Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

Vector One points us to an article in the Independent about how google are destroying Britain’s culture by not showing it on their maps. The interviewee, from the British Cartographic Society, is slightly hysterical about this- let’s face it google are not *that* evil, but I have to say I agree with the basic premise, and disagree with Vector One’s analysis.

The fact is that Google maps are not as rich and interesting as those the Ordnance Survey produces. I’ve said in the past that there is more to maps than simply directions from A to B. As more people rely on google and satnav for their map use, they will miss out on all the unexpectedly interesting things you might find whilst on the the way to B.

Vector One seems to be suggesting that this is more to do with people’s inability to read maps than the increasing ubiquity of digital alternatives. This, therefore, must be the fault of the UK government education policy. While this might be true to an extent, it’s a symptom rather than a cause in my opinion. Personally, I think the fault lies with the Ordnance Survey, they’ve missed a trick really. They could have produced their own widely available digital mapping eons ago rather than wrapping it in prohibitive licensing terms and restrictive interfaces. Given a choice of google’s over-simplified view of the world, or the rich detail of the Ordnance Survey in your satnav or digital device, maybe a lot more people would choose the OS.

<rant>

Like others, I recently received a comment about an upcoming competition on  my “about” page. Like others, I feel that this is a curious way of advertising a competition with large monetary prize. Possibly unlike others, I also feel quite strongly about being contacted in this way. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a very worthy competition, and had the advertising policy been better thought through I would be all for it.

I do feel quite strongly about only posting my own personal views on my site. I do occasionally get asked to post on particular subjects/sites/products, and in general I won’t, unless it fits with something I was going to say anyway. I also feel quite strongly about posting on subjects that have been covered ad nauseum by other people, unless I have something different to add.

All in all, that makes me quite tetchy when I receive comments like this. By not using the contact form, it means I have to decide whether to get quite stalinist with my comment deletion policy, or to give people some free advertising. Furthermore, by posting to multiple blogs, our collective readership get stung with the same old post multiple times.

I guess this is just all just a request for people to learn a little blog-etiquette- make the effort to contact people in the correct way, and don’t use blog comments to advertise!

</rant>

Suddenly, in a couple of aggregated feeds that I subscribe to, I’m starting to see feeds of people’s comments, and individual posts from mailing lists. This doesn’t work for me in the slightest, as they are both snippets of conversations or threads, without real context when seen on their own. If people are interested in comments to a given post then surely they will subscribe to them anyway?

Solution- unsubscribe from the aggregated feed and go through and subscribe to the individual feeds that I’m interested in. To be honest, it’s well overdue, but a pain nonetheless…

After a week away on the Isle of Skye in Scotland (with no computers, no phones, great weather and gorgeous landscape, but more midges than any sane person really needs) I had over 1000 rss feed items to read, most of which appeared to be about google (photos of the olympic site or streetview), but a few little gems did stand out:

1. For the historians and literary types amongst you,  the diaries of Samuel Pepys and George Orwell are being syndicated, one entry a day.
2. The Geologists really seem to be getting it right where nearly everyone else is getting it wrong (shame the map browser doesn’t work on FF3 though). I’m blown away by how forward-thinking this is and wish we could do something similar for other types of data.
3. There’s another really good geographically-themed xkcd comic up. Personally I wish all google maps directions were like that…
4. Finally, if you didn’t catch the announcement about GeoAdminSuite, it looks (at first glance) like a worthy contender in the “organising and visualising your geospatial data” arena.