain access to contacts and valuable advice. As much as investors would like to exercise maximum control and entrepreneurs to retain the biggest share of the venture, it is important to recognise this is after all a two way deal and therefore it has the most chances of success is if both parties are happy with the arrangements. Concessions on both sides are often expected.

There is an aura of “easy money” associated with online business but the competition for that money is significant so, it is another point in case for clear and simple business models to differentiate you from the rest of the pack. As already mentioned, the model outlined in the previous post can aid in that task.

Related articles:
How to pick online winners

Converting shapefile into KML

2010-11-24T18:54:00.000+11:00

In the inaugural post in the Free GIS Tools series I presented Google Map API as a very powerful online GIS alternative. Google Map has the capacity to display spatial data in various formats but probably the most attractive option is its native support for KML/KMZ. It takes only one line of code to display complex spatial information on a Google Map – as long as it is in that format. True, not all KLM features are supported in Google Map but you can still create great maps using a single KML file. Try aus-emaps.com free map service to test how well Google Map handles KMZ files: Victorian bushfires aftermath, current earthquakes.

KML/KMZ is the only spatial data format directly supported by free Google Map and Google Earth desktop application. However, a lot of free spatial data is distributed in another very popular GIS format: shapefile (shp). In order to display that data in Google Map or Google Earth, it has to be converted to KML/KMZ format.

There are many tools available for download, or that are bundled with commercial software to do that conversion, but I found only one that really work for me. And the best thing is that it is totally free! It took quite an effort to find so, by sharing this information I hope to save you many hours of fruitless trawling through the Internet. Here are the details.

ESRI Shapefile to KML Converter by reimers.dk

Simple but effective desktop tool (it works!) available for free download. Just point to the shp file you want to convert, select attributes to include in description field and press a button to run conversion. The only limitation is that you don't have a choice in selecting colours.

Here is an example of generated output: World Borders in KMZ (1.14MB kmz file draped on Google Map).

To reduce the size of KML file for distribution or deployment just gzip it. It is easy done using Google Earth “save as” function. That is, open your KML file in Google Earth and when you save it, it will be automatically converted to a compressed gzipped format with kmz extension.

For custom conversions from shp polygons to KMZ format, such as splitting a large file with many polygons into smaller files with individual polygons only (eg. to convert a single 60MB shp file with postcodes into 2,500 individual KMZ files), or grouping of polygons into custom areas (eg. to create sales or franchise territories by amalgamation of postcodes), or converting shp polygons into a thematic map layer (eg. by assigning colours to polygons based on specific attributes, like for example electorates by political party holding the seat), you will need more advanced tools. I can help you with those conversions for a small fee. Here is a sample of a thematic KMZ file using a selection of Sydney suburbs. I also have various polygon based data in KMZ format for immediate delivery (eg. postcode boundaries, as used in aus-emaps.com postcode finder service). Don’t hesitate to ask!

Use case example: Create outlines of polygons and show in an embedded map on a website (using collection of free tools and services available from aus-emaps.com)
Steps:

1. Define vertex coordinates of custom polygon area using simple geocoder tool from aus-emaps.com (select “Point” option and click on the map, reposition markers as required, copy to Notepad).

2. Convert a list of points in csv format to shp file format using instructions provided in a recent post titled “Converting csv files into shapefile”.

3. Convert shp file into KML using tools introduced in this post.

4. Convert KML file into KMZ format using Google Earth (open KML file and “Save As”…) [optional step]

5. Upload KML/KMZ file to your server and reference its URL address in an aus-emaps.com free map service.

6. Embed the map in you web page using HTML’s iframe element.

The process is a bit convoluted, I admit. You could take a shortcut by pasting latitude and longitude coordinates directly into KML “shell” but you will need the right template for this in the first place. Using Google Map’s MyMap drawing and embedding functionality is a simpler option but you will not be able to create complex polygons (eg multi-part and/or doughnut type).

I am currently working on a public tool to generate custom polygons from administrative boundaries in a few simple steps. Coming up in 2011! But I will also have to put some though into creating a dedicated KMZ generation tool so you can do it all from a single web page... added to the list of “Things to do!”.

Related posts:
Free map service preview
Converting csv data into shapefile
Colours for thematic mapping
Free GIS Tools – Google Map
Free Address Validation Tool
Manual geocoder for 70 countries

Untangling social network phenomenon

2010-11-23T19:44:00.000+11:00

"Social networking" phenomenon is driving astronomical growth of many online companies, from the leaders of the pack like Facebook, to numerous peddlers of “make quick money online” self-help guides. The bigger the network/ mailing list, the larger the company value and profits. But what is really behind this phenomenon? I am leaning towards a conclusion that it has nothing to do with “social” but rather with our limitation to deal with information overload…

Let’s look at this objectively. The capacity for individuals to participate in various social exchange networks was available from the early days of the Internet: forums, discussion boards, chat services and the like. However, the limitation was that these were mostly thematic based networks. With rapid growth of themed content on the Internet it all became very fragmented and difficult to follow…What Facebook, Twitter and the like brought to the mix was the capacity to participate/ follow many themes from a single portal! So, rather than helping user engage in “social networks” what those companies are really doing is assisting in information exchange! As simple as that. Just think about it. A person “following” a company on Facebook or Twitter has nothing to do with “social interaction” with that company – it’s not about “belonging” or “association” / “being part of a social group”. It’s all about access to specific information of interest to that individual (humour or other forms of entertainment, news, events, specials, etc.)!

