We are excited to announce that we are awarding £1 000 funding  (£500 now and £500 on launch) to  ‘Friend in my pocket’ by Rupert, Sakib and Finn. The idea will use current GPS and other information, to tell you what is around you in real-time as you travel.  So you will be told when you are walking past a bank, for example, and can include street names, area names etc.

The event kicked off with information on RNIB, accessibility and usability with emphasis on mobile phone and Android accessibility, and understanding the barriers and pitfalls with mobile phone apps.

The developers grouped to discuss what they would be working on and the hacking commenced, with several hackers working through the night to develop their solutions.

Other prizes awarded by RNIB and others sponsors at the Hackathon were:

Place Friend won the Most Innovative New App. This app could use navigation around Points of Interest or landmarks that are tagged by speaking into the phone and recording the voice. 

VIA TV Guide won the Everyday Living category; an Electronic Programme Guide for Android with: 453 channels, a ‘what’s on now’ feature, a description of the programmes and  a ‘record’ feature.  It could also access radio stations and be used for Virgin and Freeview. 

Money note scanner won the Independent Living category. This scanner would pick out the colour of the bank note to differentiate the different notes. 

RNIB App won a special judges commendation award.  Its creator, Grant Kemp, was invited to meet with RNIB project managers to discuss how to corporately support the prototype. It would pull out information from RNIB website and also use an RSS feed and browser.  This app proved the concept of making RNIB content available via a mobile app.

Speaking about the event and the Geovation winner, Chris said:

“Congratulations to “Friend in my Pocket” and the other hackathon winners. The RNIB Hackathon was a very useful event. It was great to see teams hacking solutions to real problems, as experienced and expressed by other blind and partially sighted people. I learnt a lot and gained a number of very useful insights. We look forward to seeing these hacks progress towards launch”

Greg Hadfield, a former national newspaper journalist and internet entrepreneur, is organising the UK’s first Open-data Cities Conference. In this guest post, he outlines the importance of geography in an open-data city.

The Open-data Cities Conference seeks to focus on how publicly-funded organisations can engage with citizens to build more creative, prosperous and accountable communities.

It will be attended by more than 200 people from the country’s biggest cities, including executives from public and private sectors, arts and cultural organisations, as well as the creative and digital industries.

The conference – to be held at Brighton Dome Corn Exchange on April 20 – will address profound questions facing cities and citizens in the 21^st century.

What do we mean by an “open-data city”? How do we use emerging technology to create the future we want, rather than wait passively for technology to create a take-it-or-leave-it future for us? And how do we ensure UK cities are at the forefront of an historic shift?

The conference builds on the work of the Open-data Brighton and Hove Group over the last year or so.

During that time, the group’s 120 members have focused on which datasets will be most useful to developers and in what order of priority.

The myriad civic data we have talked about relates to school performance, catchment areas, and property prices; bus times and bus-stops, taxi ranks, car parks, and traffic congestion; about energy use, CO2 emissions, and carbon footprints. The list is literally endless.

Throughout, however, group discussions have repeatedly returned to maps and mapping: maps as navigational devices; maps of roads and transport routes; maps to delineate postcodes, geographical communities, or socio-demographic clusters; and maps to show all sorts of boundaries, between parliamentary constituencies, electoral wards, polling districts, and school catchment areas.

In brief, the key question is: what are the mapping needs of an open-data city and how can such needs be met.

When most of us think of maps, we think of the physical environment: landmarks, roads, buildings, contours, and so on. But what sort of maps will be useful in open-data cities?  Much will remain the same. The fundamental real-world infrastructure of the city will be the basis on which most maps are built. The information necessary to build and re-build or re-purpose such maps will be openly available.

For example, for someone with access to all the election data about a city – political parties, candidates, votes, turnout, location of polling stations – it will be easy to visualise such data on a map of polling districts, wards and constituencies.

Suppose, though, that the emergence of open-data cities coincides with the creation of the “internet of things”, cities in which uniquely-identifiable “things” are linked to information-rich virtual representations on the internet.

Suppose also that the devices accessing to the internet are not restricted to desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

What if your car is connected to the internet? What sort of maps might then be required by someone living in – or visiting – an open-data city?

New landmarks on the cityscape might include:

• Parking meters linked to the internet, signalling when the parking space is about to become available;

• Sensors to identify vacant spaces in city-centre car parks – or to report the length of queues at entrance barriers;

• Residential parking spaces available for short-term rent at short notice;

• Bus routes showing where bus stops are, along with real-time information about where buses are.

