os opendata service a first look
Tue, Jul 20, 2010
I’ve been playing around with the new OS OpenData API, having managed to get an API key and then doing lots of research on javascript mapping functionality. I have a vague plan to link Gaelic place name data, geology data and OS 1:50,000 mapping data for a mobile mashup on the iPhone. At the moment, it’s just a web page you open with the browser on either an iPhone or Android phone but I’m also working on a native iPhone app that will make it nicer to use. This is my first foray into mobile mapping and if you point your mobile browser to:
it’ll ask you for permission to use your phone’s location and then display your position on an OS 1:50,000 map with your grid reference:
If anyone has any ideas on what they’d like to see in a free iPhone mapping application let me know. It’s never going to be as good as Anquet or the rest and you need a mobile signal to use it as the OS only make their data available to us mere mortals over the web. Next step is to get it to tell you what sort of rock you’re standing on!