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Hi Doug,<br>
An interesting and potentially useful concept.<br>
It sounds like you are proposing a spatial standard. Have you
approached the Open Geospatial Consortium about getting the standard
endorsed? <br>
<br>
With regards to any code which you wish to produce and open source,
I suggest considering bringing it under the umbrella of the Open
Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).<br>
Details about OSGeo incubation here:<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.osgeo.org/incubator">http://www.osgeo.org/incubator</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 30/10/2014 1:08 am, Doug Rinckes
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAGFr2LKiST_hDzKoww46NGOcOKKXG_bbF5iECXEvOiLPfJeAUQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">I'm an engineer at Google, and I have just open
sourced a geo project we've been working on for a while.
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I used to work on our maps, detecting missing road networks
and in my spare time mapping roads in Papua New Guinea,
Central and West Africa from the satellite imagery. But
without street names or addresses, a road network isn't all
that useful. People can't use it for directions, because they
can't express where they want directions to. After talking
with colleagues from around the world, I discovered that's it
actually very common for streets to be unnamed.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We thought that we should provide short codes that could be
used like addresses, to give the location of homes,
businesses, anything. If we made them usable from smartphones,
we can make addresses for anywhere available to anyone with a
smartphone pretty much immediately.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We had some specific requirements, including that these
address codes should work offline, they shouldn't spell words
or include easily confused characters. We wanted to be able to
look at two codes and tell if they are near each other, and
estimate the direction and even the distance. The codes should
not be generated by a single provider, because what do you do
when they disappear? Finally, it had to be open sourced.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Open sourcing the project was important. We wanted to allow
everyone to evaluate it so that we don't go implementing
something that turns out to not be useful. If it does turn out
to be useful, everyone (including other mapping providers)
should be able to implement it and use the codes freely.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>I'm pre-announcing this to a couple of geo lists today, and
I'll be sticking around for comments and questions. The
following links provide more information:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Github project: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://github.com/google/open-location-code"
target="_blank">https://github.com/google/open-location-code</a></div>
<div>Demonstration website: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://plus.codes/" target="_blank">http://plus.codes</a></div>
<div>Discussion list: <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#%21forum/open-location-code"
target="_blank">https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/open-location-code</a></div>
<div>
<div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Enjoy!</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Doug<br>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<fieldset class="mimeAttachmentHeader"></fieldset>
<br>
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</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Cameron Shorter,
Software and Data Solutions Manager
LISAsoft
Suite 112, Jones Bay Wharf,
26 - 32 Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont NSW 2009
P +61 2 9009 5000, W <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.lisasoft.com">www.lisasoft.com</a>, F +61 2 9009 5099</pre>
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