Inspired by information

I have to admit a growing weakness for the increasingly imaginative ways people dream up for displaying information. A recent favourite was Google Maps Street View option. If you haven’t seen it already, it allowed you to not only zoom onto a specific street, but also get on the ground as it were and manoeuvre as if you were there. Finding my old apartment block outside Lafayette Park, SF which I haven’t seen for many years was amazing for two reasons; one that I could still vividly remember a city I lived in but hadn’t been back to in over two decades and secondly that I could go whenever I liked (apart from the cars, the street has hardly changed). Truly technology allows us the opportunity to know more about the World. In saying that, the potential for exploiting information in applications like this, can bear more fruit than my trip down memory lane.

From San Francisco and a bad pun, we move to London and the work of UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), with MapTube designed to share maps and data using GMapCreator software.

The idea is for people to share data by overlaying it on a map, in this case, of London. Information related to the city can then be visualised in a different way, but the potential for any geographic region is there.

Specifically, there are examples on MapTube showing a mashup of population density in relation to the layout of the tube network. Because we now operate in a web 2.0 world anyone can add a map of their own, the raw data they use on the map however remains safely offline. Yet everyone can view the results. It is all very revealing.

From what is already up there, contributors have created some pretty insightful ways of presenting data, want to know where the highest growth for new building construction is, or the areas with the greatest e-awareness are? Perhaps you are researching the dispersal of ethnic populations around the city? The pattern of secondary school locations throughout the capital is there for all to see.

At the moment its early days (I could only fine a total of 69 records up on the site), but I love how this is beginning to take form. There is nothing to say why more regional, national and international maps shouldn't start to appear and nothing to stop those with access to data like you from collaborating.

Exploring new and innovative way to harness the power of information is what the creative information professional is all about in 2008. If you have any online tools you think deserve recommending, please feel free to share.

Note
On Thursday IWR will be blogging from the newly launched Web 2.0 Strategies Conference in Covent Garden. Check back then for regular updates from our sister-show all day.