More conference coverage at the O’Reilly Conferences Where 2.0 blog.
Where 2.0 ’06 is on. The San Jose Fairmont’s main ballroom is packed, getting ready to listen to Mike Liebhold from The Institute for the Future, to give us the low-down status on the Geospatial Web.
Mike speaks of the move from 2D mapping to 3D mapping, challenging the industry to start thinking of cubic cartography, one where mapping is fully layered around specific map cubes. In homage to Star Trek, Mike envisions a Tricorder for planet Earth with information stacked in layers on top of eachother — geographical, historical, and social.
Mike gives a good overview of the current bootstrap efforts to expand on the traditional GIS industry and wraps up with a few challenges to think about before the GeoWeb can be pushed to it’s next level:
- Identity management, including location privacy
- APIs for device location ( currently enviously guarded by the carriers)
- Geolocation beacon databases (being worked on in different ways by Intel’s PlaceLab, Plazes, Loki, and others)
- Standards for data exchange. “If you can’t exchange data, it’s just play”
- Public policies, including free public access to publicly funded geodata, especially in countries beyond North America
Following up on Mike Liebhold’s talk and specifcally addressing public access to base geodata is Steve Coast on the fabulous OpenStreetMap.