If every address had a QR code ...

Spotted this morning on Twitter:

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Nigel Shadbolt RT by CountCulture

A single UK address register emerges - - what open data products should it have?
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Finally, a single database of addresses - this is a great and long overdue move, well done all concerned.
What data products should it have?

Well, I'm not going to go into that too deeply, anyhow I had my say in another place, but it dawns on me that if every address has a URI, say:

addresses.gov.uk/id/12345abxdefg98765

then it can have a QR code too.

If it has a QR code then that could printed on labels, those labels could be stuck on envelopes and maybe replace postcodes in some situations.

Envelopes with QR codes could be sent through the mail cheaper, because they can automatically sorted into postcodes, thereby saving postmen time.

Because postcodes are designed to describe the walk-route of a postman, not describe an area (which we have forced it into doing).

Rather like number plates, perhaps we could apply to have our own custom URIs which replace those nasty looking URIs.

This might work rather like URL minifiers addresses.gov.uk/id/TheRobinsBedford resolves to addresses.gov.uk/id/12345abxdefg98765

Would people pay for a nice address URL?

Could the postal service do this and make a profit?

Could they pass on the savings of using QR codes to users that bothered to use them?

Would this drive QR printing prices down?

Dunno, just thinking aloud.  If every address had a QR code, how would you imagine it being used? Do jot a comment below:

Thanks!

UPDATE 17 Dec '10:

Seeing as this musing of mine recently got picked up in the US it might be worth pointing out some differences between the UK and the US regarding some of the issues I raised.

UK Postcodes typically look like B7 1JD and are to some degree fathomable if you know that B stands for Birmingham and not Bristol. My postman quip emanates from my understanding that each sub-area 1JD and 1JE, say, is known as a walkroute or similar, and was designed by the postal services to describe a set of addresses which a postman could visit with (literally) a handful of letters before returning to his/her trolley and grabbing another handful.  The resulting polygon has seemingly become the only standard for services such as making deliveries.

UK vehicle registration plates follow a similar fathomable yet obfuscated regime, but if you pay a bit more money you can enter an official bidding process to purchase plates which might have some meaning for you.  I have seen "PHP 4" go by me, quite literally.

 

Why Town Council Clerks might be ebaying soon

Last week I visited some town councils in the North West, it was part of my market research drive for my town council based website content management system (CMS).
 
Anyhow, I had a bit of a brainwave just before setting off, and threw together a list of services which, according to a recent NALC report, are the most likely candidates to be devolved, delegated or picked up by town councils from their "principal authorities".
 
Here's the list.  Following that I'll list the caveats and tell you the sample size,
 
When the clerk was asked "Which services do you see your town council taking more of a role in over the next few years?"
 
These two were chosen almost unanimously:
  • Cutting grass verges
  • Looking after local footpaths
Then there was a majority vote for:
  • Street cleaning (such as litter picking, sweeping and graffiti removal)
Around half agreed that these are likely candidates, although I believe that in some town councils were already performing these functions to one degree or another:
  • Parks and open spaces
  • Cleaning bus shelters
  • Public conveniences
  • Tourism activities
Given my propensity for maps and locations in my CMS I of course found it very interesting that the delivery of these services would entail a spatial element.
 
The sample was less than ten councils, so this is in no way a scientific report. 
 
There was a bit of nose wrinkling as some clerks admitted their members might want to push to take on these services, whereas in fact they personally did not want to do them. 
 
Many said that the takeup of services may well depend on the makeup of their next council following the Local Government elections next year - and of surprisingly, whether their town councillors were also members of their "principal authorities".
 
So, it was all a bit of "fingers in the wind" and "gut feelings", but nevertheless - might be a good idea to get onto ebay and monitor bids for industrial-strength lawn mowers.
 
Overall though the most impressive thing I learned, is just how considerate and welcoming each of these town clerks were when clearly they were very, very busy people.
 
You know who you are and I thank you (and those whom traffic problems denied me visiting).
 
 
 
 
 
 

Upgrade to Google Maps v3 - Oily rag view

Google maps has just celebrated its 5th birthday and at the Google I/0 event this year they announced the launch of Google Maps Version 3 (Gmaps v3), and the differences between v2 and v3 are quite momentous.

I thought I'd give you a heads-up on some of the key points and point out some gotchas you can avoid.