Same applies to relationships between individuals – sociologists claim normal individuals are not capable of true social relationship with more than 150 counterparts at a time. Yet social network sites are full of people with thousands of contacts… Again, it is all about information and trusted channels of access to information, not about social interaction! The fact that individuals can participate in discussions and exchange messages is a part of the deal - some take advantage of it, others do not. True, the focus on “friends” helped Facebook to grow those personal networks at a rapid rate to propel the company to number 1 network facilitator but I will argue the key driving force was “the need to know” and not “the need to belong” (opening up the network to others and not only college students was the best and most logical decision to make since it is not about who you are but rather what you need to know!).

The information overload is what in my opinion is driving the popularity of the thing labelled as “social networking”. People want to know what is happening in their immediate environment, places of interest, topics of interest AND people they associate with (friends, colleagues, celebrities, etc.). At the same time people want to participate in some of those forums personally. Not enough time to read/see/do everything so the only way to keep up is to revert to “skimming over main headings” and to “following” limited number of information themes (on demand, user initiated).

What is helping in managing communication complexity associated with information overload is wide acceptance of abbreviated message format. It could be argued that the format was first introduced by Google Search - we all are so used to it: title and a short description of content. Just compare the main content pages of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Google Search … they all follow the same “short message format”!

I believe “social network” is a bit of misnomer as it implies only personal interactions of a casual nature. It is more than that! And the implications of this view on the state of affairs are far reaching. Let me just share a few observations. Firstly, for publishers and participants in networked information exchange it highlights the importance of catchy titling with informative but short secondary tag line to draw attention of “skimmers” (the principle is nothing new and has been applied in print advertising for ages…). Short form content sharing and aggregation will only grow in popularity. This is a great opportunity for content aggregators and gadget makers and another warning for those considering locking their content exclusively behind pay walls (although can also be seen as a great opportunity if enough of short content is left in the public arena!).

Secondly, it implies that the importance of Google and other search engines (and hence SEO for marketing) will be diminishing as “search” is starting to loose ground to “personal recommendations”. A new information referral model is emerging on the Internet where “opinion leaders” (ie. those with large personal networks) are starting to play more significant role in directing online traffic. The bad news for online advertisers and marketers is that it is a very fragmented channel of communication. It also means that the concentration of online advertising power will be shifting to network facilitators, such as Facebook, and away from search focused sites. Some food for thought…

How to pick online winners

2010-11-22T20:33:00.001+11:00

You may have heard a story of how eBay started – a guy just wanted to help his fiancé to sell candy dispensers so he invented online auction service, and “the rest is history”, as the saying goes. Well, that was only a fabricated PR story but media is full of tales about other startups that make it all sound so easy - “they just did it”.

I was intrigued why some businesses operating in online arena had “so easy” while others struggled to get any momentum. Of course, it had to do with the calibre of individuals involved to a certain degree but I reached a conclusion that it also depended on the business concept. In this series of articles I will present a model of various types of online businesses as well as outline implications for their money making potential. This theory may help in assessing whether the concept is “worth pursuing” in the first place.

The thoughts presented in this article were sparked when I recently read about an Australian online business that started from ground zero just 2 years ago, claims to have 30,000 unique visitors a month and 85% of the market niche it operates in, estimated annual revenue of $2 million and still some good potential for the future. Of course it also has a number of high profile investors as directors, introduced by an influential Chairman of the board. Why this one had so easy? What was so attractive about this business in the first place? Read on to find out...

My analysis led me to the conclusion that the business mentioned above had “so easy” because it met two important criteria:

it had simple, attractive and proven revenue model (ie. attracting visitors with free cost comparison service - relating to a commodity that many households need - and earning revenue in the form of referral commissions if those visitors end up purchasing that commodity from a list of suppliers), and
the model was easy to understand by investors, hence they were eagerly willing to fund this start-up.

In more generic terms, in order to succeed, a startup venture needs a clear vision as to what it is going to provide and where the revenue will be coming from. That is, it needs a clearly defined product and clearly defined revenue stream that can be attractively packaged for potential investors.

I devised a simple model that attempts to describe in simple terms different modus operandi of businesses in the online arena. I am putting forward a proposition that they all can essentially fit into one of four generic types, derived by cross-classification of two categories of revenue sources (online advertising and sale of products/services) with two categories of product offerings (content for consumption and online transactions):

Definitions of categories:

Sources of revenue:
# Online advertising – all forms, including paid features and editorials;
# Sale of service/product – includes tangible products but also subscription services, and the like (eg. referrals to products sold via affiliate programs);

Product offering, defined in terms of primary purpose for visiting the site:
# Content for consumption – that is, information for consumption in a passive way (browsing, reading, watching, etc.) or goods/services to be acquired and used online and off-line; includes online search services; or
# Online Transactions – specific functionality enabling interaction between parties (eg. emailing, twitting, contacting friends, calling, buying, listing, publishing, etc.);

In order to illustrate the concept with greater clarity I will attempt to describe those four business types with more details. In particular:

The first, most basic category of online businesses includes websites that contain mostly passive content (ie. things to look at, read, search for, eventually to comment on) and that derive majority of revenue from selling advertising space. Examples of such businesses include blogs, media portals or search focused sites directing users to specific content somewhere on the web.

