EirePreneur

Bulding OpenEir on Google Earth?

The more I learn about Google Earth the more it strikes me as the perfect platform upon which to build OpenEir.

• Its free and no doubt will soon be on 10s of thousands of Irish desktops. Although you need to pay for the Plus version to connect to a GPS device, that's not necessary if you have another means of downloading the data.
• Virtual tours are a delight as is wonderfully demonstrated by ink_polaroid's tour of Dublin on the Google Keyhole forums
• The Network Link really is a killer feature which would allow users to consume up to date OpenEir data on the fly.
• The high definition Latitude/Longtitude grid reference means people could contribute without even having GPS units (at least for Dublin and Cork city centeres where you can zoom into a street corner and read the coordinates for that point).

Please use the comments feature or the OpenEir Yahoo! Group to join the dicussion. In the meantime I'm going to convert some of the routes and waypoints submitted by Martin McCreesh to KML format for ease of import to Google Earth.

A full circle of Ireland now GPS mapped

It may not be a coastal circle but its better than that - Martin McCreesh (of Iontas) has submitted GPS tracklogs and waypoints for primary routes between Letterkenny and Limerick, Cork and Fota, Cork and Kildare and Dublin back up to Donegal. You can now download this GPS data (in open GPX format) from the OpenEir Yahoo! Group files section (in the 'Other' folder).

Not only do you get the routes but also the waypoints for 40 towns around the country including -

Abbeyleix, Aughnacloy, Ballindin, Ballyboffey, Ballyshannon, Barefield, Bundoran, Drumcliff, Buttevant, Cashel, Charleville, Charlestown, Clanbridge, Clane, Clarecastle, Claregalway, Croom, Crusheen, Cullaville, Drumaweir, Dunleer, Letterkenny, Durrow, Emyvale, Ennis, Fermoy, Fota, Galway, Gort, Johnstown, Kilcolgan, Lifford, Milltown, Mitchellstow New Inn, Rathcormac, Sliqo, Tuam, Tubercurry, and Urlingford

Martin has also made a great suggestion as regards a structure for storing tracks - he proposes a single network of all primary routes and motorways so that as each OpenEir contributor loads tracks we can add them to a single national network file. And do the same for each county and town. This structure would enable a visitor to Ireland to download a national primary route and then the county or town files required.

I think this is a terrific idea and ties in with my own revised thinking on waypoint nomenclature which was previously based on county registration plate codes. Afterall, how many visitors to this country want to travel routes on the conceptual basis of counties? That's why I've started naming recently collected Waypoints on the basis of roads instead. I'll post more about my thoughts on this in the OpenEir group and hope others join us in the discussion.

Thanks to Martin for really getting the ball rolling on the OpenEir project - we're well on our way to building an open source map of Ireland.

Powerful geographical application mashups

Newsbites, a blog from the Tipperary Institute, points to an American example of the powerful application 'mashups' which can be created with open access to geographical data.

The dataset is American but the codebase could be extended to the Republic of Ireland--if the Irish Ordnance Survey removed the requirement to charge for GIS-validated latitude and longitude data. The results boggle the imagination: live feeds to 3G phones of accident sites, road works and gridlock. The tax-paying citizens of Ireland deserve as much.

How true. And that's partly the motivation behind the OpenEir project which aims to route around the Ordinance Survey of Ireland by aggregating GPS data from volunteers nationwide.

Georeferencing digital photos with GIS data

The two gadgets I use for recording OpenEir data are my cameraphone (Nokia 6630) and Garmin Geko 201 GPS unit. Its handy that the Nokia phone produces EXIF data but people have said to me what I really should have is a GPS camera. Yes, that would be nice, but better still would be some way of injecting the GPS data from my Garmin unit into the digital photos from my cameraphone.

And I didn't know such a thing was possible until I came across RoboGEO which claims it can permanently embed latitude, longitude and altitude information within the image. I've downloaded the trial so I can't wait to see if it works as advertised.

Galway to Limerick - get your free map!

The Ennis bypass is not due for completion for another few years but drivers would do well to take an existing route around the town, via Tulla, on the journey home along the western corridor this bank holiday Monday evening. If you don't know the route it can be tricky to navigate but if you've got a GPS it will be simple after you've downloaded the OpenEir tracklog and waypoints below.

Download GalwayLimerickWaypoints.txt

Download GalwayLimerickTrackpoints.txt

All files and their GPX variants are now available on the Yahoo! OpenEir Group. TXT formatted versions can of course be opened by MyGPS.

The screenshot below shows the major towns and villages along the N18 and the alternative route along the R492 via Sixmilebridge, Kilmurry, Kilkishen and Tulla. The waypoints file also includes Bunratty Caslte and Folk Park, 11 hotels and all major junctions.

Donegal to Dublin in the OpenEir

A big thanks to Martin McCreesh for supplying the GPS tracklog for a journey from Donegal to Dublin, which includes the the M1 from Airport to Ardee exit which, as Martin points out, many 'regular' maps still dont have!

Here is the tracklog file in GPX format - Donegal to Dublin. And here's a screenshot as produced on Topofusion.

Waypoints to follow later. Thanks Martin!

Geotagging Dublin at street level?

Paul Power finds that the Dubin Transportation Office now offer a useful online route planner for Dublin. I too wonder if the geo data behind this is open... as in OpenEir.

The latent demand for online map data for Ireland

One of the great things about blogging is being able to mine your referral data for insight and knowledge. A strong trend that I'm not surprised to notice, since I've started blogging about OpenEir  - the open source map of Ireland - is the latent demand among foreigners for Irish mapping data in GPS formats. A large percentage of hits on €irePreneur are now coming through various international search engines (in particular Google.de) looking for combinations of the keywords - GPS, Ireland, Waypoints, Tracklogs, Irish, Map.

Satellite navigtion looks to smart business ideas

The BBC carried a great article yesterday about the new European GPS system - Galileo and the 'glorious opportunities' it will open up for European businesses.

And for the companies with innovative ideas on how to use this improved data, there are expected to be some big new markets to exploit.

Analysts believe the value of the Galileo-enhanced business - equipment and services - could be worth well in excess of 10 billion euros a year by 2020, as sat-nav functionality wheedles its way into every corner of modern life.

Some applications are obvious... Other applications will stretch the imagination and ingenuity of Europe's smartest technologists.

And hopefully OpenEir - Ireland's open source GPS map will contribute in some way.

Mapufacture your Flickr photos

Mikel Maron, the genius behind WorldKit and MapProxy has come up with another brilliant web-based GPS tool called Mapufacture. This allows you to easily annotate satellite maps with geocoded RSS feeds or Flickr photos.

I just took some of my previously geotagged flickr photos from an OpenEir tour, fed them to Maron's new application after specifying the midwest of Ireland and boom..... out popped this Mapufacture map where the red dots represent waypoints where I took photos. Hover over the dot for a thumbnail or click on it to be taken to the full version on Flickr.