It is not clear who will create such applications and such maps. Many people might expect it to be Google, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, or the next big thing. I have my doubts.

More likely, it will be the new generation of open-data cities that will take the lead, by self-consciously creating and curating the data that can help meet the needs of the individual city and citizen.

To find out more, come along to the Open-data Cities Conference on Friday, April 20.

If you have an idea  that uses Ordnance Survey products and services, including OS OpenData or OS OpenSpace  to transform your neighbourhood, enter it on the GeoVation Challenge to be in with a chance to win a slice of the £115 000 prize fund.

I’m very excited to see the new challenge on GeoVation. It’s an exciting opportunity to bring about real change through geography. Thinking geographically is a powerful way to see patterns, make connections, present ideas and crucially, scale-up projects.

We have been lucky enough to win GeoVation awards twice. For us this has not only meant significant and important financial support, but also access to support, guidance and thinking that has helped us to push our solutions forward far more quickly than they would have done otherwise.

Our project, Mission:Explore, is deeply connected to the question that sits at the heart of the current challenge ‘How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?’. At the GeoVation powwow 16 people identified 104 problems and 7 themes. One of these was “how do we provide safe environments for our children to be active?” and this problem sits at the heart of what Mission:Explore is about.  Children being active in their community has a wide range of benefits of course, not least their personal physical and mental well-being as well as that of their wider community.

Through Mission:Explore our solution is to encourage and inspire more children and families to play outdoors. We are working to do this through our series of children’s books and social website that includes hundreds of quirky outdoor activities to do. On our website children and families can pick missions , collect points and earn rewards for doing them. Some missions can be done anywhere but others need to be done in specific places.

Last year we won funding from GeoVation to tackle the problem “How can we improve transport in Britain?”. Our work focusses on the National Cycle Network and using new functionality on the website to find ways to increase the number of children and families using the cycle paths. Focussing on 10 cities in England we’re going to be releasing 500 missions along cycle paths that support playful learning and with a mixture of reward types. Some rewards are just online badges but others will result in physical prizes. For this project the Technology Strategy Board’s Ideas in Transit project has been providing financial support, UWE is helping with research, Sustrans are providing logistical and cycle counter support and the dairy company Arla are supporting us with sponsorship through their energetic Kids Closer to Nature campaign. The website itself is built in partnership with the fantastic interactive agency, The Workshop, in Sheffield. Mission:Explore the National Cycle Network will be going live from the end of this month and will be in full swing before the summer holidays.

We’re currently looking for charities and public sector organisations that would like to use Mission:Explore to challenge children and families to discover new places and learn in creative ways. Later this month we will be launching private accounts which will allow schools to create missions that only their pupils will be able to see.

Our experience of GeoVation has been a powerful and inspiring one. I really recommend that you take part and see how far you can get. Good luck.

Mission:Explore are currently crowd funding their next children’s book, Mission:Explore Food. They are looking for people like you to contribute as little as £1 to help make the book happen. In return you can be illustrated into the book, request an experience day and much more. Visit Mission:Explore Food to be part of it.

Daniel Raven-Ellison
Mission:Explore

Great news!! The award fund for our new GeoVation challenge “How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?” has now been increased to £115 000, for the best use of Ordnance Survey products or services in addressing the challenge problems.

We will be looking to make up to 5 awards to the successful finalists at the GeoVation Showcase on 20 June at Ordnance Survey in Southampton. Finalists will be competing for a £40 000 first prize, and 3 runners-up prizes of £25 000each. Finally there will be a community awarded prize of £1 000.

So, post up your ideas, help develop others’ ideas through your helpful comments and, if you and your idea is invited to the GeoVation Camp on 18 – 20  May we look forward to welcoming and working with you then.

Good luck!

It has been over a year since our last GeoVation challenge and we are delighted to launch our new challenge ‘How can we transform neighbourhoods in Britain together?’. Following the successful format of the previous challenges we are calling for innovative ideas to help people help each other in their neighbourhood.

What problems are there in your neighbourhood and what barriers are stopping you and your local council from improving them? In the current economic climate we are all being asked to do ‘more for less’ and ‘do things differently’. The new challenge allows anyone to submit an idea which could ultimately help deliver solutions in local neighbourhoods across Great Britain.

