SkyMapping by Puffbox: map mashup mechanism for journalists

early concept
It’s a big day for Puffbox, my own little web consultancy. Today we officially delivered our first ‘built from scratch’ product: SkyMapping, a map-based mashup mechanism we designed and developed for my old mates at Sky News.
The idea came to me in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. It was a major news story confined within a very small geographic area, with lots of eyewitness accounts, some accompanied by photos and even video. But you didn’t really get a sense of how it all pieced together. What happened where, and who saw what? And where exactly is Virginia Tech anyway? The BBC has quite a nice visual treatment of the events, but it’s basically just a static aerial photo with embedded links to content lower down the page – very ‘web 1.0’. I had an idea that we could do more.
Having lashed together a few things with Google Maps (like a map-based view of MPs’ activity driven by TheyWorkForYou, or this one using BBC football headlines), I knew there were ways we could use the Google Maps API to identify a particular aerial view, mark points on it, and add rich HTML content into the pop-up ‘speech bubbles’. With a bit of extra coding, you could create a notional ‘sequence’ of points, with each one linking to the next, letting you tell a proper flowing narrative. Plus of course, inherent in the Google application, you can click around a bit to ‘get your bearings’, or switch from ‘map’ view to ‘satellite’.
Any geek could have told you this; many geeks could have built it too. But the really clever bit has been the usability on the ‘back-end’. We’ve made it a doddle for a non-geek journalist to throw a ‘flowing narrative’ mashup together in a matter of minutes. To position a point, there’s a draggable map with a crosshair over the centre: place the crosshair exactly where you want the point (with all the usual Google zoom controls), and press ‘save’. To create the ‘sequence’ of points, it’s a couldn’t-be-simpler drag-and-drop interface.
The first use of the application will be next week, as part of Sky’s Crime Uncovered week. Viewers are being invited to make their own video clips, and upload them to Sky’s YouTube-style site, SkyCast; the newsroom team will pick them up from there, and plonk them on the map. From the front-end, it won’t look a lot different to Sky’s last foray into Google Maps, for its Green Britain week. The concept doesn’t really lend itself to the ‘flowing narrative’ model, so the more advanced functions probably won’t be used. But this is only the start.
Since I started on the project, there’s been something nearly every day which lent itself to map-based presentation. Today for example: the trail of Polonium traces round London in the wake of Alexander Litvinenko’s death; the continuing search for Madeleine; Blair’s farewell tour; the daily review of the local evening papers; I could go on. But it’ll really prove its worth next time we have something like the 7/7 bombings. Lots of media which can be plotted to a particular place; and put together ‘live’ by journalists, not designers or developers.
Dan Gillmor blogged earlier this week: ‘It’s mind-boggling to me that more news organizations aren’t taking advantage of (maps’) possibilities, or, in most cases, even bothering to learn what’s possible.’ I like to think that our SkyMapping app may open some eyes in Osterley. Particular thanks to Hugh and Simon over at Sky; and my boy Gareth, who did most of the hard work. We’re great.

Why e-gov sites prefer Google Maps

Heather Brooke in today’s Guardian: ‘While maps and geographical information are vital to local authorities and their websites, the prices and licensing policies of Ordnance Survey, the government’s mapping agency, mean that some councils have decided to bypass OS and use free maps from Google to create mashups of information for their websites.’ She could also have mentioned usability, flexibility, instant availability via a one-field web form… I could go on.

Who's behind the McCanns' PR campaign?

It came as a bit of a surprise to see former BBC reporter Clarence Mitchell popping up on camera out in Praia da Luz. Tony Hatfield has been digging around, and it transpires that Clarence – whose day job is heading up Whitehall’s Media Monitoring Unit – has been temporarily seconded to the Foreign Office to handle ‘media relations’ out there.

In my view, it’s entirely appropriate for the Foreign Office to offer consular assistance to the McCanns… and given the unparalleled media interest in their plight, it’s entirely appropriate for that consular assistance to include the services of someone with significant media experience himself. But I’m intrigued as to the extent of his role. Someone is clearly doing a spectacularly good publicity job for the McCanns – they’re still a ‘top story’ nearly a month after Madeleine’s disappearance. Is this Clarence? Normally you’d expect the ‘family liaison’ job to be about keeping the family away from the media…

Another great loss to the public sector

OK, so I’m a bit late with this particular piece of news… Ed Parsons was the first Chief Technology Officer in the history of Ordnance Survey. His departure in December 2006 was widely lamented: it was suggested that he was leaving because he was ‘interested in rocking the boat at Ordnance Survey, especially over its Web 1.0 attitude’. His blogging activity tracked the various developments happening at OS’s new competitors, like Google Maps, and it’s not too big a stretch to imagine his frustration at seeing his own organisation being left for dead. Fast forward to April 2007… and where does Ed start work? Google. The public sector actually did have a guy considered good enough by the cutting-edge to be their new Geospatial Technologist. And it lost him. Brilliant.

