Where 2.0 and “Sense of Place”

location based services

I’m flying back to the UK to present at the Google Developer Day in London, so my comments on this years Where 2.0 are rather brief. What stood out for me was the recognition of the importance of “sense of place” information, geospatial data that is not traditional cartography, but which is really useful and meaningful to people because it is not as abstract as mapping.



In StreetView we are attempting to represent the world from the perspective of someone in it, i.e. from a perspective of a viewer 2m high not 1500m in the air. High resolution terrestrial imagery is actually very useful, as John demonstrated in today’s presentation, fro example being able to read street signs is a source of attribute information not available else where. This type of imagery especially when navigable in such a simple way, makes exploring the virtual environment easy and really does provide a sense of what in the case above San Francisco is like to visit.
The power of imagery to provide this “sense of place” was also a major part of Quakr some fellow Brits who are developing a site to put geotagged images in their correct perspective location on an interactive map, so that in effect you walk through the photos..

Combine imagery with the environmental sound-scenes developed by inside 30proof for Wild Sanctuary and you are beginning to see what I think used to be called ‘hypermedia” starting to have an impact in communicating geospatial information.

Written and submitted from the British Airways Lounge, at SFO airport using the free broadband network