Using GeoVation’s established Powwow methodology to uncover the problems associated with meeting the challenge, we’ve worked with Barking and Dagenham Council, Business in the Community, Cabinet Office, Design Council, Kent County Council, NESTA, Nonon, Ordnance Survey, Social Reporter, University of the Arts and UnLtd to produce a list of problems which form the basis for the challenge – see here.  Please read this before you submit your idea.

As with previous GeoVation Challenges we are looking for great ideas that address the identified problems using geography, technology and design. Ordnance Survey will be offering a slice of £115,000 in development funding for best use of our data, including OS OpenData and OS OpenSpace.

The challenge runs to 28 March and the best ideas will be invited to a weekend GeoVation Camp in Southampton from18 – 20 May 2012. The finalists from this camp will be invited to a GeoVation Showcase on 20 June 2012 to pitch for a share of the funding.

The award was for best use of OS OpenData in their ‘Sunlighting in Kent’ prototype, which aims to help individuals and organisations connect with each other to exchange skills, resources and opportunities in their local area.

‘Sunlights’ consist of skills which people want to share while ‘Sunlacks’ will be gaps which members or groups are trying to fill. The concept will use mapping from OS OpenData to provide visual information about the locations of members and places, helping to match available skills and resources to people who need them.  Members could search the site for people in the area who want to ‘Sunlight’ or post their need to the community notice board under ‘Sunlacks’.

Since winning the award The Sunshine Bank have been busy looking for funding to take this prototype forward and have a meeting with Kent Business School to explore this.

Our new GeoVation Challenge will link closely with this theme of innovating to help people in your neighbourhood and improve local services. Watch this space as there will be more details later this week.

liftshare’s myPTP Project Manager, Katie Lumley, gives us a most up-to-date progress report on how the tool has been shaping up over the last 5 months:

Since September 2011, the liftshare project team have been working hard to develop and refine one of our most exciting projects – myPTP – funded through GeoVation and the Ideas in Transit project.  myPTP will uniquely combine public transport, walking, cycling, and car-share options for individual journeys, and have the potential to help any organisation or community effectively deliver personalised travel plans (PTPs) at a fraction of the current time and cost associated with traditional approaches.

myPTP encourages and enables users to make informed choices about the way they travel.

Development began with design, before working to build, test, and refine the new and innovative web-based tool. During November, our biggest hurdle; accessing data for all modes of transport (walk, cycle, car-share, bus and train) across the UK, was overcome, and work to integrate data for all transport options then began in December.

Users will input individual’s journey information and in return will receive clear information on all transport options available to them, including maps, local provision options such as community transport, and any incentives the organisation has put in place to change their travel behaviour e.g. a week’s free bus pass. Ongoing communication is then possible to monitor modal shift and follow up changes in provision etc. Below is a sneak-preview of the online myPTP results:

Over 38 organisations have already expressed interest in using myPTP to deliver PTPs to individuals, and of those three organisations have been chosen to pilot the tool this February. These initial tests will be carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of West of England, through the Ideas in Transit project, and will help us to evaluate the usefulness and usability of myPTP from an end-user point of view (that’s me and you!), as well as assess its impact ongoing on travel behaviours. We are looking forward to hearing feedback from the test pilots so we can keep innovating and refining myPTP to ensure it is useful and effective for all.

We are very excited with the progress of myPTP so far; both internal development of the tool itself, as well as its seeming ability to appeal and meet individuals, organisations, and transport operator needs. If you would like to:

• Help individuals make informed smarter choices about their mode of travel, as well as improve accessibility.
• Better understand transport patterns of your organisation, to increase efficiency and save time and cost.
• Help Local Authorities determine shortfalls in provision and help local transport operators determine what services will best satisfy demand.
• Have on-going communication with individuals about their travel options to achieve real modal shift, and to relay any possible changes in provision.

myPTP could be your solution. For more information please feel free to contact me, Katie Lumley, on: (01953) 451166 or katie@liftshare.com.

Since our last blog we have been working closely with our software developers, Realistic Digital, to create and refine the AccessAdvisr website on the basis of the specification we drew up in the autumn.  As total newbies to the field of web-app development this has been a great experience for our team, and we have been learning a massive amount about the process (and pitfalls!) of working to create an innovative web-based project.