Loyal users and streams of visitors from search engines are the lifeblood of majority of such businesses and their profitability depends on the costs of acquiring new users and generating the content, as well as on the ability to sell advertising space at a premium. Some do very well in this space – Google with its flagship search engine is one such an example – although, with somehow limited future growth potential. But it is rather difficult for newcomers to break through the cloud and gain quickly significant user base since the most attractive niches are well covered. It is predominantly a slow growth proposition unless big money can be thrown at advertising and generating publicity to bring in the crowds (introduction of Bing online search service is a point in case). Specific examples of businesses in this category include: Google Search, Yahoo7 portal or portals of online newspapers.

The second category includes online businesses that, although containing mostly passive content, nevertheless are able to derive majority of revenue from sales of that content or related goods and services. Examples include paid subscription or pay-for-access services, predominantly with financial or other highly specialised information, or online retailers such as Amazon online bookstore, or websites of airlines selling tickets and holidays directly to the public (that is, traditional retailers extending their operations into an online environment). And of course numerous sites of self-made-gurus selling “how to make money online” advice...

The key focus of these businesses is on generating sellable, often unique content, packaging it in various formats and with different access options, and finding enough clients willing to pay for that content to cover the costs and a bit more. These businesses resemble more traditional “brick and mortar” type of operations as they need “real people with real needs” as well as salesmanship to secure the sale. Promotions through affiliate programs is a very powerful concept often deployed by these companies, followed by social marketing and more traditional brand building PR and advertising campaigns.

The third category are companies that supply basic “transaction services” such a free forums, listings, email, internet telephony, chat or similar, allowing interactive exchanges between groups of users or those creating free “market places”. Facebook, Twitter and similar social media sites are good examples here. They can rely on display advertising as the source of revenue but their key asset it seems are thousands and often millions of visitors that are utilising their services (there is anticipation that “one day” that wast user base will be willing to pay for something “yet to be invented” and that is enough to keep investors happy and often to subsidise the operations for long time). Some of the businesses in this category are already trying to capitalise on their user base by offering premium services – which means, they are aiming to move to the next and the most lucrative category.

And this fourth category comprises of online businesses which were able to devise paid “transaction services”. Examples include all exchange/ marketplace type of services, eg. online auctions as well as paid classified listings websites, app store model, or price comparison sites that derive revenue from commissions on "special deals" exclusive to their customers (Groupon, or health insurance and credit card comparison sites are good examples). In these arrangements at lease one party to the transaction pays a premium (eg. as is the case with all successful classified sites) but very often these operators are able to charge both sides (eg. as in case of wotif.com hotel booking services or some auction sites). This is the most attractive online business model as it can deliver significant revenue stream even with relatively small, in web terms, customer base. It could be argued that the majority (by volume, probably not value) of most successful online businesses are in this category.

I admit, there are no clear cut boundaries between the categories and some may argue that this or that online business would fit in one or the other category. A good example is Yahoo portal that I use exclusively as a transaction service (ie. for private email) but which also has significant passive content (ie.Yahoo7 media portal) and therefore could be classified primarily under category one. Nevertheless, it is quite useful model for choosing between business opportunities with greatest potential, as well as in deciding on strategic direction for existing online businesses. And of course, it can be invaluable in helping to explain “the potential” of the proposed online business concept to prospective investors!

In case of the business I referred to at the beginning of this article, the simplicity of the idea was its key strength. It belongs to the most attractive online business category hence its creator did not have much trouble in convincing investors that it can deliver in a big way.

A clear definition of what the business model is and where the revenue will be coming from are the two primary considerations an online startup has to address. Those who understand how important it is will be in a better position to find willing investors and quicker capitalise on their ideas, even before the first dollar is earned. True, it is easier said than done, especially when you are embarking on ventures that no-one has tried before, but relating your offering to a basic model presented in this article can work in your favour.

In the follow up to this article I will elaborate on the “content” vs “transaction” aspect of online product offering, in the context of costs associated with acquiring/ creating that product offering.

Related articles:
Use examples of Online Business Model
A word on investors in online startups
Economics of free stuff
The golden rule of online business - traffic, traffic and traffic
Law of “exponentialism” of online advertising revenue and online business value

Free GPS navigation in Android phones in Oz

2010-11-18T20:00:00.003+11:00

This week Google released its free turn-by-turn navigation app for Android smart phones in Australia. It is called Google Maps Navigation. It was only a matter of time since Google has already launched similar services in the US and UK. There is no peed limit information but otherwise, it is the “whole GPS package and more”… Smartphone based navigation applications are gaining rapidly over lower end traditional GPS tools.

