[Herts] Google maps

[Steve Clark]

On Thursday 12 January 2006 18:31, Ian Gregory wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 09:29:30AM +0000, Steve Clark wrote:
> > I had a thought after I left. If we wanted to create our own map of
> > members that did not use Frappr then we could use ability to encode a
> > location in a web page as described at
> >
> > http://geourl.org/add.html

> I was thinking about adding a location to my site anyway, but I am
> not quite sure yet. Obviously if you ran a website for, say, a B&B
> place, it would make sense to give the location of the B&B. If you
> are just running a personal homepage then what location do you give
> if any? I don't reveal my home address on my website so I may not want
> to add a geotag which pinpoints it. I might want to give the location
> of the server (somewhere in Docklands) or no location.

How much personal information to give out on a site is a complicated issue. My 
home page has a fairly precise location for my house, but I guess I could 
have used one that did not point so exactly. There ought to be a mechanism 
for pointing at a standard location for a town. In any case my previous sites 
have included pictures of my house when it was being built to people could 
find it anyway. I try not to include details that you hear about in relation 
to 'identity theft' e.g. DoB, names of relations etc. Obviously if you are 
into family history then you might need to reveal that information. My FOAF 
file does not contain too much personal information. I just have to think 
about the trade-off between sharing information and my privacy.

I use other resources for family news and pictures that allow for more access 
control.

> And then if I had a page about Ben Nevis on my site I might want to
> add a geotag locating Ben Nevis just on that page - but presumably
> you can have as many page specific tags as you want. I am still
> learning about the subject. There are lots of links from the Wikipedia
> page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoTagging

An obvious application would be to geotag photos. I expect this is being done 
already. The Rev. Rumble has also used it on his wiki

http://engineer.openguides.org

I can see a lot of possibilities in semantic web technologies, but as with 
everything it is open to abuse.

> By the way, it seems that Google have just released a Mac OS X
> client for Google Earth - addressing a long standing complaint
> of Mac users.

I wonder if we will ever see it on Linux.

-- 
Steve
http://www.bagofspoons.net