Gavin’s Odd Bits of Code

2009-05-18 (Mon)

OS Overlays disabled by the Ordnance Survey

Filed under: Google Earth — Gavin Brock @ 10:04 pm
Tags: ,

EDIT 2009/05/19: The service has been re-enabled – see this post…

What’s happened?

After running my KML based Openspace Overlay for Google Earth service for the best part of a year, the Ordnance Survey has decided that the service is in conflict with the OpenSpace Developer Agreement, and I have had my API key disabled.

OS API Key Blocked

Although I have requested clarification on exactly what aspect of the agreement I am in violation of, or how I could make changes to to the service so I can comply with agreement, they have chosen that they would rather block the it. I will give full details of my conversation with the OS below.

What can you do about it?

Over the year, many of you have sent me great feedback of how you are using this service for many things including hiking, biking and even in schools. I have really appreciated this! I believe this service has benefitted the community, and that is why I have worked on it and hosted it (at my cost).

I believe the the Ordnance Surveys actions are unfair and unnecessary. If you feel similarly, here are some things you might like to do:

Finally, if you do follow up on this, and have time, drop a comment at the end of this post to let me know!

(more…)

2009-03-16 (Mon)

OS Overlay – 1,000 tile limit issue

Filed under: Google Earth — Gavin Brock @ 7:10 pm
Tags: ,

Wot no tiles? For some unknown reason, my OS OpenSpace tile limit has suddenly dropped form 30,000 to 1,000. As you can imagine, this pretty much cripples my Google Earth overlay.

Thanks to everyone for pointing it out – it’s great to hear that people are actually using this!!

I’m looking into it, and will update this post when fixed…

2008-04-12 (Sat)

More on Ordnance Survey Tile Usage

Filed under: Google Earth — Gavin Brock @ 1:18 pm
Tags: ,

Here’s a summary of the usage yesterday: (Interesting to note that the counter resets at 23:00 GMT)

Ordnance Survey Usage for 2008/04/11

(more…)

2008-04-10 (Thu)

Ordnance Survey Tile Count Exceeded

Filed under: Google Earth — Gavin Brock @ 10:51 pm
Tags: ,

Oh-oh!

Ordnace Survey Sorry Message

Tiles Used: 34642 of 30000

I guess my OS Overlay is getting more well known! This is the first time I have run out of my allocated tiles.

I’m going to monitor this for a while to see how chronic the issue is, and if necessary, ration tiles by source IP address, or even beg the OS for a bigger quota!

2008-03-29 (Sat)

Daily Tile Usage Count for Ordance Survey GE Overlay

Filed under: Google Earth — Gavin Brock @ 7:41 pm
Tags: ,

One problem with the Ordnance Survey’s OpenSpace API is the relatively low number of map “tiles” that you can use (currently 30000 per site per day). However they now have an API call to let you see your current tile usage.

I have added a little embedded widget to my Google Earth page so that you can check if the count has been exceeded, and if that might be the cause of problems when using the overlay.

If you are interested the tiny piece of code is:

<body>
<div id="tilecount" style="position: absolute; left:0px; top:0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; text-align: center;">Checking tile count...</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
	var supportService = new OpenSpace.SupportService();
	supportService.getTileCount( function (tilesUsed, maxTiles) {
  		var s = "Tiles Used: " + tilesUsed + " of " + maxTiles;
		var div = document.getElementById("tilecount");
		div.innerHTML=s;
	});
</script>
</body>

Blog at WordPress.com.