Related Posts:
Google enters mobile GPS Navigation Market
Google Maps Navigation launch in UK
New Features on Google Map for mobiles
Free GPS navigation tool for iPhone
Pushing the limits of GPS navigation
Trends and opportunities in mobiles market
Mobile map giveaway from Nokia
Tom Tom GPS navigation in iPhone
Ban on use of phone GPS navigation in cars

More proof of Australian ingenuity

2010-11-11T21:11:00.000+11:00

It is a widely held belief that Australians are fast adopters of new technologies and we have a fair share of great inventions that originated on this remote continent. Now there is proof that it is not only a recent phenomenon. The world’s oldest axe has been found in Australia!

A recent archaeological discovery of a ground-edge axe, dated as 35,500 years old, is evidence that Aboriginal Jawoyn people from Arnhem Land could have been the first to grind axes to sharpen their edges. Conventional belief is that these type of tools first emerged in Europe but a piece of “polished-edge” stone from Australia is the oldest object of this type ever found.

Arnhem Land, a 97,000 square kilometre patch of forests, rivers and gorges east of the Northern Territory capital of Darwin, is sacred to Aboriginal people.

Incorrect maps lead to war

2010-11-10T19:36:00.000+11:00

Oh, and on the subject of spatial information and business, GIS is not perfect. Bad data and bad maps can cause a lot of troubles... As recently reported “…a Nicaraguan military commander caused an international incident by leading his soldiers into Costa Rican territory…” Apparently, Google Maps were wrong. There are many disputes around the World caused by less than accurate representation of national borders.

Although the whole premise of the article is now proven incorrect, nevertheless it highlights the importance of using correct spatial data for decision making. Even generally trusted and reliable sources can get things wrong. So, read the small print and disclaimers before embarking on the big decisions!

Bad location can send you broke

2010-11-10T19:21:00.002+11:00

All spatial industry professionals know the importance of "location" in many aspects of business operations but the statement may be an eye opener for those not dealing with spatial information for business decisions on day to day basis. An article published earlier this week by smartcompany.com.au and titled: Poor site selection caused Kripsy Kreme crash, Sumo Salad founder Luke Baylis says well highlights the issues.

“Collapsed donut chain Krispy Kreme expanded too rapidly and selected extremely poor sites for its products… the market for ‘fat, greasy food’ remains large and it was Krispy Kreme's expansion strategy that led to its troubles, and not the healthiness of its food… they weren't overly clever in the way the expanded, in terms of their site selection and the positioning of their stores … in lower socio-economic demographics, their product would have had more appeal - people generally aren't as health conscious in those areas, according to research…”

Geodemographic analysis techniques and tools have been around since 1980’s but you don’t have to apply complex statistical models and methodologies to gain an insight into your customers or profile catchment areas of your stores or sales territories. Simple Census data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and thematic maps are enough to get you stared and visualise relevant information. As they say, picture is worth 1,000 words! I will continue on this subject with a few follow up posts so, stay tuned. Meantime, here is a link to thematic maps with Census statistics for postcodes, with over 90 various demographic characteristics available for analysis.

Atlas of Living Australia

2010-11-09T19:55:00.000+11:00

A new portal has been launched last week to provide rich information resource about Australian plants and animals. It is a "public face" of a $64.7 million initiative, funded over 6 years by the Australian Government and a group of fourteen contributors comprising scientific organisations, universities and museums. It aims to enable any user to quickly locate and access information across the Internet on all aspects of Australian biodiversity. And of course, as the name implies, the portal comes equipped with a mapping application – what better way to provide easy access to such an extensive and geographically diverse range of information!

The mapping application supporting Atlas of Living Australia is built with OpenLayers implementation of Google Map and has quite a few interesting features. In particular, I like the concept of local, regional and species "perspective" to access the information via a map driven interface. Local "your area" view gives a quick snapshot of all the species in visitor’s current location (but Google’s "IP address to location" web service is sometimes not very precise in determining user’s true location). Regions view starts with a long list of areas to choose which is a bit unfortunate but once you make your selection you have a choice to download a large selection of data in csv format.

Species Map is where the real fun starts. You can search for species using common names as well as scientific terminology – lookup feature is enabled so it shows suggestions as you type in the text. Occurrences are then mapped as points or as numbered cluster markers. Click on the map returns a query on how many occurrences of particular species are in 10km radius from a selected point.

I like how selected data layers are managed – they are added to the “current list” at the top of the navigation panel and then can be individually edited (colours, transparency, size of markers). Users can change order of layers with drag-and-drop feature.

The application comes with a long list of contextual layers – too many to mention! All well referenced to metadata and with auto generated legends for easy identification of what various colour scales mean. Created maps can be saved as images for further reuse. And for those in the know, there is an analytical module as well but I will not even try to describe what it can do – as most of such tools, it is designed for a specific purpose, not for average user.

Atlas of Living Australia is a good example of a very powerful online mapping and analysis application created with free OpenLayers implementation of Google Map and integrated with free GeoServer at the back end to manage access to the data for downloads and as WMS and WFS web services to display information dynamically on the map. It did crash on me a couple of times and some image tiles were not displaying but that are just teething problems of a newly deployed application. If something goes wrong you can always start again with a click on reset button. Very convenient feature! Access to all the data via web services is planned in the near future when the application is more stable.

