OpenLeeds

Started on 30th June 2009

Needlessly complicated: The whiteboard at OBH when we'd finished. It's not that bad, really. Summarising it for Wes took mere seconds.

Sections

1. Leodis overview
2. Leodis data - documenting gathering the data (scraping etc.)
3. Leodis interaction - User interaction (prototyping, design, narrative)
4. Leodis hosting
5. Leodis resources - document all the local data sources etc. here
6. People involved - who is working on this, who wants to work on this, and please upload skillsets and CVs here
7. Target Audience - any ideas on who the target audiences should be? Ideas, please!

The Game

To crowd source the geo data: people will geotag the photos we deliver to them. In return we will provide:

• A leader board
• New data on their defined areas for their interest
• Who their neighbours are (other local users)
• …are there any other ideas?

Features

• A map of leeds
• A list of untagged pictures
• Ability to position a photo on the map
• etc etc etc (fill this in!)

Tasks

TODO (delete this once the previous sections have been filled out)

1. Phase 1 intentions
   1. Have prototype system where people can geotag images and we store the data and do whizzy things with it.
   2. Overviewy stuff: Dublin Core explanation; potted history of Leodis; what is Geographing
2. Future ideas
   1. (...)

Development task list

Images must have "view this on Leodis" link

• Implement database - (DONE - On dev)
• Scaffold(?) data access layer - (DONE - On dev - cakephp)
• Import Leodis data
• User can log in - (DONE - On dev)
• Unauthenticated user can register - (IN PROGRESS)
• UI - list of untagged photos
• UI - map of leeds
• UI - choose picture to tag
• Can apply geodata to a photo as a user
• UI - user can position a photo on the map

1. Things to think about:
   1. Large areas, such as parks, need particular handling
   2. What's the story?
   3. Alternatives to Gmap (see below)
   4. Captchas? (Perhaps later)
   5. The site needs a discussion element, with community aspects on a per-photo basis
   6. Voting mechanism to determine accuracy
   7. How to display the users (front end)
   8. User profiles?
   9. Tag rough geograph location (postcode, street name?)
2. Things we've thought about:
   1. Three statuses for a image - red, amber, green. Red for images we haven't a clue where it is, amber for stuff that's had one suggested location and is awaiting verification, green for stuff that has been verified twice and we think is sound data.
   2. Web page layout, main panel as a map with amber and green pins on it. Down one side of the panel you have a list or thumbnails of all the images we can't put on the map as we don't know where they are. Function buttons are beneath the map and list to keep the look clean.
   3. When users are tagging images they should be asked Where? When? What? The where needs to be mandatory, When and What (to indicate event photos like NYE etc) can be for more kudos points. For the When decades is probably best as a range.
   4. PHP, Zend, PEAR, Codeigniter/Kohana as frameworks? (PEAR is a library rather than a framework)

More things to come as Alex and others send notes.

Legal Shenanigans

Copyright of source images - most of these should be Public Domain (expired Crown Copyright)?

Terms of Use from Leodis / Council - we'd assume we'll have permission, so no worries here?

Google Maps

2 fold issue:

By using Google Maps, essentially we give to Google "you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute, and create derivative works."

So they can do what they want with the data (this bit should be fine for us, really)

Also, their terms state: "(b) copy, translate, modify, or make derivative works of the Content or any part thereof;" Using the maps website to make a database of geotagged photos would be making derivate works. It's fine for small uses and for personal use but building a database of items completely based on GMaps would be a no-no. Examples of projects that don't use google maps for this very reason include http://www.npemap.org.uk which uses old maps for adding postcodes.

Basically, the coordinates of clicking on Google Maps are copyright of Google's map providers. Using Google's Satellite imagery would be okay, and probably utilizing Streeview too, as you are solely using your own judgement and skill, apparently.

Now, it's quite unlikely at this present time that they would go after us, but it could be unwise later on down the road especially if some laywers start to look at the data provenance.

Other Options

OpenStreetMap - coverage isn't complete for Leeds (would only take a few days by a handful of people to complete, if necessary)

Yahoo Maps - possibly. Need to read t&c's

Microsoft Maps - possibly. Need to read t&c's

Old out of copyright maps. Would fit in with feel of the app. (this is probably a phase 2 thing) ...