Posts Tagged ‘cloudmade’

Getting free routing data for the UK

Saturday, May 8th, 2010

I wrote this week about my new Android app, which checks for road traffic problems affecting UK routes. I mentioned that it wasn’t ready for release yet, because there are a few admin issues that I need to sort.

One of the problems is in how I get the routing data.

The app relies on comparing the locations of traffic problems with the user’s route.

Getting the location of traffic problems isn’t too hard as there are feeds from the Highways Agency and the BBC that offer that.

But getting a detailed description of a route between two places, in a format that I can use to compare against the traffic problems, proved harder.

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minibar meets geomob

Saturday, March 28th, 2009

I went to Corbet Place in London yesterday night for Minibar.

MiniBar is a social evening in Shoreditch, which offers people a chance to snaffle some free beer while discussing p2p, web applications, start ups, social networking and general Web 2.0 mayhem & fandango.

photo 016I’ve heard of Minibar before, particularly from Andy and Roo, but never actually got around to going to one. In fact, the main reason that I went to this one is because it was being done as a joint event between minibar and geomob (a geo/mobile developers meetup group which I have been to before).

Despite being a newbie, I had a few ideas of what to expect. Andy described the place as a “dimly lit … brewery bar“, which pretty much sums it up. And more usefully, warned me to turn right when I arrived, to stand a decent chance of hearing the presentations – definitely a useful tip. 🙂

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