This fantastic animation was presented at Minibar last Friday. Looks like OSM are really starting to give Ordinance Survey a run for their money.
Ordinance Survey holds much more accurate geo-data, so this crowd sourced data set wont destroy their entire business. However, they do need to act fast if they want to stay in the bigger picture as many applications like Sat Nav don’t need millimeter perfect maps – near enough is good enough.
I really hope they can adapt their business model as 300 years of history is a terrible thing to waste.
After eight years of charging users for messaging one another Friends Reunited has decided to go free – pretty major news I’d say. I’m wondering what fantastic business model they have up their sleeve as overnight revenues will be down by 40%.
Given that Friends is not Facebook, Bebo, MySpace or LinkedIn I think their success will be down to defining themselves as a distinct entity. And given that they’re owned by ITV, building media around your salad days would seem like a natural progression – I’m thinking tailored TV channels (class of ’85), lo-fi reunion shows, essentially arrogating media around key points in peoples lives.
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks reading Colin Moock’s latest 900 page epic – Essential ActionScript 3.0 so it was great to stumble upon Wonderfl. The concept behind the site of sharing and developing code online is genius.
Compared with 99% of tutorial sites (this included) the Wonderfl approach is the way forward and it’s certainly an idea that can be applied to many community based web applications.
The news that Sony lawyers have successfully closed down video game importer Lik-Sang will no doubt come as a blow to every video game enthusiast. Lik-Sang has always been like having a bunch of friends in Japan, whose sole purpose was to seek out cool stuff for you.
You’ve got to wonder how many hundreds of thousands of pounds Sony spends each year developing relationships with early adopters and members of the gaming community. It seems obvious that they should have regarded Lik-Sang and its customers as a resource, not as a threat.
I guess I’ll just have to put this incident behind me, be patient, and form an orderly queue outside Argos.
