Barcamp Singapore 2

I was at BarCamp Singapore last week. Yes, this post is overdue but still it should give a good insight to what (some of) the speakers had offered.

The topic to discuss is on Maps and Mobile. Mainly Google Maps and generally anything mobile. 2 tracks and I attended the Maps track. But before going on, the event was the first public event sponsored by Google Singapore and supported by NUS Enterprise, e27/Garag3 and Singapore PHP User Group.

Derek Callow (Corrected after by Lesile of e27 update me on the actual speaker) Andrew McGlinchey (Geo Product Manager for SE Asia, Google Singapore) was first to present on the overview of Google Maps API. Nothing much technical but generally what Google Maps aims to be and what are the possiblity. In summary of what he said:

  • 80% of data have location related meta information
  • Geospatial long tail: most geo location information collected by government are limited to landmarks and places of general interest. What about parking lots and places to walk dogs? Hence the long tail of geospatial data.
  • Google Earth have managed to map a pixel to a meter square accuracy.
  • Enterprise Level user agreement: A paid service level agreement for power users, whom which none of Singapore Google Maps based website have yet to require.

He always suggested that we check out the following:

A useful introduction to Google Maps. Too bad he spoke without a microphone and it was pretty hard to hear him from the back of the room.

Second up was Gerard Lim, CTO from bak2u to talk about Secured Mobility. For this I was not paying too much attention as my area was way to noisey with dis-interetested participants.

Nokia managed to get the first presentation slot and was presentated by Gary Chan. His presentation was (sadly) a close duplicate of what Derek covers earlier. Thunder stolen maybe. But Nokia Maps are like Yahoo and MSN maps, competitors in the Maps API arena with Google. Just maybe the geek culture just prefer the Google’s touch better?

Singeo was next with Jon Petersen. Singeo have maps on many kind about Singapore. He have maps on wifi location in Singapore and general stuff that the public will be intereted in but may not be captured by the governement.

He mention Fire Eagle which is a location broker which allows a user to allow certain controlled access to his/her location so that certain services can be provided to him/her with such information on her current location.

Then he touch upon some concept of locating a person’s location via wifi based trigulation and/or GPS or event mobile phone location. Such the ability to location on person will allow an intelligent system to show nearby bus stop to anyone, to cite an example of his.

Shopelette was next and it is a presentation on their site and services. Pretty site, and rather appealing for the shopahoplics. Generally is a site for people to state their purchases. Mainly for the less mainstream from what I saw. Of course, he mention 3 key points which strikes me:

  • Shopping is a social activity
  • 95% of purchases happen in-store
  • Location, location, location

Overall, a insightful view to something which I have little interest in. Which is shopping. If ever I was to use Shoplette, I guess Sim Lim Square is all I see. Right? Throw in Funan Center too. The presenter’s blog here.

On a side note, Shoplette is done in Ruby on Rails.

Lilihood was next. They have a highly interactive map (location) based social network. Pretty fun as users can claim a turf and see who shared the turf with you and then you get to make friends and such. What caught my attention was the ability to switch the underlying map from Google to Yahoo and if I am not wrong, MS Maps too. A site with great technical effort placed into.

Last on the Maps track was on homespace.sg. This in my opinion worth my effort that day. As they covered the problems which they faced. Highly user-centeric based problems but should serve as a guide for anyone starting out on Google Maps API.

Problem: Display information - Information overload

Solution:

  • Proper Planning of relevancy.
  • Reduce loading of irrelevany information
  • Grouping of information
  • Reduce visual distraction
  • Uses clusterer plugins to reduce information shown on map and group markers together

Problem: Design and Aesthetics - textless markers

Solution:

  • Design markers to symbolise information
  • Consistent theme for different class of markers
  • Custom markers for School and MRT lines, 2D markers vs 3D markers to differential importance
  • Making use of info windows, uses Danmarvelous

Problem: User behaviour - dragging and zooming requests

Solution:

  • Limit request by understand user behaviour
  • Separate type if request.

In short, I think it as a great presentation on their experience with Google Maps. 2 thumbs up.

Of course, Preetam Rai sneaked in a short presentation on tagging a real life object and generate a shared communication/sharing of thoughts between users of that object/place/item. It is better explained with his blog post named tagging real world objects.

And last but not least, Widgeo.us did that beta launch and do support them and register for their service.