Free map service preview

2010-11-02T22:23:00.008+11:00

I am rushing the release of my latest free service offering from aus-emaps.com due to high level of interest in accessing postcode and other administrative boundaries data on a reference map that can be dynamically called from external sites. At this stage the free map service is more like a preview release rather than the real thing but it is good enough for a "show and tell". The full concept behind this service is rather a long story so I will leave it for a more appropriate occasion. For now I will just limit the description to a short statement that it is intended as a free reference map, for embedding into website or linking to, to share location specific information.

Currently it works only with kmz files that can be referenced from anywhere on the world wide web and postcode boundaries from aus-emaps.com. It accepts single and multiple kmz files, as per examples below.

Here are a couple of examples of kmz files with complex information: in this case, Victorian bushfires aftermath (public file extracted from Google MyMaps): http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?
kmzl=http://www.aus-emaps.com/data/VictorianBushfiresFeb2009.kmz

And here is an example of kmz file showing the latest world earthquakes from USGS: http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?
kmzl=http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/catalogs/eqs7day-age.kmz

Finally, a simple example of referencing Australian postal boundaries map from aus-emaps.com:
http://www.aus-emaps.com/svs/ref/map.php?
kmzl=2601,2220,7000,3122,5000&svs=2,2,2,2,2

Width and height of the map can be easily controlled by adding the following parameter to the URL: &wh=500,400 (size in pixels). Map type selection is with &mt=0 parameter (valid numbers are 0 for street map, 1 for satellite overlay, 2 for hybrid map and 3 for terrain map). This is just a quick demo of basic capabilities to give you a taste of what is possible with a very basic deployment of Google Map API (this one is still running only on version 2). More on this service soon.

Old new web security concerns

2010-11-01T19:02:00.003+11:00

Most discussions in the public arena about “web security’ focus on anti-virus protection and avoidance of infections with malware but they rarely extend to issues of security of communication over the web and wireless networks. However, a recent release of a new Firefox browser add-on called Firesheep, that allows to “discover” login credentials of fellow surfers on unsecured Wi-Fi networks, has attracted significant attention to “communication” aspect of web security. The problems highlighted in the media are not new but now that anyone, not just hardcore hackers, can “steal” other people online identity the penny has suddenly dropped about all the potential implications.

Millions of personal accounts on sites like Facebook or YouTube can easily be compromised and any application that allows smart phone users to access their favourite social sites over the unsecured Wi-Fi networks can potentially be exploited to compromise secure corporate networks as well (if phones are used to access those networks remotely). A nightmare scenario for all…

The core of the problem is that majority of Internet communications happen via unsecured protocols (http as opposed to https), without content encryption and without subsequent content authorisation checks after user credentials are verified on login. That is, while many sites choose to use https (or as it is know Secured Sockets Layer – SSL) protocol for the initial log-in procedure, the rest of the content, including session cookies, is “freely” accessible to anyone - exposing the user to high risk of so called “HTTP session hijacking” attacks.

The main reason why web service providers are opting out of continuous secure connectivity is that browsing is much slower and it requires better hardware to handle the traffic because of extra encrypting and decrypting steps involved. So, unless you are dealing with a financial institution or other purpose built application, it is very unlikely you will be using totally secured network connection. The flip side is that if all communication was secure there would be no independent web traffic reporting… and the spooks would have so much harder to monitor national security issues!

Web companies are starting to recognise the problems with insecure web communication and are attempting to explore the arising opportunities. For example, in May 2010 Google launched secure web search service over https protocol. What does it mean in practice? Only you and Google will know what keywords are searched on because information travels fully encrypted over the network so, ISP or other intermediaries cannot peek at the content.

User authentication and content authorisation are becoming important issues for me as well since I am planning to add extensive cross-domain user interactivity for sites currently under development. I am reluctant to follow the others with very crude and insecure solutions so, solving the puzzle may be quite a challenge. It is a topic I follow very closely now...

World Bank mashup competition

2010-10-20T19:01:00.002+11:00

A new mashup competition has been just announced by the World Bank, with prizes ranging from U$15,000 for the winning submission to U$2,000 for honourable mention. All entries must be submitted by 10 January 2011 and winners will be announced in April, 2011.

One of the preconditions of participation is use of World Bank’s free data, launched under its Open Data Initiative in April, 2010. “The Apps for Development Competition aims to bring together the best ideas from both the software developer and the development practitioner communities to create innovative apps using World Bank data… All entrants will retain all intellectual property ownership in their submissions.”

Google Map creators get recognition

2010-10-20T18:24:00.002+11:00

Brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen, the creators of technology behind Google Maps, have been formally recognised for their role in developing and launching this popular world-wide service. This week they were named NSW's Entrepreneurs of the Year in the information and communications technology (ICT) field.

