meg goes to a geo-spatial mash-ups conference

Meg goes to her first conference

about geo-spatial mash-ups.

yeah, dull I know. But not really.

Mashups are where people take google maps and overlay extra information over the top, making it more useful.

Take for example: https://www.schoolmap.org.uk/

A site that links all the data on schools, league tables, government reports and such like, and displays them on a google map of britain. Not an insignificant task considering that the database that relates postcodes to latitude and longitudes (thou it's eastings and northings in the UK) is copyright and so he couldn't use it.

People already consider moving to be in the postcode of a better school for their kids. With the advent of things like nestoria https://www.nestoria.co.uk
that show you where properties for sale are... this will become a lot easier.

The information was always there, but relating it to a map makes it easy for us to understand and use.

MySociety.org https://www.mysociety.org/
is a cool bunch of guys that build really interesting websites related to the local community and politics and whatnot. https://www.mysociety.org/projects.php
has a list of their projects, PledgeBank being one of the most interesting ones.

backstage.bbc.co.uk

The bbc have sat up and taken notice of the latest technology and allow people to create custom websites based on content they provide, like weather reports, tv listings and news feeds. They're not quite sure where it's going, but with being able to download bbc program from youtube or stream them from the BBC site itself, enforcing the license fee is going to become harder and gather them less money. They're trying to make a center for innovation and for people to communicate so as to help generate new ideas.

Maybe if they opened up enough, their resources would help people detect propoganda and total falsehoods in journalism.

Made me remember this: https://laptop.org/

FreeThePostcode.org (you'll need a GPS) where you locate postcodes and help create a FREE postcode database of the UK.
or
https://www.npemap.org.uk/
Where you locate youself on a map and set the postcode that way. (no gps needed)

OpenStreetMap - people with GPS's upload traces of them as they drive / cycle / walk about and create open street maps for anybody to use... and without any of the fake roads or wrong names that Ordnance Survey use to detect copyright infringments of their maps. ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Copyright_Easter_Eggs
)

What do maps have to do with us? Well if I was non slack, I could screen scrape the user lists on HOP and try and match location titles to real locations, find the lat/long of that location and plot it on a google map. Then I might consider doing the same with Events, and then I'd have something interesting to view...

"the now legendary" - Kaskade
"the still legendary" - Kaskade

I spunked in my friend's aquarium and the fish ate it. I love all fish. Especially the pink ones. They are my bitches. - Anon.

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