I'm a jobbing PHPer and know enough about JS to get me by, especially as I rely on jQuery more and more - and I am going to presume your skills are similar to mine.  I was no great Gmaps v2 ninja, but could work out how to do most things.  I also worked as a GIS tester for about a year when I started out in IT, which has always meant Gmaps made some sense to me.

Too busy to read on? Short version: Adopt html5-repurposed Gmaps V3, win mobile, lose IE6.

You'd better read the next line twice.

Upgrading Gmaps from v2 to v3 meant me rewriting every single line of JS but I cut out more than I rewrote.

Yep, backward compatibility (bc) went out the window, maybe there are some pockets of code you can keep the same, but I did not find any, and support for IE6 and FF2 is dropped.

I will start by giving you three of the headline reasons you, as a developer, may want to overhaul your Gmaps code.

You don't need to submit a google licence key - a constant thorn in my side when trying to test things locally.  Gmaps v2 meant Google gives you a key you can call from 'localhost' but when you have multiple domains running on 'localhost' this does not work - I had to constantly edit my hosts file and make the current website the first one on the list in order to stop the nagging "key not reconised" alert.  Plus, that is one less stonking great global var knocking around my CMS, and for each client that's one less thing to apply for. This was big news for me.

Streetview no longer needs Flash - yep, Streetview is done in straight HTML (and JS probably). I have loathed proprietary standards since being bitten by them when I first started learning about t'internets.  I already wrote about the arrival of Google Streetview in the UK and its importance for local councils. Now I could rip out all that conditional code, all those extra GUI warnings and help hints about how to install Flash, turn it on etc. It make me feel, so, ahhhhh!  CLEAN! Plus, I can provide Streetview even on smaller maps.

Gmaps v3 is optimised for mobile devices - they claim its faster, I have not tested this nor will I ever have time to do that, but I believe them and to have something which gets me better maps on Android and iPhone devices is just all win.  Certainly Gmaps v3 seems a lot slicker to me now.

In Gmaps v2 I had hundreds of markers kept in xml files, and the associated data for each point was popped up into ExtInfoWindows after an Ajax call back to PHP scripts on the server.  This provided me with the right mix of immediacy and responsiveness (showing the marker) and content (showing the data in a pop up on the map).

It was fiddly to set up and test and it seemed so complex, over engineered and convoluted that I dreaded having to adjust or debug it.  But, hey, it worked and I and my client were happy.

Gmaps v3 is rebuilt and stripped down to its bare necessities, and if you want the niceties of absolute control over DOM elements you enjoyed in v2 then you will be able to find most of them for v3 managing markers and layers etc - but these are things you will need to write yourself.

One of the best aspects of Gmaps v3 is its support for KML and geoRSS.  I was aware of KML in v2 of course, but if you are serving up a lot of map points and associated data, then you really should be at least testing out what can be achieved with KML now.

In short the KML file allows you to make a kind of template which includes declarations for ...

  • the icon to be used
  • the bubble-text (think "InfoWindow")

.... and bundle that along with all the data that both the marker need and your pop up window needs.

Now, 'scuse my oily-rag explanation for what goes on back in the black-box world of Google maps, but if we were down the pub this is how I'd explain to you what I think is happening.

When a map is requested from Google any KML file is bundled off back to Google and munged up with the map tiles and the whole thing is somehow optimised and cleaned up and squirted back to the user depending on their user-agent and screen-size.  The output is also cached at their end in case it is requested again shortly afterwards.

There is an awful lot going on in that Gmaps black-box so if you are thinking of doing some KML testing let me warn you of a few KML Gotchas.

You cannot test by using locally hosted KML files.

All KML files must be served from a internet facing server.  Localhost or 127.0.0.1 wont hack it.

All links will open in a new window

Yes, even internal links although there is a claimed jQuery workaround, I cannot get this to work at the moment.

All home made icons will be resized

No matter what you do your icons wll be resized to 32 x 32 pixels, so produce your .png icon with clear space around it to make up the difference to 32 x 32.

KML map icons cannot currently have shadows

So build the shadow into your 32 x 32 icon allowance as described above, or live with icons without shadows.

