A few weeks ago I started Local Blogging Birmingham, a simple blog to track all the local blogs that exist in the city and in doing so figure out exactly what a “local blog” was. As a process it’s been useful for me but as a resource it’s not that great. It my defense it took me 5 minutes to set up so I’m not too worried but there are much better ways to display this information. Howabout a map?
M’good chum Nick Booth aka Podnosh is running a new blog, Be Vocal. It’s part of Digital Birmingham’s Open City project but specifically looks at how “the web is being used for what you might call civic good” and in particular mashups of local data.
The Brum Blogs map is a simple but effective example of that. It takes some basic data about local blogs (the name, location and web address) and automatically plots it on a Google map. Now we can navigate the the local blogosphere visually.
Another example is Twittermap which takes the location from people’s Twitter profiles and maps their tweets. Whereas other twitter mapping services look at the whole globe you can limit this one to a radius around a location – here’s the current Twitter activity within 10km of Birmingham. It’s actually very simple to do. They’re just taking this standard Twitter search and mapping it.
Here’s another example:
Like most police forces Leicestershire has a helicopter which frequently buzzes around annoying the hell out of people, especially at night. They’d probably be less annoyed if they knew what it was actually doing up there. This map takes the location data that they presumably produce in their reports, adds the level of information usually issued to the press and maps it. It doesn’t stop helicopters being annoying but it adds context and informs any discussion about the practice. (via Midge)
The reason maps are popular for mashups is people can immediately understand what’s going on. But that’s just scratching the surface of what can be done by combining data sources and delivering them in new ways. Quite often a mashup is is greater than the sum of its parts. and because we’re using computers the mashing up process is often automated from existing activity.
If this sort of thing interests you then keep tabs on Be Vocal, in particular if you have ideas for mashups but no idea how to go about doing them. One of the aims of the blog is to inspire new ideas that can then be helped into reality by Digital Birmingham.
Good thoughts Pete. I’ve been mulling over similiar ideas for a while after a social chat with some folks from Common Purpose. The thoughts were to create a full screen map, using existing tech (probably a Googlemap) that could pin 4 dimensional data. This could and should contain upcoming and past events, blogs, people, companies, groups etc.. etc.. The key would then be providing an intuitive filter interface. There’s no point searching for events and scanning the ones in your vicinity if most of them are past, so upcoming events by default, past if you want to see reviews or whatnot available by a one click filter. Event pins could also be colour coded by their immediacey (sure it’s a word and sure I’ve not spelt it right).
You could effectively mash together a virtual city, and as long as the filter panel was good, the feeds were alive and the site/app was cross platform with all the usual integration and sharing features it would provide an events calendar, blog map, business directory and communication portal in one. Reading that back it sounds ill thought out, but I’m sure there’s something in there somewhere.
Must be better than a blank touchscreen in Bullring proclaiming ‘Upcoming events’…