Sometimes it takes outsiders to shake out things in stagnated industries, as GIS once used to be. Pitching the idea to Google was a brilliant move (and reportedly very profitable). Otherwise who know where we would be today…

Related Posts:
Ingenuity of Google Map architecture also its main limitation
Free GIS Tools - Google Map

2010 The Year of Android OS

2010-10-08T20:39:00.005+11:00

Google finally has its day of triumph in smartphones market. The latest set of figures on purchases of smartphones released by Nielsen indicate that 2010 is the year of Android OS. It is quite an interning find given that wherever you look, everyone seems to be using iPhone! But the reality is that the share of current sales of smartphones running on Android OS is 50% higher than that of iPhones! The following graph clearly illustrates the trend.

True, iPhone still commands the largest overall share of the market but Android based phones are gaining rapidly in popularity. It’s the battle of “one versus many” - the following graph highlights the trend – relatively stable share of the market held by iPhone but rapidly growing share of Android OS. It indicates to me that all those who meant to buy iPhone have already done so. So, there is not much potential for Apple to find many more new buyers for its phones! The only way for them to make money now is to release new models with increased frequency - to maintain sales revenue by selling “must have” upgrades to existing group of very loyal users. Although it appears that Android OS expansion comes at some expense of BlackBerry, the bulk of new users are most likely those switching from older mobile phone technologies to the latest generation of smartphones. If current trends continue, Android OS based smartphones will soon dominate the market.

Related Posts:
Nielsen confirms mobile revolution?
Trends and opportunities in mobiles market

Sutherland Shire Map's a winner

2010-10-07T20:59:00.006+11:00

Earlier this week, coinciding with Spatial@gov conference in Canberra, industry associations representing spatial professionals in Australia announced their annual Asia Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards. Amongst many categories there was one that caught my particular attention: People and Community Award. The winner in this category was Sutherland Shire Council with its Online Shire Maps application. It is indeed quite impressive application, well deserving to be a winner. Built with ESRI's ArcGIS server as a backbone and Flex (Flash) front end it is very responsive and quite attractive in design. Developers took advantage of Flash vector and animation capabilities well utilising a wide range of visual effects.

The map comes with a comprehensive set of data and aerial photography layers. In particular, available data layers include simple "white base" map, ideal for drawing objects and annotating text (relevant tools are accessible with a single click on a menu panel), terrain map with hill shading effects, but also a whole range of colour coded thematic maps showing planning and zoning areas, accessibility indexes for public transport on various days of the week or environmental information. Imagery layers include early aerial photos dating back to 1930 through to the latest high resolution snaps from NearMap.com archive. Full set of points of interests and boundary overlays, such as wards or suburbs, is also available from a drop down menu.

The map has a comprehensive legend for all data themes as well as location search function with a range of search options, including latitude/ longitude. Created maps can be easily printed or saved in PDF format. Access to the application does not require login so, the only downside is that user annotated maps cannot be saved as a "work in progress".

Congratulations to the development team at Sutherland Shire!

NSW traffic conditions map

2010-09-29T22:31:00.003+10:00

Road Traffic Authority (RTA) in NSW has stared publishing up to the minute information about traffic conditions in Sydney as well as in NSW regional areas. The coverage and extent of information is quite comprehensive and it is served in two formats to suit individual preferences: as an interactive map with continuously updated information, and as a text list (with sort function to enable arranging information according to update time, type of incident or its location). A separate window lists 67 live traffic cameras strategically located across Sydney's road network, with images refreshed every few minutes.

I find map option the most informative as it displays all the data in geographic context. Information on the map is refreshed automatically with update time clearly marked. Auto update can be turned off if required and users can customise the list of information items for display on the map.

Live updates include information on accidents, scheduled road works, major events, fires, floods and Alpine conditions. There is an option to add traffic flow overlay for Sydney provided by Google as well as locations of live traffic cameras and temporary message signs.

Journey planner, utilising Google driving directions script, is part of the application. The map comes with a comprehensive list of points of interests that are very handy for planning a trip. These include: bike parking areas, heavy vehicles checking stations and rest areas, locations of Safe-T-Cams, general rest areas and RTA Motor Registries. Travel routes can be filtered to avoid incidents or road works on specific dates and can be saved for future reference.

RTA provides RSS feeds of the information on region by region basis. However, despite the push by Federal and State governments to liberate access to data generated by their agencies under creative commons licence, RTA is not letting developers to use its information for value added services and derived products. It is strictly for personal use although, embedding of the entire application in third party websites is allowed. A comprehensive widget customisation tool is provided as a part of the application, with easy to follow instructions.

Overall, this is quite a comprehensive information source, with attractive multi tab design and extensive range of features. The mapping functionality of the application is built with Google Map v2. Mobile version would be a great extension.

RIP free postcode widgets

2010-09-24T19:45:00.002+10:00

By changing licence conditions Australia Post has killed my and dozens of other free postcode lookup widgets and websites. Yes, you as a consumer have been denied the right to use lookup services of your choice as website operators can no longer provide such services in competition with Australia Post.

For now I will leave my postcode lookup widget running as is, since it is using older data version and it could be argued that the new licence should not apply to previously acquired files. But I acknowledge the data will get out of date pretty quickly and I will have to discontinue the service in the current format at some stage… I wonder how strict Australia Post will be in pursuing its rights with numerous sites using the data – some have built a substantial traffic pure on postcode lookup functionality!

