Stuart Lewis’ Blog

The Repository Mashup Map (http://maps.repository66.org/) has just undergone a bit of a software upgrade. Here are some details:

• A JavaScript spring-clean: The JavaScript which powers the maps (not including the Google Maps code!) has evolved over time from a simple map showing repositories in the UK, to repositories worldwide, with data from multiple data sources, and with multiple filters. The code has now been tidied up and rationalised, which will hopefully make it faster and more efficient, and is about 10% smaller than it was before. For example, rather than holding multiple arrays of the same data but keyed differently for different filters, it is now all stored in one multi-dimensional array. No rocket science here, just a tidy-up.
• Extra filter: You can now filter on the country where the repository is located, as well as the software platform it runs on, and the date it was created.
• Auto-zooming: When you select a filter (e.g. “Show me all DSpace repositories in the UK”) the map will automatically zoom to show just the area covered by the repositories (in this case, just the UK).
• Auto-filtering: When you select a filter (e.g. “Show me repositories in Austria”) the maps update on their own, without you having to press the filter button.

To make my life easier, I also now have a development copy of the maps where I can test upgrades. The URL for this is http://beta.repository66.org/

As always, comments or suggestions on how the maps could be improved are very welcome!

There was a trailer shown as the last story on the BBC One 10 o’clock news last night for a new TV series starting next week called ‘Britain From Above‘. There is a news story introducing it online where you can watch a few clips. The series starts at 9pm on BBC1 on Sunday 10th August 2008, and will be available in HD.

The series will be presented by Andrew Marr and shows how our lives work and interconnect using some pretty neat visualisations. A simple way to describe them was mashing up data from our lives onto some high powered maps. The examples they showed included:

• A dataset from all of the telephone exchanges in the UK showing the sources of phone calls made in one day, plotted over time onto a map of the UK. Once animated it allows you to see how the country wakes up, runs through the day, then quieten downs again at night.
• A map showing flight paths of all flights in the UK, running down the air corridors, and stacking up before landing.
• A visualisation of the shipping traffic passing through the Strait of Dover.
• A map of London showing the routes taken by a selected group of cabbies, and how it changes when the road get busy, using their local knowledge to find different routes.