Chief execs are getting younger

Submitted by jamiewallace on March 19, 2006 - 15:40.

We (that is myself and Terry and Martin - the technical supremos behind walkit.com) met up with the Department for Transport, the Ordnance Survey and our first client, 4Holborn, on Thursday. And all the meetings went suspiciously well.

4Holborn, the Business Improvement District (BID) that camps out in Holborn police station, have really bought into the idea and we had a great chat about all the creative opportunities for ‘marketing' walking/walkit.com through their upcoming transport portal. Their CEO (and in case this conjures up a mental image of a 50 or 60-something bloke, no, I think she was in her twenties...) had some great ideas and will hopefully help us make links to the other BIDs in London.

So we're now moving from the largely conceptual development phase, to delivering ‘products/services' to ‘clients'. This is a bit of a leap - but a welcome one. I now need to get my head round things like contracts and licensing agreements.

We had a good meeting with the OS too. They're a funny old outfit the OS. They certainly charge out their data in a very commercial manner, but they also behave partially like a statutory body. There's a huge amount of debate amongst mapping experts about them: on the one hand recognising that they produce some of the best data in the world, but on the other complaining that their charging model stifles innovation (wholly in contrast to the US where much of the equivalent data is free). The guy we met has been there only 6 months and certainly seemed to have a ‘can do' attitude. I suspect ‘can do' will morph into ‘can't help'. But I'm happy to suspend disbelief for a while longer.

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DfT endorses walkit.com...

Submitted by jamiewallace on March 9, 2006 - 15:30.

Well, sort of.

I use the 'Google Alert' service to tell me when new instances of the phrase 'walkit.com' appear in the global ether. It crops up in some unusual places.

I was particularly surprised the other day when Google informed me that 'walkit.com' had been detected on the Department for Transport website. Curious I thought. I've been in protracted talks with the DfT for over a year now, but I've never been bowled over by their enthusiasm for the concept.

So I click through and low and behold the DfT has placed a walkit link on the 'How to find us' section of their website. Nestling at the bottom, below all the 'By bus', 'By train', 'By car' etc. information is the following: "On foot - For central London walking routes, see walkit.com".

It's a rather nice endorsement (of sorts) to receive. But it's slightly puzzling, not least since the site is very much a 'beta' (or pilot) version, and hence still pretty unreliable.

But I suppose in relation to their own Transport Direct (TD) journey planner, we've done rather well at the walkit.com HQ.

TD is a hugely ambitious project that allows you to enter any two postcodes for anywhere in the country and it will give you practically every possible journey option (by public or private transport) between them.

But it's being delivered at a price - some £35 million, and counting. And what have we spent? About £3.5k. Yup, we've spent a TEN THOUSANDTH of their budget. Probably less than the cost of refreshments factored into the budgets of the vast global consulting firms who are meant to be delivering TD. read more | 1 comment

walkit.com helps avert looming threat from floating elephants

Submitted by jamiewallace on March 2, 2006 - 17:09.

The London Borough of Sutton website helpfully provides visitors with the following statistics:

"The average car (based on a 4 seater family car) emits 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year. In December 2004, there were 31 million cars on the roads in Britain. That means 31 million cars emitting 124 millions tonnes of CO2.

Hard to imagine such high numbers?

To help, imagine an African elephant. An adult male weighs about 4 tonnes. That's the equivalent of the CO2 emissions of one car.

Now imagine 31 million African Elephants floating over our heads."

I struggle to imagine 1 floating elephant, let alone 31 million. I've never quite understood the whole 'tonnes of gas' thing. To me it's as incomprehensible as 'yards of water' or 'pints of wood'.

I think I got a C in O level physics.

But if walkit.com is needed for the impending floating elephant threat, we're ready to help. 1 comment | global warming | climate change | carbon dioxide