Welcome to the very very early start of a meaningful conversation.
How do we make a global, open, database for collaborative geo apps to benefit from?
This particular conversation was born at etech2006 between Di-Ann, Felix, Stefan, Jyri, Anselm, Sean & Jason, but has been going on in many circles long before. This conversation is wide open to anyone working in the geo space, feel free to add yourself to the who is here page.
This particular conversation is about how do geo based social web apps treat data, and how should they, and how could they, all with the assumption and hope that sharing can be a very good thing all around.
irc
seems like a helpful thing to have an irc channel?
i don't really know how to set these up, but it seems like if i just make up a room name, it works.
so i've done this at:
irc.freenode.net #geothing
Current metaphor of how things work with the geodata in these various map apps:
(from scott smith)
At the moment, however, it is like entering a disorganized bookstore with thousands of different travel guides to roughly the same area. What's lacking is a layer that allows users to choose first what view of the world they want to see, then what area, then perhaps based on expertise of the mapper - a mix of Google and eBay for user created geographic information.
(from jason)
... but also add to it that the bookstore is full or various vendors, each squatting in one corner of the shop, trying to lure the 'right' kinds of people over to its table. it's a classic problem involving the value of the middlemen. the end user wants the info, the publishers all package the same data for slightly different tastes, the book selling tables offer certain (overlapping) collections of these books, again based perhaps on taste (target market). the 'consumer' either feels like this is a bug or a feature of the sytem.
How it could be different:
(jason)
of course, the creators of this data (in most cases) would be interested in it getting out into the most accessible place, onto the most sites, in front of most people who care. http://evdb.com has a really interesting position on the ownership of data, and the distribution of data, and in fact the basic premise of competition. the work in a split environment, where the data is openly pushed and pulled from multitudes of sources, including the users, then, they have their own front end consumption interface http://eventful.com which is basically an aggregator of events. everyone keeps talking about breaking the walls down around the data garden, and brian dear is actually doing it.
One strange part about their setup is just that the open DB and the aggregator service are the same thing.
... an open db for placedata, enabling not just one interface to the data, but a rich multitude of potentials. the analogy then becomes your own local bookstore, with it's own disctintive charm and flavor, but with access to absolutely any travel book, and even the ability just make custom travel book mashups according to your needs, desires and culture.
Aggregator vs. DB:
Scott Smith of Smartplace talks about an idea for a unified front door to skim all the geo apps, a sort of geo search engine, or geo-blog search engine (since google local is already the basic geo search tool).
There is another ideas that is a receptical based metaphor, where the creators of this data (or the solicitors of it, the map apps) have some benefit for pushing it all into this big repo.
A few ways that these differ:
-standards (the aggregator would have to mimic the various standards that currently thrive, this is less work for the data creators (+) but more for the service creator (-). the repo metaphor would make it's decision about a standard, and have to hope that others will follow.
-portal vs platform: the aggregator is a portal, the repo is a platform.
-social perception: i think the repo has more perception of being something held for the people, while the aggregator isn't really offering you anything, just a window into stuff. (i'd really like to define my own opinion on this matter more, and hear others')
Existing things that may be related, similar, doing what we are thinking about already.
-And and what the differences may be.
1. http://geonames.org
-search taco bell in all countries
-it searches wikipedia for articles that have some kind of reference to both the term *taco bell + whatever city, or country**
-it doesn't actually find the place (in this case) in any meaningful way.
-it doesn't actually find the place (in this case) in any meaningful way.
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