- 16 Jul 08, 12:55 PM
Today we've launched our interactive map of the Beijing Olympics, showing all the venues, a selection of landmarks, plus blogs and Twitter posts from our journalists in Beijing.
If you haven't already seen it, please do take a look and let me know your thoughts.
I'm a bit of a map geek - old maps, new maps, shipping charts, satellite images, GPS, it's all good (I've just had mild abuse involving "toggles" and "anoraks" lobbed at me in the office, to prove the point) - so it's been great fun to help build a map for BBC Sport.
But for somebody like me, used to wasting the occasional evening messing around with applications like Google's My Maps, creating a map on this level turned out to be a daunting proposition.
Getting a custom map to work on as many browsers and computers as possible, as quickly as possible, for many thousands of users at a time, is not easy.
(I'm aware not everybody will get the full experience with our Beijing map but believe me, we threw the kitchen sink at it to make it as compatible as possible. Apologies to anyone who misses out. I'm also aware it may take some time to load, but then maps of China by necessity err on the large side! We're working on quickening the beast.)
My job has been the easy part - deciding which things to show on the map, what we say about them, which pictures we use and where the links go.
Other poor souls have dealt with the design work and complex development to actually get the map up and running, doing all the different things we need it to do. Andrew Nicolaou, our developer, has worked incredibly hard and doesn't seem to have gone home for the last fortnight.
Darren Blane and Lenny Hanniford, two of our designers, faced a few fascinating challenges. For example, I've had DVDs packed with the latest satellite photos of Beijing couriered over to me by Microsoft but, even then, some of the venues still look like building sites.
Having stared at a threadbare Bird's Nest surrounded by construction vehicles and dust, we decided to illustrate Beijing's Olympic Green ourselves - but where do you get good-quality top-down images of the venues? You need good reference points for good graphics, but it proved difficult to get hold of the right material. In the end we rang a colleague who was spending a week in Beijing, and begged him to pop into a local bookshop and see what he could find, postcards, books, maps, anything. Thankfully he came up trumps.
Prior to the latest satellite imagery turning up, there had also been some great fun and games trying to guess where venues like the Shunyi rowing and canoeing park were, using a few other sources. (Given we only had a vast expanse of fields in the old satellite view, I'm proud I was only 100 yards out with that one.)
You may also notice that if you zoom in on the sailing venue, Qingdao, there is a rather large hole in the satellite map data. Some of my more suspicious colleagues might suggest that makes it incredibly difficult to spot any carpets of green algae, but I prefer to think that's just a natural gap in the coverage. We'll try to get new images when we can.
The point of the map is that it gives a bit of context to this summer's Games. For me, and hopefully for you, it's interesting to get an idea of where all the different events will be taking place.
But alongside that there's the context of where these venues are in relation to famous Beijing landmarks. In choosing which of these to display, I wanted a bit of variety, so while hugely iconic places like the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square are must-haves, there is also the new CCTV Headquarters building (the "Twisted Donut" on account of its architecture), the Olympic athletes' village, the city's main railway stations and the BBC Sport studios at the delightfully-named Ling Long Pagoda.
Good photos of all these venues and landmarks are sometimes hard to come by, particularly for those venues you don't hear so much about. There are thousands of Bird's Nest photos from all the main picture agencies, but you try finding a selection of pics for the University of Aeronautics and Astronautics Gymnasium (weightlifting venue, since you ask), and you might struggle. Plus it's not always the picture agencies who get the best shots. (Why else would Getty, a leading agency, have just set up an agreement to use some Flickr images?)
Above: A photo of the Bird's Nest taken by Flickr user toomanytribbles.
So for some venues we asked photographers who use Flickr if they'd like to share their photos. Flickr users like toomanytribbles and niklausberger delivered some stunning shots of major venues, and I'm very grateful to them. It's not too late to add your photos either, if you're keen. If you're going to Beijing or you've just come back, take a look here to see where you could contribute. By the way, if you refresh the map you'll get a new Flickr photo for certain venues each time.
