I was delighted to feature in a BBC news piece by Nick Higham on the future of maps today (14 July 2012). The BBC filmed me demonstrating Talk About Local’s work on a new, simple augmented reality product using Layar. You can see the film on the BBC website. The work we have done with Layar makes it much easier for a publisher with little or no technical skills to get their content into an AR environment. Talk About Local can help you create a geo-coded RSS feed by just clicking on a map and then bring that feed into AR by pasting it into our website. The feed then constantly updates to Layar without you having to do more work. As well as local blogs, we already have some local authority planning feeds and some of the Battle of Naseby in AR.
The BBC piece ran on the Radio 4 Today Programme the UK’s leading news and current affairs show and on BBC Breakfast Television. We shall update with links to web content as they become available. I also go to show off my lovely Stanfords Library map from the 1850s.
Today: Saturday 14th July
The government reveals plans to reduce speed limits on rural roads as serious injuries and deaths rise for the first time in 17 years, Security firm G4S fail to recruit and train enough staff for London 2012, and has the sat-nav contributed to the demise of the printed road atlas?0711
Since 2005 sales of printed road atlases have fallen by 50 per cent, and A-to-Zs by 60 per cent. The BBC’s Nick Higham reports on the future of the traditional paper map.
William Perrin
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brian bourne says
16th July 2012 at 11:50 amgreat news
Colin Hall says
18th July 2012 at 7:54 amHi William,
I watched the BBC interview with interest. I see the future of mapping as an integration of location, information and control. Knowing your location is one thing, knowing about your location and what it offers is another … Knowing what your rights and legal restrictions within a particular location will soon help to ‘educate’ the population about speed limits, property ownership and access restrictions etc.
How long before maps start telling us that we are trespassing, speeding, not walking enough to entitle us to NHS services … IMHO I prefer a paper map any day 😉