Today I filed a Freedom Of Information request from the Royal Mail Group, for the location of every post box in the UK, with a grid reference. I’m told there are 114,000 of them. Why? I want to build postboxes.iamnear.net.
I suspect that iamnear.net works best with the things that are common, often required when out and about, and easily spottable. Pubs obviously fit the bill; megaliths probably not, but they’re fun, so that’s exempt.
The difficult bit is getting decent sources of data. I wanted to build hospitals.iamnear.net, but it seems that there’s no single source of data for these, apart from OSM, which is probably not complete.
So, what should I be building next? And perhaps more importantly, can you help me get the data to do it?
James Smith on May 15th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
When you get the data (hopefully!), will you just use it for iamnear.net, or would it be better to import it into OSM and then pull it back out for iamnear, considering you’ve already done that for pubs?
Tom Taylor on May 15th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Oh, I’ll definitely import it into OSM, if possible.
Jim Kosem on May 15th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
What about bus stops? Kebab shops? The possibilities are endless if you ask me, but this is good because it fits the “I need this friggin’ thing right now” mode of mobile computing. Hospitals then fits that. Beer? Got that covered. Skate spot? Bike shop?
Sven Latham on May 15th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Assuming the FOI request is successful, is there an explicit right for you to republish this information or does Royal Mail retain copyright and/or intellectual property rights?
Tom on May 15th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Who knows - obviously I’ll ensure the licensing is clear.
Shaun McDonald on May 15th, 2008 at 8:14 pm
The interesting thing about the OpenStreetMap project is that when you start using the data, and there is stuff missing. Suddenly people will start mapping the stuff that is missing.
If you want to help complete London you can come along to some of the London Mapping Marathon events.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/London/Summer_2008_Mapping_Party_Marathon
I’ve discovered that all Scottish Councils need to hold a record of all their public roads.
Tom on May 16th, 2008 at 8:24 am
Shaun, I totally agree and I’m already a convert - I’ve done most of my neighbourhood east of my house, and I’ll be doing the west side sometime soon.
I’ll take a proper look at the OSM hospital data - it needs to be in a relatively complete position to be useful for people - I don’t want to be misleading people in a potentially dangerous situation.
Mark Dyson on May 17th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Hello mate, great work with the iamnear!! Landing myself in a new town gave me the world of issues with finding places, especially petrol stations. Perhaps it’s not on the green agenda, but still of use. Other items on the list could be oyster top up locations perhaps.
As you mentioned OSM, I didnt really know the acronym.. but assumed you means Ordinance Survery Maps - LOL, but is any data relatively ‘available’ or even useful to cross reference your hospital data?