It appears there no option of commercial licensing of the data as there is no reference to it either in the new licence or on the Australia Post site. I asked several times for a formal permission to use the file but my emails remained unanswered until today. I was advised politely that "Australia Post are not willing to consider" my request. No mention of paid option whatsoever!

The new licensing conditions are quite restrictive as users are not allowed to:

use [the data] in any database and/or application for the purposes of providing, updating or maintaining any publicly available postcode look up or finder functionality;
to modify the extract file; [can only use original file and cannot combine with other data!]
to reverse engineer or disassemble the extract file; [cannot extract into a database even for personal use?!]
create derivative works based on the extract file; [cannot map localities for postcodes!!! And commercial operators will not be able to use the file to produce updated versions of their postcode boundary products unless Australia Post agrees specifically to such a use!]
make any use of the extract file in a way which directly or indirectly causes Australia Post financial loss (including, without limitation, consequential damages with existing clients and / or loss of commercial opportunities with existing clients and / or potential future clients).

The last one is especially nasty if taken literary because it means if Australia Post wishes to sell you that file, you are not allowed to use the free version even for strictly personal purposes! Let’s hope Australia Post can do something creative and useful with this dataset because otherwise you, as a consumer, are stuck with something pretty ordinary...

So, I can no longer provide free postcode look up service with the latest Australia Post data for you beyond what is already there… I can’t even give you my existing widget code “as is” because it requires “disassembling” of the Australia Post file and storing information in a database… But I am working on the alternatives. I am not giving up on the concept just yet, considering my current widget is used over 20,000 times every month!

Postcode Finder map remains unaffected by these recent developments since it is based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics postal area boundaries. I was hoping to integrate Australia Post data into it to be able to provide continuously updated geographic representation of postcode extents, based on my new concept, but I will have to shelve the idea for now.

Australian Postcodes User Guide

2010-09-21T19:54:00.003+10:00

There is a significant level of interest in postcodes as a convenient reference to locations because of perceived ease of linking them to information about individuals and businesses alike. Over the years postcodes have been put to a wide range of uses in analysing and publishing social trends and population statistics as well as in defining sales, service, franchise or dealership areas. Unfortunately, a misunderstanding of what postcode really is, resulting from a widely held belief about its value as a uniform referencing system, can cause many troubles for the unwary users. This article is a guide for all potential users of postcode boundary data.

Postcode Basics

Firstly, some facts about postcodes, from Australia Post site:

Postcodes were introduced in 1967 to facilitate the efficient processing and delivery of mail to customers.
Postcodes are only allocated to localities officially gazetted by State land agencies (usually, a postcode covers an area comprising of more than one locality).
The decision as to whether a new postcode or an existing postcode is to be allocated to a locality is based on operational efficiency.
Because the adoption of new or changed postcodes by customers is slow, changes are only made where significant reasons for change are established. A postcode change will only be considered if such a change leads to either enhanced service to Australia Post customers or operational efficiency to the organisation. Any such change will involve consultation with the local council/shire and residents.

Please note, the above holds true most of the time... but there are exceptions. It is also important to note that there are 3 types of postcodes: delivery areas, post office boxes and large volume receiver. Only delivery areas have meaningful reference to locations “on the ground”.

Sources of Postcode Information

Australia Post publishes a list of all postcodes from its database as a comma delimited text file. The list is updated every month and can be downloaded for free from Australia Post website.

Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes in 5 year intervals a set of Postal Area boundaries that are compiled using outlines of Census Collection Districts. They approximate official Australia Post postcode coverage areas at the time of publishing. These boundaries are available for free download in a range of popular GIS data formats. The next update of the data will be released in December 2010.

A number of private companies also produce and regularly update their own versions of postcode boundaries which are available for purchase. The two major suppliers include MapData Sciences (currently ESRI Australia) and Pitney Bowes (formerly MapInfo Australia). There is also a number of smaller operators that may be a source of free or inexpensive information on postcodes, such as aus-emaps.com which genaralises and converts ABS postcode boundaries to KML format for use with Google Map and Google Earth and supplies large format static maps in PDF format for printing. Other small suppliers with a variety of postcode related products and maps include: mapmakers.com.au, findmap.com.au, cartodraft.com.au and ausmaps.com.

Common Problems with Postcodes

1. Changing Postcodes
Postcodes are changing over time due to evolving operational requirements of Australia Post. Changes include additions of new postcode numbers and deletions of old ones from the list as well as adjustments to composition of postcodes by adding or removing localities. This is especially the case with new, dynamically growing areas as well as some rural locations and is less of the issue for established metropolitan areas.

It means that postcodes are not a stable spatial reference. It is ok to use them as a snapshot of a particular point in time, but what often happens is that the attribution to “what area constituted that postcode X years ago” is lost from the supporting documentation and important facts can be misinterpreted by future users of the information.

This is a real problem for researchers of social trends - those who insist on using postcodes as the main location reference. As well, it may cause some legal headaches if postcodes are referenced in contracts for supply of services or franchise areas, etc. Postcodes were never meant to be used in this fashion!