You cannot set the zoom level in the KML file

You might think that was a pretty basic requirement, but you can do it in your scripts very simply, applying a condition on map.getZoom() to map.setMap(map) or map.setMap(null)

KML expects reversed lat, lng order

Yeah, maybe like me, you even got your database fields in the correct order of lat then lng so that you never ever get confused any longer about which way round they go, but natively, KML expects then as Lng, lat, Height. Might save you a bit of hair pulling.

Google caches your KML for a period of time

The work-around when testing is to change the url slightly each time by appending a GET argument to the url or use <?php echo time(); ?> to output 'http:// <yourwebsite> /maps/test.kml?123' and so on.

All of the above are potential time-sinks and could put you off discovering what is a really great way to bundling off to Google all the data it needs to intelligently package it ready for use by most browsers and mobile devices.

You will be reading the KML spec  - mostly you will be studying the sometimes hard to find Gmap supported elements table.

OK, so what did I gain by going through this process?

Well, lets start with what I saved:

I saved about 32k worth of (mostly) minified JS includes, which contained;

  • ExtInfoWindow library (and 6 graphics files)
  • PHP and JS Ajax files
  • Icon definition files
  • MarkerManager
  • A JS Flash sniffer

I lost some control over my map icons, but was able to bundle up and post off to Google all my kml files, with their associated styles and icons and that takes care of the infoWindows too.

What did I gain?

  • Slicker maps
  • a better separation of concerns
  • a lot less code to read and maintain

If you need convincing at this point then take a look at this map from the examples on the Gmaps v3 documentation and take a look at the source code. Georss example.

There may seem little to choose from in the trade-off between v2 and v3.  I can quite see how you can make your v3 Gmaps applications look and behave just like your old v2 apps using elements of the growing Gmaps support libraries - but that would be kind of missing the point.

If you buy into the v3 philosophy then you will will likely look seriously into using KML, and your output - certainly initially - will probably not look as good. 

It may be an uphill struggle to convince your boss that the extra effort will be worth it - but cite those big 3 reasons I mentioned at the top of this post, no key required, Streetview support without Flash, mobile-device ready might help you.  Or pick from the reasons Google show in their Basics intro.

Gmaps v3 feels a lot more object orientated a bit more like a good framework in as much as you seek out and add the extra elements you need. Everything seems to extend upon, what Pattern enthusiasts may find the strangely named MVCObject().  In my book MVC is a structural paradigm, and I'd expect to see a ViewObject or even a ControllerObject - but lets not dwell upon that.

Coming from the PHP world I am used to world class online documentation, but I found myself thrashing around quite a bit moving between the Gmaps and KML references which are two distinct sets of API docs. The key document you will need is the table which shows the subset of KML which Gmaps v3 currently supports, which is so important I have linked to it twice in this post.

Gmaps v3 continues to be built upon, and you may find some of the drawbacks mentioned have since been fixed or improved. I will be watching out for updates from the Google Maps Blog anticipating more KML features being supported by Gmaps v3.

There are other fascinating additions to Gmaps such as Fusion Tables offering the option of query-able KML stores, which hold immense promise for those that believe that website content isl increasingly emerging from distributed and shared resources.

Overall I found Gmaps v3 is a great improvement and I urge you to join the Gmaps v3 Google Group, subscribe to the daily update and become familiar with the problems that others (like myself) are overcoming.

 

Godalming council gets Street View - a first? - but why?

Google launched full UK coverage of their Streetview layer on Thursday (11 March 2010), and quite frankly my life was put on hold for 5 days. 

On Tues 16 March 2010 I added Street View to the main Godalming map - for those with:
  • javascript turned on
  • updated version of flash (9 or greater) plugged in to their browser
  • a firewall that does not strip flash or scripting out
The map still "degrades gracefully" for those who may not be able to experience "Street View", and of course for those without scripting enabled, Google Static maps provides an alternative, and is even easier to use now (as I had previously described elsewhere) .

Street View relies on Flash, and I am no fan of proprietory plugins - but there is just no getting away from it, "Street View" is utterly compelling, engaging and packed with local information - and should be a useful source of information for any town council officer with no access to GIS (Geographic Information Systems).

http://www.godalming-tc.gov.uk/map

Google Street View has been available in the UK for about a year, but only in 25 cities.

I may be bold and I might be wrong, but I would guess that Godalming Town Council is probably the first council in the UK to carry Street View maps on their website (and I don't mean simply providing links to Street View).

So what is the relevance of "Street View" to town councils, and why did it cause me to put my life on hold for 5 days?

