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a thesis in the making
Wednesday 22 February 2012
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Methods + Misc
Well, first and foremost, you need to believe in your field of research. I mean, that’s really the main point: doing something that you find to be very fascinating and pursue it with emphasis. To do this on a constant level over a certain time period, you have to believe in the worth of your research (or at least in the possibilities the results will open up for you.)
But a funny thing is: using Atlas.ti makes you feel more and more like a biblical scholar since they programmed the quotation management in way that resembles the way you would quote a bible. So when I refer to a quote in my analysis I write it like this: Competency 2:23. This refers to a quote regarding competencies and is to be found in the 23rd quote of interview 2. If you do this a lot, it really gives you the feeling of quoting from the bible.
So, if I would have done an interview with the founder of OSM, I would write it like this:
Steve Coast 1:24 – “Thou shalt not use closed geodata.” Amen.
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2012-02-22 ::
Thomas
Tuesday 7 February 2012
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The image you see on the left is kind of a pre-atomic-age-GPS. It’s a device from 1932 which shows the current location of your car. But 1932 – how does this even work? The device rolls a printed map according to your travel speed and therefore displays your position. Of course it’s use is very limited since you would’ve change the map everytime you take a turn or travel the same route everytime (which you know so good you wouldn’t need a map). But it’s a nice symbol for the progress the science of “geo” made so far. Today, I could go on OSM, download some data, load’em on my android, go outside and ask it to take me to X.
Marvellous times!
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2012-02-07 ::
Thomas
Wednesday 25 January 2012
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There’s a tool for everything. A short story about the use of R instead of a full blown Desktop-GIS solution: Before, During and After: The Richest 1 Percent.
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2012-01-25 ::
Thomas
Wednesday 25 January 2012
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Crowdmap, a VGI-based service by Ushahidi, gained quite some importance during the arab uprisings. One of the sadest and horrifying uprising happening has also an own portal on Crowdmap, which was recently updated to aggregate more information from mutliple sources. As sad as the sheer numbers, the site contains links to very graphic material. Use with caution.
We tend to see the business opportunities when we’re talking about open geodata. We strive to make our life easier, our government more effective and to create new things as well as services. But there are many other possibilities to actually help those who can’t use smarthphones or even a computer. It’s a great thing to find the nearest public swimming pool with my phone, but the digital divide excludes many from the benefits of open data. With that in my mind, there should also be services and applications which tackle more fundamental problems. Make a map of the soup kitchens in economically rattled greece and print it out? Would be possible, but is it on the radar?
The syrian map of al-Assad’s crimes is not quite an open data platform since it’s fundamentally a crowd-sourcing project with none governmental data whatsoever. However, it makes its data publicly available; you can download all reports. After the Assad-Regime is gone it could likely serve as basis for investigators to uncover the murders and crimes of the syrian military. So, whenever we think about open geodata we have to have those in my mind who can’t use the latest hardware.
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2012-01-25 ::
Thomas
Friday 20 January 2012
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Since Google imposed their license for 25.000+ mapviews per day, there has been a mildly higher interest on Twitter for switching to OSM. Most small businesses or private persons may shrugged their shoulders: “25k mapviews? I’m glad if I get 250 visitors per Day.” The real downturn for businesses relying on GMaps isn’t that obvious. Sebastian Delmont from StreetEasy cleared that up. His post on (ironically) Google+ ist lengthy but worth reading.
The TL;DR-version of this:
We at StreetEasy decided to build our own maps using, among other tools, OpenStreetMap, TileMill, MapBox and Leaflet, instead of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to Google. And yes, the money pushed us into doing it, but we’re happier with the result because we now control the contents of our maps.
Sebastian also wrote a follow up, which gives some credit to Google. They have been so kind to let us use their maps for years.
The bottom line is: businesses or sites who rely heavily on mapping such as real estate agencies or touristic pages will pay a lot of money for staying with Google. But they also get a highly reliable, well-known product with a lot of features. On the other hand there are highly sophisticated solutions in the realm of (free) open source software (see Sebastians post). In fact, you can replace Google with these solutions. So, the question is: shall I stay with Google and their terms or should I set up my own mapping service?
Google’s fees fired up this process but didn’t decide it, yet.
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2012-01-20 ::
Thomas
Wednesday 18 January 2012
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News
So, the OSM-Community wondered about some strange damages to their data coming from a Google IPs. The details aren’t exactly distinct but these actions came at most from a Google contractor. So, the implicit thesis behind this news “Google tries to beat up their rivals” seems just placative and untrue.
But anyway, that leads to an interesting question behind the whole open data idea: who prevents forgeries of open data?
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2012-01-18 ::
Thomas
Sunday 15 January 2012
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The title may seem a bit bold but it points out the current state of my thesis. I am looking for interview partners. So, if you’re working in or involved in the wide field of Open Data / Geodata don’t hesitate to contact me!
I’ll soon post a my interview guidelines so can see the direction my questions are going.
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2012-01-15 ::
Thomas
Saturday 10 December 2011
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After a few hours spend in the library I am on the edge to write the first chapter. It seems as it will be highly theoretical but nevertheless worthwhile to write since it lays out one half of my theoretical framework.
For those who are interested: the chapter will deal with value creation as a term. So, the first thing is to get to the core of ‘value’. What is value? Who defines it? How has the definition changed over time? What kind of value is produced by companies or organizations? Further I’ll try to argue that value as a fixed concept in business science isn’t actually that fixed. Value is a fluid concept – even in business.
Secondly, I’ll try to point out the changes which value creation has gone through. There is a long way between Smith, Taylor and the modern/emerging notion of value creation.
The third topic to discuss is the state-of-the-art from a value-creation-based point of view. So what concepts and models of value creation work today? Which will work in the future?
And to sum things up, I’ll develop the first half of my empirical framework from the points discussed before. This ultimately leads to questions which I will incorporate in my guide for the interviews.
So wish me luck. May the first page followed by many others.
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2011-12-10 ::
Thomas
Friday 25 November 2011
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News
- Poetry Map
That’s quite something! Katharine Whitcomb, Robert Hickey, and Marco Thompson are putting together a anthology/map called: A Sense of Place: The Washington State Geospatial Poetry Anthology. Make poetry spatial – really neat idea.
- Alternatives to Google Maps
That’s a bit more for the coders than for direction seekers. Antiona Santiago blogged a nice compilation of alternatives to the soon to be commercial API of Google Maps.
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2011-11-25 ::
Thomas
Friday 18 November 2011
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News
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2011-11-18 ::
Thomas
