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By Luke, 20, May, 2013 8:00 am

This week from Monday through to Sunday you’ll find us at the Digital Shoreditch festival, an event that attracts hundreds of speakers from the most innovative and successful companies and organisations across creative, technical, start-up tech and digital spaces and beyond. During the week, we’ll be exhibiting, speaking and promoting our digital products and services amongst some of Tech City’s most talented digital and technical creative individuals.

The festival has a different theme each day, comprising of panel sessions, key note speeches and discussions – kicking off with today’s “What Tech City” theme. During the day, festival goers will collectively explore the many companies and organisations that make Tech City what it is, focusing on developing new ways to exploit the potential for growing global engagement and improving our digital economy and society.

Continue reading 'Digital Shoreditch festival 2013 – hear how we’re involved!'»

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By Cartographic Design team, 26, March, 2013 8:00 am

Recently we told you about the new OS OpenData Award that we’re providing to the British Cartographic Society, offering you the chance to win an Apple iPad.  Today we bring you a guest blog from one of our Cartographic Designers, Charley Glynn, who has used one of our freely available products to map all five of our head offices from 1791 to the present day: 

Our current head office and the grid reference graphic which inspired Charley's map

As cartographic designers,my team and I get a lot of opportunity to design and develop topographic maps.  We’re very familiar with making leisure maps and creating custom styles for contextual maps which is why we are particularly excited when we get the opportunity to submit work into map galleries.  They give us the chance to build on our own map ideas, exercise our creativity and try out new tools and techniques. One such gallery is being hosted at the FOSS4G 2013 conference, the global conference for free and open source software for geospatial use, organised by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.  With that and our new BCS OS OpenData Award in mind I decided to take this opportunity to create something different from my ‘norm’. 

Continue reading 'Mapping out our history with OS OpenData'»

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By Gemma, 22, March, 2013 8:00 am

We are excited to be launching our newly updated OS OpenData product, OS VectorMap District Version 1.0.

Launching today, 22 March 2013, OS VectorMap District Version 1.0 delivers an enhanced user experience over our previous beta version through the provision of additional formats and styling tools. It has been designed for viewing either as a map on its own or as a contextual backdrop to your own data, enabling you to share information more effectively.

OS VectorMap District Version 1.0 is created and maintained from a large scale database and offers an improved representation of features such as roads, roundabouts and railways. The beta version was voted winner in its category at the 2011 British Cartographic Society Awards.

OS VectorMap District Version 1.0 will be freely available under OS OpenData terms.

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By Melanie, 16, October, 2012 8:00 am

We shared a video with you in a previous blog which provided some highlights from an event that we delivered at the Google Campus, towards the end of August 2012. The event explored the topic of location-based information and how location has, and continues to be used by new business start-ups to create innovative products, services and applications.

Many developers came along to the event, all hoping to learn more about location and how they might be able to use such data to develop their own business. And they didn’t leave disappointed. After listening to a range of guest speakers – all of whom presented their own stories and experiences around location, illustrating how they have used geographic information to create new products and services – there was an opportunity to network amongst other attendees. Many felt the evening provided a useful insight into some of the resources that are freely available – such as OS OpenData and OS OpenSpace, amongst others.

Whilst this networking event was a great introduction into the topic of location, the next event that we are hosting will be far more ‘hands-on’. Tomorrow, Wednesday 17 October, we’re holding a FREE OS OpenData Masterclass at the HUB, in Westminster, London SW1Y 4TE.

Continue reading 'OS OpenData Masterclasses – what you can expect!'»

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By Melanie, 9, October, 2012 8:00 am

Ordnance Survey held a great ‘Innovation’ event showing how location data can be used by developers in an innovative and user-friendly way. Watch the video to find out more.

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By Luke, 18, September, 2012 8:00 am

Last week we presented at the fourth Open Source GIS conference at the Nottingham Geospatial Institute, University of Nottingham. The annual conference provides a platform for people from across government, academia, industry and open source communities to network and share ideas for future collaborative work in open source, open standards and open data geospatial technologies.

So…for the benefit of those of us that aren’t sure what open source is, well, it is often described as being a way of working that allows the source code for software applications to be made freely and openly available, encouraging a public and collaborative approach to the ongoing development and enhancement of the software. This ensures that everybody can contribute to, and benefit from, these developments.

Image: Nottingham Geospatial Institute, University of Nottingham

Continue reading 'All things open at Ordnance Survey – using open source GIS'»

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By Gemma, 19, April, 2012 8:00 am

People across the country jumped at the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of open data and put tools and techniques into practice at a series of free masterclasses we hosted recently.

The masterclasses, hosted by Ordnance Survey’s GeoVation initiative and supported by Horizon Digital Economy Research, were held at six locations across England and Wales and attended by over 130 people. The free all-day sessions attracted small businesses, local authorities and students interested in learning about open data and how to maximise its use.