Well, now we can get on and geocode (pinpoint the location in the real world) all of the litter bins, telephone boxes and grit boxes - as well as verify the location of all the postboxes, car parks and recycling points we already know of - AND NOT rely upon the "upstream councils" to provide that information AND at the same time present that information to the public in a way they will a) find and b) understand.

It is doubly important for the reason I stated above, that town council officers do not have access to expensive GIS systems but with Street View they can now roam around and identify things in the real world, an ability their colleagues in "upstream councils" have just been able to take for granted.

How else could you explain that of all of the councils in all of the 25 cities which have had access to Street View for over a year have failed to enable it for their public websites? (a Google search threw up nothing, neither did my asking my Twitter followers).

I concede that my solution may not perfect by any means, reliant upon Flash and displaying old information in the views (re-runs by the Google Street View car may be infrequent).  Imperfect it may be, but it will provide a huge leap forward for many town councils. 

In the short time these Street Views have been online I have also noticed some other problems with my solution.

I don't have Google Analytics tracking what users are looking or what they are doing, I just know that on average users are spending over 5 minutes in there.

Opera 10 is not displaying the Flash content yet. grrr ...

Please take a look at my solution and let me know if it does not display as you expect.

Thanks for stopping by!

Are you a town clerk or town councillor?

Using Google's web mapping as your local GIS viewer, and using me, Councilsites, as your website (CMS) provider you can now gather and share information about things such as street furniture.
  • ask councillors to help identify and correct the location of things
  • ask the public to move things to the correct location (more on this later)
  • ask the public to report problems (but to whom?)
  • find things for yourself
As well as the existing information layers we already display on Google Maps:
  • all businesses
  • all community places
  • Flickr photos
There are many more information layers to collected.  Get in touch if you think the time is right to update your town councils' web presence. or visit my site www.councilsites.co.uk
 

Godalming is on the map.

Yesterday I finally got the "Godalming Town Council map of the area" launched.

http://www.godalming-tc.gov.uk/map/

The issues for non-JS enabled browsers were finally ironed out and tested, but the biggest hold up was getting the geotagged Flickr Group Pool images from Godalming and Farncombe to display correctly on the map, and of course to lead back to the original image on the owners' Flickr account.

Even after half a day it was the 4th most visited page on the site yesterday. I think "navigation by map" will be something that Visitors will probably use more than residents, but who knows.

We have plans to describe more of the town using this map.

Maps are a great way to bring a place to life - to make it somehow seem 'more real' - and of course it is even better if they can be used to draw people into your site.

 

 

 

 

 

Beta version of SuperMap

This morning I put online and briefly tested a project I called "Godalming SuperMap".
 
http://www.godalming-tc.gov.uk/map.htm
 
We have collected and geocoded lots of information about the town in the years I have been running the website, today we finally brought everything together in one place.
  • Roads and points of interest on each road including
  • Postboxes
  • Recycling points
  • Car parks
  • Junctions
Along with:
  • Community places
  • Businesses
There are some problems to iron out before we launch it next week, notably the Non-JS version is not displaying correctly yet (some visitors will not have scripting turned on) and the onscreen menu could roll-up and take up less screen space once a user has clicked an option.
 
The page is live but is not linked from anywhere, so you can only find it by visiting the url directly http://www.godalming-tc.gov.uk/map.htm (be warned it may be on/off line at various times between now and next weekend).
 
I didnt sleep well last night trying to work out what is the best way to display data when a user zooms into a road, at the moment it shows all the businesses and community places on that single road - should I try and load all the other points of interest in that window, in the immediate vicinity?  Should I add a screen control to ask if those points should be loaded?  I am sure the correct answer will evolve over time,
 
Still, for me this an important milestone.  Here we have a Town Council website with some proper grown up navigation techniques;
  • A-Z
  • Search
  • Document Search
  • Government categories
and now..
  • Navigate by map
More exciting things are in the pipeline for maps, subscribe to this blog to be kept informed or follow me on twitter @councilsites if your town council's ambitiouns are starting to outstrip your  current website.
 
 

Council web sites fail usability test

 An article surfaced this morning asking why council websites are seen as generally being so difficult to use, entitled council websites fail usability test.

Which contains the wonderful truism: "There is a great challenge to get it right, but there's little incentive to do so because, if a visitor is not happy with the site, where else are they going to go?"