2. Changing definitions of localities
On top of changes that are undertaken from time to time by Australia Post, there are also changes to boundaries defining localities which are implemented by State and local authorities. What was locality X in 2007 may now be split into locality X and Y. As the result, it is very difficult to maintain timely and consistent reference of postcode numbers to “what is actually on the ground”.

3. Imperfect procedures of referencing postcodes to localities
Where possible, Australia Post references postcodes to officially gazetted localities but localities are determined by State land agencies and boundaries are recommended by local councils. This process is not coordinated from end to end and sometimes it gets out of sync. Take for example postcode 3478 in Victoria. Australia Post lists Medlyn as a locality included in this postcode (June 2010 edition) yet this locality is not on Victoria’s register of gazetted locations. Referencing postcode numbers to localities is not a science and there can be inconsistencies.

Recommendations

If you must use postcodes, please consider the limitations outlined earlier as well as the following recommendations to avoid potential problems:

If you intend to match postcodes to official ABS statistics:

Your only choice is ABS version of postcodes as it will ensure consistency of definitions (that is, postcode X in the data table will correspond to postcode X depicted as an outline on the map). It is particularly relevant for Census of Population and Housing data.
If you need to combine those statistics with your own data (eg. client records), geocode individual addresses and then reference them to specific postcode boundaries (eg. using GIS software with “intersect” function capabilities) rather than just rely on postcode component of the address to match the records to boundaries. It is the only way to ensure a particular address/location is part of that specific postcode area.

If you intend to use postcode outlines to define custom areas:

Again, ABS version of postcodes is the most cost effective option as it is a free dataset.
Define your custom areas once and put effort in maintenance of that dataset over time. You can adjust a composition of custom areas if required (eg. add/ subtract postcodes or even adjust boundaries – but only if topological consistency can be maintained - that is, if changes to the boundary of one polygon can be reflected in the adjoining polygons).
It is important to acknowledge that this dataset becomes de facto your own version and that compatibility with “source” postcodes and/ or statistics published on postal area basis may be lost over time.
Always reference version of postcodes used in any legal documents to avoid future ambiguity as to what constituted “that” postcode at “this” particular point in time.
As in the previous case, if you need to reference those postcode outlines to your own data, run geocoding and then reference individual records to specific boundaries and do not rely on postcode details in the address record alone to match data with boundaries.

If you are relying on postcode boundaries from commercial operators:

There is really no point in aiming to always have “the latest” version of boundaries representing postcodes. After all, these are not compatible with ABS statistics (unless the company can assure they reprocess those stats “somehow” to a new representation of boundaries) and besides, what is the benefit of constantly having to reprocess your own data to accurately reference it to the ever changing representation of postcode boundaries? The only exception would be if the company supplies some other unique data that is available exclusively with their proprietary version of boundaries.
Although companies claim to have “the latest”, these data are rarely updated on continuous basis (ie. every month), rather in 3 or 6 monthly intervals so, you are still getting “dated” product.
Don’t assume you will be able to reference your address records to “the latest boundaries” using only postcode number unless your address details and postcode boundaries refer to the same time period. In most cases they don’t and you cannot avoid geocoding and then running GIS “intersect” processing of data to ensure reliability of information.

In conclusion, although postcodes appear to be well recognised spatial units for referencing locations, the complexity associated with accurate delineation of postal boundaries greatly diminishes their usefulness. If you can, avoid using postcodes! If you can’t, be aware of all the limitations, especially when drawing conclusions with far reaching consequences.

Related posts:
Free postcode search widget
Post code maps and population statistics

My first iPad encounter

2010-09-20T22:27:00.008+10:00

I finally had a chance to play with iPad. Just for a few moments while passing through the Apple store at the Sydney International Airport - enough to formulate my "first impression"… it is sooo tiny! Till now I have seen iPad only on pictures and in my imagination it was so much larger (closer to A4 page size but it actually approximates only B5 size).

Overall, I like how it works! Touch screen is so sensitive (maybe a bit too sensitive for my liking). Enlarging and scrolling page content is fun and so natural. I like how onscreen keyboard appears automatically when you tap on text input box. Hat down for Apple usability designers who first came up with that navigation and interaction idea!

I jumped straight on the internet to see how my site worked on iPad and … it works perfectly as is should! Because it has been designed to work with all major browsers - including Safari supported by iPad. It looks good too (thanks to great screen resolution of iPad)! I am yet to experience custom built apps but maybe at the next stopover.

I would like to finish off with a few comments on the design of web pages to work well in iPad:

Use high resolution images for all background graphics so they look good when zoomed to/ enlarged in iPad.
Where possible, opt for large buttons and text input fields so it is easy to "click on" with "fat fingers", without the need to enlarge the page content.
Long pages are not a problem on iPad as scrolling is so simple!
Design pages to fit content to window so, it can fit on small screen sizes like iPad (if it is too big, iPad will reduce its size to fit available space horizontally).

Endnote:

Looks like that those great navigation capabilities I referred to above were not invented entirely by Apple designers… the company is sued by the original inventor of some of those fancy navigation functionality who is seeking damages totalling U$625.5 million for infringing 3 of his patents.