The next step is equipping three journalists with mobile phones for Beijing. These handsets have to be the luckiest phones in the world - they went to the Euros, I think they might be getting an outing to the Open golf, and they're booked on the plane for the Olympics, but not before I've got at them.
Using a bit of clever software and the built-in GPS, our reporters will be able to send Twitter updates containing a string of geocode which precisely, and automatically, locates them on the map. That's a step forward from previous major events where we've successfully used Twitter. Similarly, Olympics blog posts from China will appear on the map according to where they were written.
(With the humble exception of this one, which I've stuck in the middle of the map to tell you more about it. As an open and transparent BBC journalist, I confess I'm in London right now, and this blog's marker on the map is as close to Beijing as I'm getting.)
That's enough from me. Go and have a play with the map and post any thoughts in the comments, good or bad. All I ask is be a little forgiving if it takes time to load, bearing in mind its nature.
This was put together quite quickly in the grand scheme of things, but we have four years and a lot of possibilities for London 2012 - so if you've got grand ideas for things we could do next time, I'd love to hear them.
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Comments
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Put simply, at first glance, it looks absolutely awesome. Well done, good job.
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Excellent Map, Nice customisation and clear icons. Good work.
Mapperz
http://mapperz.blogspot.com/
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It looks nice...shame us with Google Earth cant possibly get an add-on of this fanatsic graphics.
But its good that the BBC took its time.
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Great use of icons and design over Virtual Earth, working fine over my laptop 3G link on a slow train from Ipswich to London :)
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You tell me my browser (Opera) doesn't support your map. When I set it to mask as Firefox, it seems to work perfectly. I'm not sure what the purpose of trying to stop me seeing it in Opera is, but it's pretty annoying.
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Varitek - thanks for the comment. I won't pretend I am an Olympics journalist AND an expert on cross-browser functionality, but here goes.
Like you say, you can mask Opera to act as other browsers and then you get good results. That is the ideal scenario. But we can't brazenly assume that every Opera user will do that, or even knows how to do that (even though they may well do!).
Because BBC guidelines (rightly) demand content be as accessible as possible across a range of key browsers, we can't just leave you staring at a broken map. So you should be redirected to a text page containing most of the content that's on the map.
Obviously if you know what you're doing with Opera and can come back masking as Firefox or whatever, that's great. Believe it or not I'm actually quite keen you see the map, having spent a fair bit of time helping to make it!
But if you turn up using plain old Opera it won't work, so officially Opera cannot be supported. Believe me, we tried to support it and for a long while were led to believe we could, and it was pretty disappointing when that turned out not to be the case. I'm very pleased you got round that.
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Wonderful and impressive! Thank you for your work to the Beijing 2008 Olympic.
We are from Shanghai China. As the volunteers, we also creat the Olympic venues maps and graphics,
and we think such map would be the good supplement for your map. Pls take a look at http://www.tomap.cn
And we welcome your any comments. If you have interests, we can provide you the graphics.
We believe it will be helpful for the visitors and audience.
Pls feel free to contact us.
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Well, the point is, masking as Firefox just means that Opera sends a Firefox User-Agent string. It doesn't change the fact that it's Opera that's rendering the content. In other words, the map works in Opera, as far as I can see. At the very least, you should have a "You're using a browser that we don't support, but click this link to see if it works anyway" page, as Google does with Gmail and their "nobrowsercheck" option. It's one thing to not want to devote resources to making sure that the map works on Opera; it's quite another devoting resources to make sure that Opera users don't even get a chance to find out if it works.
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Your current location for the BMX track is a little out as the track is clearly visible just below the velodrome.
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Excellent job on the map. I like the interactivity. Much better than the static map from the "official" website. Good use of icons and pop ups. Map loads a little slow for us here the US.