I think I'm a programmer-journalist

Dan Gillmor notes that scholarships are available for ‘an academic program blending computer science and journalism, designed to fill a staffing void at many digital news sites. The goal is to turn out students who understand both journalism and technology, connect one to another in ways that build audiences and also enhance and protect the civic functions of journalism in a democratic society.’ A very wise move.

Dan uses the term ‘programmer-journalist’ which, on reflection, should probably have been my job title during my time as online agitator at Sky News. Knowing the news business, knowing what’s happening in the tech world, and working out how to meld the two. I’m also working on something right now which puts me right back in that space… I’ll write it up in the next day or two. I’m excited again.

Sky News forums open for business

Sky News has very quietly launched a new ‘message boards‘ area, built (as I understand it) in-house by the team behind MyKindaPlace. Presentation is pretty basic, almost primitive in fact. Anyone expecting extra forum-esque goodies like personal profiles, RSS feeds, rating systems, etc etc will be disappointed. So far, discussion is entirely dominated by the ‘UK News’ channel, and specifically Madeleine McCann threads. Minimalist registration required to post, with post-moderation applied.

I freely admit I’ve got a blind spot when it comes to open forum spaces like this. I just don’t ‘get it’, but other people have made a success of them. (Very few, though.) Sky probably has a strong enough brand to pull it off, but it’s going to take a lot of effort. Possibly more than they realise.

Again though, I’m wondering if they wouldn’t have been better to just install an off-the-shelf forum package. There are quite a few (fairly obvious?) navigation and usability issues, which I’d have expected any established forum package to have resolved. I particularly like the look of bbPress (from the WordPress crew), although development seems to have slowed lately.

I’ll have more to say about Sky News in the next day or two… 😉

Brown's big ideas for real-time information

Looks like my source was right: Gordon Brown has plans for the internet. There’s a lengthy interview in today’s Guardian, conducted with Jackie Ashley last Friday. Of particular note:

The Labour party may not realise what is about to hit it. Brown believes the days of political parties as “small organisations of people who are accused of talking to themselves” are over. In future, constituency parties will become local hubs, building links with other networks and groups, and using new technology to reach out way beyond their usual supporters.
Brown expands his theme: “There are so many different forms of communication – writing, phoning, the internet – at the moment we’re not doing enough to keep people informed and to show people that when they have a view, we’re prepared to listen to them.” So we may become like New Yorkers, who can access “real-time information” about what is happening in every precinct of the city on the internet, whether it is crime, health or education.
There are ideas here, big ones, but throughout the time my tape recorder has been running Brown has remained guarded in his language. As soon as we are talking off the record he becomes a different person – enthusiastic and genuinely excited at the thought of being able to change politics. … He is certain he can win the next election by sorting out health, education and housing, and by ushering in a new style of politics. If the public could see this side of Brown they would warm to him more.

Communication? Networks? Internet? Big ideas? Blimey. The next month could be a bit quiet, but the following 100 days might be very interesting indeed. It’ll be a heck of a challenge… but when Downing Street says ‘do it’, the civil service really doesn’t get a choice.

Parliament's new forum site proves 80-20 rule

I was looking at the Cabinet Office website’s section on Consultations. I clicked on a link ‘Less is More‘. It took me to a ‘page not found’ error page. You couldn’t make that up.

The new eConsultations website for Parliament is ‘the result of a great deal of effort from the Hansard Society over a number of years’ (according to Jeremy Gould); so it’s intriguing that in the end, they’ve gone (by the look of it) for an off-the-shelf discussion forum package. And so far, it seems to be working pretty well.

It’s running on the Phorum platform, which I don’t know at all but seems perfectly fit-for-purpose. And by taking an off-the-shelf product, they get some nice extra features including search and RSS. The debate on Medical Care for the Armed Forces is getting a lot of traffic, presumably as word gets round the forces and families; not so much for the other discussion around the Local government and the draft Climate Change Bill. Everything is subjected to moderation which ‘should happen within 24 hours’.

It’s further reinforcement of my growing belief that there’s an 80-20 relationship in most web projects: the first 20% of effort will yield 80% of the likely benefit… and that it’s very rarely worth the extra 80% effort to get the final 20% of benefit. There are exceptions, but then again, there always are.

We shouldn’t get worked up about the electronification of the existing formal consultations process. If Tom Steinberg reckons it’s beyond the mySociety crew, that’s a clue. And besides, it’s far from an ideal process anyway. Few old-fashioned consultations get great responses, in either quality or volume. We can do better.

192.com adds better aerial photos

Online ‘people and business finder’ 192.com now has Google-style maps and aerial photos. It has a definite British accent, with Ordnance Survey maps and the most recent photography of all the competitors in the space (certainly for my house anyway). But its Flash-based interface isn’t quite as smooth as Google’s javascript-powered tool, and there’s no apparent scope for mashing. (Google just launched a ‘street view’ – but no UK support yet.)