[Geowanking] Google Maps UK

[Anselm Hook]

It turns out that google did not issue any cease and desist; it was
just NASA being a responsible citizen and not endorsing support for a
data source that was not explicitly marked as free.

At the same time I am going to leave my own demo down until this is clarified.

Frankly unless something is totally and legitimately free I do not
want the risk or liability.

 - a


On 5/6/05, Anselm Hook <anselm at gmail.com> wrote:
> I heard on #geo that the php/gmaps hack for worldwind was asked to
> cease and desist by google.
> 
> So I guess I was wrong re this becoming a reliable foundation for other stuff.
> 
> Unfortunately I have to yank my little demo since I really do not want
> to continue to make the organizations I am associated with liable in
> any way even if minor.  It may only be the UK that Google is concerned
> about but...  it's a risk.
> 
> I think the google maps user interface was such a nice demonstration
> that it might be worth wrapping free services with user interfaces of
> the same quality.  I was impressed by their work, I think they
> articulated a number of ideas quite well and I'd like to see this kind
> of ideas become platforms for other applications some day.
> 
> - a
> 
> 
> On 4/23/05, Jo Walsh <jo at frot.org> wrote:
> > hello anselm, interesting points.
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 23, 2005 at 04:21:16AM -0700, Anselm Hook wrote:
> > > yet.  And as well they do themselves say that they do not have an XML
> > > api _yet_.  I am a big fan of the word 'yet' here.
> > > policies do come down against free use - it is at least providing a
> > > chance to play with some of the implications of maps.
> >
> > It is the 'play' and the 'some' that i take issue with. That Google
> > Maps is popularising web mapping and leading people to hack on
> > interesting related applications. That is great; more in the spirit of
> > geowanking, gluing different data sources together via spatial
> > properties to do interesting things, than classical GIS/cartography.
> >
> > > We've always known that if maps were free, or perhaps free enough,
> > > that there would be so many things we could do as a community.
> > >
> > > What Google Maps allows this community to do is to leap ahead and
> > > play.  We can always backfill with our own free data sources if we
> > > have to; as they mature over the next year.
> >
> > This bugs me more than i can express. All of you working in the US are
> > in a situation where maps are free, where geodata is free and open.
> > Why hasn't some kind of revolution happened, showering the world with
> > proofs of the economic and social value of putting state-collected
> > data into the public domain?
> >
> > We're in an odd situation; half playing catchup, half far out in
> > front. Why hadn't, or hasn't, the 'community' set up a Google maps
> > UI-quality web service based on the TIGER data set and county-level
> > augmentations, with an XML interface and open license?
> >
> > Partly, because we're not Google; we don't have an edge network with
> > terabyte storage straddling the Internet, to pre-generate and cache a
> > million map tiles and store contact information for 10 million
> > businesses. Partly because we have always been looking too far ahead;
> > at RSS-powered services, at the integration of different media with
> > geo properties, user contributed data, wireless geopositioning.
> > The stuff that inspires us; not pushpins in a picture.
> >
> > > Note that of course here we are mostly talking about just using maps
> > > to help to visualize and contextualize other things.  It is not a
> > > WFS-T solution such as you proposed - although I suspect people will
> > > start to do exceedingly clever things even with google maps.
> >
> > Yes well i had a look at the spec today and it is not so pretty.
> > Perhaps like seafood it helps not to look while you're eating. For me
> > it has the potential as a de facto standard to do remote geodata
> > creation / maintenance that is well supported in traditional GIS and
> > more appealing to me than the other OGC standards. We are talking
> > about using WFS-T behind and between more 'usable' services (such as,
> > 'annotate this street segment with whether it's one-way, and which way
> > it is', which you'll need if you want to play route-planning based on
> > the free data you now have in TIGER.
> >
> > In our position, in the position of almost everyone in the world who
> > does not live in the United States, we don't have the repositories of
> > data to play with; we don't have access to our state resources and the
> > social good inherent in them. We *need* to use and propagate these
> > standards if we're going to build either maps of our own or a provable
> > and secure open infrastucture for managing share-alike processes at a
> > National Spatial Data Infrastructure level to support the open
> > licensing case.
> >
> > > I'm not yet so cynical about this.  And it's 'good enough' to act as a
> > > playground for exploring other ideas.  As Ash suggested: Google Map
> > > Games anyone?
> >
> > It's greatly good-enough for you, partly because you have access to
> > the free and replicable geocoder.us service built on TIGER, so you can
> > plot addresses. Guess what? To rent a postcode geocoding service in
> > the UK costs 2-6000 pounds a year. To rent political boundary shapes
> > costs twice that. Good projects like http://www.mysociety.org/ and
> > http://urbantapestries.com/ have to beg and borrow agreements for
> > discounted licenses which restrict the services they can offer.
> >
> > I've been repeating the open access to geodata theme on the
> > http://mappinghacks.com/ blog a lot recently; the more the 'industry'
> > is getting the web / geowanking idea, and the more plausible the
> > mobile services are seeming technologically, the more frustrating our
> > inequitable lack of access to our national information resources
> > becomes...
> >
> > I'm frustrated that Google Maps UK looks like a wgs84, not a UTM
> > projection; i think that to anyone who has lived in England and
> > looked at maps here much, that projection just seems wrong.
> > I doubt anyone who worked on the project was familiar with more than
> > the London Tube map. I don't want the maps that describe my world to
> > be made 6000 miles away from me, whether in the Bay Area or New Delhi!
> >
> >
> > -jo
> >
> >
>