{"id":1250,"date":"2011-01-26T15:19:54","date_gmt":"2011-01-26T14:19:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/t-machine.org\/?p=1250"},"modified":"2011-01-26T15:22:25","modified_gmt":"2011-01-26T14:22:25","slug":"web-0-1-ordnance-survey-uk-govt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/2011\/01\/26\/web-0-1-ordnance-survey-uk-govt\/","title":{"rendered":"Web 0.1: Ordnance Survey \/ UK govt"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think it is a fantastic and wonderful thing that the complete, detailed, maps of the UK are now free for all commercial and non-commercial use. This is a long way ahead of any other country – these maps are many times more detailed and accurate than e.g. the Google Maps \/ Yahoo Maps \/ Streetmap datasets.<\/p>\n

(PS: these days, the excellent OpenStreetMap<\/a> (which works in every country – and I wanted to name-check here for anyone who isn’t aware of it already) has advanced so much that it’s seriously encroaching on the OS … why did we have to wait until the OS was heading towards obsolescence before making it free? Sigh)<\/p>\n

(it’s just a pity it took so many years to reach this point, when e.g. in the USA, NASA has been making their content public domain for decades. All those high-res photos of space, nebulas, planets, etc – all free. For everyone)<\/p>\n

But … it’s a pity they couldn’t find competent web-developers for their site http:\/\/www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk\/<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Apart from the “I’m too lazy to write a web form properly” bug there, it also begs the question:<\/p>\n

\nWhy, in 2011, are you forcing people to use *EMAIL* to get a download link, instead of just downloading direct from the website?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can think of a few possible explanations, but they all have simple solutions. So … I guess they’re all wrong. Otherwise, why hasn’t the OS done any of them :) ?<\/p>\n

(oh, BTW: Ordnance Survey folks, you might want to run through your email-marketing database, and prune out any accounts you just created for: *you*are*incompetent*@*.com . Your crappy web-form not only failed to accept legal addresses, but it happily accepted email addresses that were blatantly fake)<\/p>\n

And so … we have another Web 0.1 award :).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think it is a fantastic and wonderful thing that the complete, detailed, maps of the UK are now free for all commercial and non-commercial use. This is a long way ahead of any other country – these maps are many times more detailed and accurate than e.g. the Google Maps \/ Yahoo Maps \/ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}