The Visual City - Geographic Visualization: Concepts, Tools and Applications - page 194

Figure 9.9 Tweets in Central London

update with new photography of places at each predetermined time interval. These again are
live feeds into a web-based geographical visualization system, something that was unheard
of and hardly imaginable a mere 18 months ago.
The key to this rise in geographical information is data, but not data as we would tradi-
tionally view it in large information sets from a central repository, often government-based,
but personally gathered data. The move towards low-cost, yet powerful, software such as
SketchUp creates a geographically tagged database of three-dimensional objects, mainly in
relation to our built environment. Yet this is only one aspect, as we have seen. The move
towards the increasing miniaturization of hardware and the demand for remote access to in-
formation is pushing forward hand-held personal digital assistants (PDAs) and more impor-
tantly the mobile phone market. These hardware innovations come in waves with each new
wave adding increasingly complex functionality within increasingly easy-to-use interfaces.
In the late 1990s, PDAs were the 'must have' gadget for remote access to information. Func-
tionality was limited to email and internet access, firstly via slow modem connections linked
to mobile phones and then later via wi-fi hotspots. Such devices allow access to information
but not in the geographic sense per se . As with all waves of innovation, PDAs fell out of favour
and are only just re-emerging, this time integrated within mobile phones, making available
a portable digital tool kit for the data capture of Visual Cities available to the public at large.