--Joe Francica, Editor, Directions Media
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Interesting to hear about the use of twitter and geolocation. Are you using the l:lat,long format? Can you say anything more about the clever software which is automatically passing on geolocation?
For the BBC World Service, we used twitter location technique. Though for that project, they entered in the location manually.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/bangladeshboat/
http://twitter.com/bangladeshboat
-Mikel
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Yes, Oliver, is it okay if i refer to you as the name?
Well, I have some real issues with this excuse of a map you have created. I am a regular MAC user and for some reason you seem to have created a major error in my browser because of this map.
I clicked on the icon for the indoor arena and then everything just froze, yes it could be a bizarre coincidence but something tells me it has something to do with your map.
I hope you can get someone to get in touch with me to resolve this matter.
Yours faithfully
Mr. M. Brooks
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Hi Ollie,
You might want to add:
1.Beijing Opera theatre, the "egg" (I think thats what they call it locally) onto the map, its just right next to Tiananmen Sqr and it looks impressive at night.
2. "The finance street" at the western side of the 2nd Ring where all the banks and funds are, great buildings and shopping area
3. Around the People's stadium are the "San Li Tun" where all the bars and pubs are. Also "Hou Hai" is the other place where you can find hundreds of bars and pubs
4. Linked-Hybrid by Steven Holl is pretty impressive too situated at the north-east corner of the 2nd Ring.
5. The great wall
Good job mate!
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Just had a look at the map of Tianjin - it is at least 7 years out of date! Beware if you use it for getting around the city. I lived there from 2003 to 2005 and the building I lived in is showed as still under construction! I presume the Beijing map isn't as old..........
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like the map. but where is the trampolining being held?
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Great coverage of the opening ceremony on BBC One, but when the Malaysian athletes marched in, the female commentator said that Lee Kwan Yew was leader of Malaysia. However, Lee Kwan Yew was Prime Minister of Singapore, a separate country to Malaysia, that is also represented at the Olympics this year. Can that mistake be corrected?
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Sue (er) Barker (uh) is the (uh) worst presenter on the (uh) BBC , can (uh) you see already how annoying the constant 'uhs' can (uh) be. It is only Day 1 and I am already fed up with it, and now it seems as if Adrian Chiles has become infected as well. Hazel Irving doesn't do it so why does Ms Barker. If you back at the BBC check the tapes you will find it equally annoying.
Additionally, who chose that dreadful intro, terrible cartoon, and even worse soundtrack.
I'm not the only person to think this, many friends and relatives have also complained
Chris P
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Like Mr. M. Brooks I too have a problem with the map. The moment I opened it Tina Cook was knocked down to bronze by that dreadful German and my favorite Royal Doulton fell from it's resting place on the mantelpiece.
I hope you are happy.
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Hi, I work for Opera Software and have some comments on the browser compatibility approach.
You say "BBC guidelines (rightly) demand content be as accessible as possible across a range of key browsers"
- this is in every way the right intention, and giving good fallback content for browsers that aren't up for it is commendable. However, the devil is in the detail and in this case the detail is how you discover that a browser can't handle your content.
You say: "if you turn up using plain old Opera it won't work (...) we tried to support it and for a long while were led to believe we could, and it was pretty disappointing when that turned out not to be the case."
It seems the map script from Microsoft has a serious bug, claiming Opera doesn't support SVG:
http://my.opera.com/hallvors/blog/2008/08/20/ms-virtualearth-claims
This may be why you failed to get the map working. For your information, Opera probably has the best SVG support among today's web browsers and the VirtualEarth script makes no meaningful attempt at discovering SVG support beyond looking for browsers named "Firefox".
The way to go is to use fallback content AND combine it with proper and thorough capability detection to see what the browser can handle:
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/using-capability-detection/
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Great map and information, well done.
It would have been nice to mention the software used on the nokia N95 phones for the twittering with geotagging.
I beleive it is called twibble from http://www.twibble.de , I'm currently testing a build for Blackberry at the moment too.
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