Following feedback from two previous successful masterclass series, the sessions focused on giving participants the chance to use open datasets and put the theory into practice. The masterclasses introduce the context of open data across the world, OS OpenData and the GeoVation initiative before hearing a user case study. During the sessions people had the chance to work with data from the Home Office, public authorities and more and see how it could be put to use with OS OpenData datasets, a great framework to display other available public data.

Map showing anti-social behaviour statistics overlaid with school attendance rates

Continue reading 'Helping to make the most of open data'»

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By Gemma, 8, March, 2012 8:00 am

We’re fast approaching the two-year anniversary of the release of OS OpenData, which gave more access to free, unrestricted Ordnance Survey mapping than ever before.

We’re giving you the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of open data, and the tools and techniques to use open datasets, through a series of free masterclasses. They’re following on from the success of the two previous open data masterclass series, run by our GeoVation initiative and supported by Horizon Digital Economy Research.

The masterclasses will combine theory and practical sessions and give you the chance to try free-to-use open datasets on data.gov.uk, including OS OpenData. You’ll learn a range of techniques, from data collection and processing, to data analysis and map visualisation. As well as OS OpenData, you’ll have time to use open datasets from government departments and public-sector organisations including higher education, healthcare, transport and environment.

We’re offering up to 30 places at each masterclass, running from 9.30 am until 5.00 pm each day. Just click on the session link you’re interested in to reserve a spot.

Continue reading 'Learn how to make the most of open data at our free masterclasses'»

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By Melanie, 17, January, 2012 8:00 am

In a survey last year, users told us that they were keen to hear more about the innovative ways in which Ordnance Survey data is being used. So, in response, we are delighted to welcome you to the first of our Innovation newsletters, designed to give you the most up-to-date news about our Innovation initiatives – OS OpenData, OS OpenSpace and GeoVation.

Since the launch of OS OpenData, we have seen OS Street View and OS VectorMap District become the most popular datasets for download. Users have ranged from councils to developers of games on Facebook!   There’s more about this and other OS OpenSpace developments in the newsletter (PDF).

We are focused on widening access to our data and supporting innovation to create new economic and social value for Great Britain. Since we launched OS OpenData in 2010, we’ve been encouraging developers to create and develop new applications using our data.

Our GeoVation programme looks to encourage the use of geography to address specific needs through a series of focused challenges. It’s a place where communities, innovative thinkers, geographic data, skills and expertise can get together for the benefit of communities and their needs. You can read about the new challenges in this newsletter and remind yourself of previous challenges and some of their winners.

We’re also extremely pleased to have delivered our 10 000^th API key for OS OpenSpace. We launched it in January 2008, to enable developers to develop innovative ways of displaying information based on our maps. On average there are over 1 million downloads each day and I July last year, we delivered our one billionth tile download – quite a milestone.

If you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss out next time, let us know at blog@ordnancesurvey.co.uk

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By Melanie, 2, December, 2011 8:00 am

Last week our GeoVation programme awarded £1000 development funding to an innovative community prototype which aims to help individuals and organisations connect with each other to exchange skills, resources and opportunities.

The winning prototype, which will use mapping from OS OpenData, was awarded the £1000 prize at a Developing Solutions Day held by Kent County Council. The exciting community prototype called ‘Sunlighting in Kent’ has been created by the founders of The Sunshine Bank – www.sunshinebank.co.uk

Sunlighting

Sunlighting means sharing what you are passionate about with your local community. ‘Sunlighting’ is the opposite of ‘moonlighting’; doing things that you really enjoy and want to share with others in your communities, be they of interest, location or identity. Individuals, community groups, charities, businesses and council services could set up accounts and offer what they want like to sunlight and to say what they lack.

The website would match sunlights with ‘sunlacks’  (or gaps) in the following three categories – skills, resources and opportunities.

For skills, this would be subdivided into various headings including sport, music, helping others, cooking, social media etc. Resources could be subdivided into spaces, tools and equipment, while opportunities into events and meetings.

OS OpenData maps would provide information and visuals about the physical locations of members and places, helping to match sunlights with sunlacks. Members could set up alerts to stay connected. Other features could include setting up groups and inviting members.

For example, Northfleet Brass Band currently have a vacancy for a quality percussionist to complete their line up. They could search the site for individuals in the area who want to sunlight music as a skill. They could post their need to the community notice board under Sunlacks/Individuals/Skills/Music. They also want to find local places to rehearse and perform, through the website they could search under Council/Resources/Spaces and/or post up a request on the community notice board.

Help needed

The Sunshine Bank team is composed of a senior web developer, PHP developer and HTML/CSS developer. If this project picks up, they will need more developers to join them.  Let us know if you would like to help this exciting and innovative community.

If you are interested in innovating and finding new ways to improve neighbourhoods through technology then watch this space. In the next few weeks we will be releasing exciting information on our new GeoVation Challenges which will be appealing for entrepreneurs and innovators from across the country.