Haha. "Look my dear, their A to Z is hard to find and when you get to it, Rubbish collection is termed Waste collection so appears on the wrong page. Honestly that's the final straw, lets take the kids out of school, change jobs, sell the house and move to Brent where they pay attention to these things ... "

Having worked on local government websites for over 12 years now I can't vouch for that being the sole reason why to the public, many council websites are on the whole unfathomable rabbit warrens, but it certainly explains some of the stupor.

In practice the truth is probably more depressing and difficult to disentagle.  Even though some in a council may wish to address this issue, their hands are tied because of  a melange of the following forces:
  • vested interests
  • internal squabbles about what goes on the home page
  • the strangling of proper news and information by overzealous PR gatekeepers who deem it "unworthy"
  • dogged determination to not link to other sites (see the MySilo antipattern)
  • crap CMS systems not fit for purpose
  • ignorance of the importance of standards, and their place in usability
  • design by committee
  • lack of interface/programming skills inhouse
  • a plethora of "warm bodies'' shunted around end up in the "web department" or being given the job of "updating the website" ('warm bodies' a management antipattern)
There are exceptions, but my guess is that on the whole most councils are blighted by at least half the items on that list, so its not wonder then is it?  But, hey, if you work in a town council, you will likely be able to add more.

My only surprise was that only 34% of those asked found council websites to be the worst!

Adrian Short had a few things to say about this issue whereas some time ago I decided to try and untangle some of the reasons for their badness, based on my personal experience.

But why is this of interest to town and parish councils?

Because there exists an opportunity for enterprising town and parish councils to sieze the initiative by grabbing the public's interest, and clicks, and providing a better more focussed experience (read a previous rant of mine: Why town and parish councils are important).

Just how your town will be able to go about doing that seemingly monumental task is something which I believe will unfold during the course of this year.

Not giving any secrets away, but it'll involve finding the right supplier (me, of course), engaging with your local community, and monitoring and reacting to what is happening over at www.data.gov.uk.  More on that on another post.

The internet is the best example yet of a level playing field, and there is a new game in town.  Subscribe to this blog, follow me on twitter or just email me.

councilsites AAAATTTTT gmail dot com

www.twitter.com/councilsites
Filed under  //   anti-pattern   district council   town council   usability   websites  
 

Highways Agency gets customer service right, nip round those roadworks

I wrote to the Highways Agency on the 7th of Jan this year to ask if they could advise me on how to correctly link to their website so that if a user clicks on a Roadwork on our RSS display then the Roadwork Triangle appears automatically.
 
I got two replies, concise and to the point, one asking for more detail, and the other offering a fix.
 
I got that last one about an hour or so ago, tested it and put it on Godalming's website.
 
http://www.godalming-tc.gov.uk/roadworks.htm
 
So you can see the Highways Agency Roadworks and Delays RSS feed however it is re-ordered showing those roadworks situated closest to Godalming at the top.
 
When you click on a Roadwork, the resulting map at the Highways Agency Traffic England website shows the red-bordered roadwork triangle without you having to click on the navigation bar on the right hand side of the page.
 
(Yeah, I know I could plot them on a map, but that would be a "nice to have" rather than a "must have", and I have other fish to fry)
 
Thanks a lot, Highways Agency (Lindsay) and well done.
 
(images: Roadworks and delays shown on the Godalming website, and part of the ensuing page on the Traffic England webpage)
 

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Why have one home page when you can have two?

Following the xmas/newyear 09/10 makeover of the Godalming Town Council website, the site's 2 home pages are re-established.
 
If you have been to the site before and told us you are a resident, then you see a slightly different home page than if you were a visitor.
 
If you live in Godalming you don't need to see where it is on a map, you don't need to find driving directions TO Godalming, you need to find travel directions AWAY and maybe return to Godalming.
 
If you live in Godalming you don't need to read yet again that it was the first town to ever have an electricity supply, but you might be interested to know how much of your council tax has gone to funding the town council.
 
If you live in Godalming you will probably appreciate being reminded just who your own town council ward councillors are, and when the next town council meetings are - things likely to be of very little interest to visitors to the town.
 
That makes sense doesn't it?
 
So why don't you see this on other town and parish websites?
 
Because my motto is : "Make technology to fit people - not the other way round."
 
 
 

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