The great news is that we now know our webservices from our browser optimisation, and are almost ready to start proof-of-concept testing with real live people here in Nottingham.  This is also excellent news for our colleagues at ITP, who will soon be able to speak to us about the weather, sports, current affairs and other projects without fearing they may get drawn into a debate about ‘Where the search bar should go’, or ‘Should the favourites button be bigger’ (I still say it should…).

We are also looking forward to collaborating with colleagues at Loughborough University’s Design School through the Ideas in Transit project.  They have been helping us to draw up an evaluation plan that is rooted in various innovation and end-user behaviour theories to give us the lowdown on what people actually think about the concept, the site itself, and the way they use it.  This iterative process will be the first acid test for the site, and will no doubt pose us as many questions as answers.  Nonetheless we are really looking forward to hearing people’s thoughts and views.

Here is an ‘in-development’ screenshot for a sneak preview of how the site is shaping up:

If you want to learn more about AccessAdvisr, then please contact me, Neil Taylor at ITP on 0115 9886903, or email: taylor@itpworld.net.  Access Advisr is also now on Facebook, so you can ‘like’ us to keep up with all the latest project developments.

Coming into its 11th year, Big Schools’ Birdwatch asks teachers to take their class outside and to watch birds for a total of one hour during the day and to then send their results to the RSPB.

A comment from last years’ activities “We used the information collected to carry out an investigation in maths, drawing graphs, concluding from results and to discuss probability” (Reception teacher, Cambridgeshire).

Teachers could extend these activities and use
OS OpenSpace Web-map builder in the class to plot their sightings, much like Nottinghamshire Birds.

The RSPB would like to beat the record set last year of just under 90, 000 UK school teachers and children getting involved, which I am sure they will achieve.

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GeoVation has just launched a similar initiative at BETT with its Mission:Explore GeoVation Challenge which will ask children to identify a food related problem in their community and think of an idea to solve it. Children in Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 who make use of Ordnance Survey mapping can win a slice of funding to help turn them into a reality.

It’s now  just over four months since FixMyTransport launched. It’s great to see so many people turn to us when problems arise with public transport – and that more and more users are reporting on-the-go. That is, of course, thanks to the mobile version of the site, which is GeoVation-funded.

Since launch, we’ve sent over 1,700 problems to transport operators, and our community of users has grown to over 3,000.
In the site’s early days, just 15% of visitors came via mobile. Since then, we’ve made a number of enhancements for those visiting via handheld devices:

• We’ve introduced geolocation, which means that the site can automatically pinpoint where you are – very useful for those travelling in unfamiliar places, and also a boon for those who don’t want to type too much on tiny mobile keyboards
• The same technology means that we can also invite users to see ‘issues near you’. This helps people engage with transport problems local to their own area. It’s also had an unexpected, but positive, effect: old problems get revived as people rediscover them. There’s now much less chance of a campaign fading away, forgotten.
• Maps are more user-friendly on mobile browsers now, and are scrollable just as they are on the desktop version.

Meanwhile, we have encouraged visits from commuters by putting out most of our social media messages during the rush hour: scrolling through Twitter and Facebook seems to be a very popular way to pass the time on packed trains.

As a result of all this, mobile activity now represents almost a quarter of all visits – 24%.

We’re continuing to work on the site as a whole in several small ways, as well.

Most significantly, there is now a new step in the reporting process. Before submitting a report, users are alerted to other campaigns on the same route or at the same stop. We hope this will cut down on duplicate reports and help consolidate existing campaigns.

For the new year, our most important new challenge is to refresh our data more frequently. Up until now, we’ve been relying on the public NaPTAN and NPTDR datasets to generate the 30,000+ routes and stops on FixMyTransport.

Routes change, and services change hands; some are even cancelled, especially in the climate of council budgetary cuts. Our helpful users are great at contacting us to let us know when our information is out-of-date, but checking and correcting this data takes a significant amount of our time.

The good news is that we now have access to much more frequently-refreshed data, and we’re working right now to integrate it. The result should be a more accurate FixMyTransport, and a happier support team.

Also in the pipeline are operator-specific pages which will allow for the browsing of every problem reported to each transport provider. There are plans for a blog so that we can discuss transport issues with what is becoming a vibrant and very engaged community. Meanwhile, we’re expecting mobile user visits to rise and rise – we’ll be watching that particular metric with interest.

Myf Nixon