Maps and map imagery seem to be back in the news. Google's recent map update and immense speculation about Apple's "will they, won't they" replacement for the current Google Maps app on iOS seems to be spilling over from the usual tech media into mainstream news.

Firstly, the UK's Daily Telegraph, a "quality broadsheet" seems to have just discovered that today's digital maps also have satellite imagery. It's not entirely clear how this is news, let alone current news. Navteq has had satellite imagery as part of its' maps since the mid 1980's and Google has also included satellite imagery in Google Maps since the mid 2000's. But linked to Apple's recent acquisition of 3D imagery specialists C3, we're told to anticipate a "private fleet of aeroplanes equipped with military standard cameras to produce 3D maps so accurate they could film people in their homes through skylights". The middle market tabloid Daily Mail has also picked up on this story, running with the headline "Spies in the sky that no one will regulate".

This is not the blog post I set out to write. The one I set out to write was about Flickr, about machine-tags, about noticings and about transport data feeds. I had it all mapped out in my head during one of those wide awake in the middle of the night and your mind's buzzing moments. But as I started to research the blog post that I had set out to write, it mutated.

So with the caveat that I'm well aware that I'm making a sweeping generalisation whilst simultaneously doing a large disservice to a lots of specialist UK data providers ... 

Until recently, if you wanted a source of geo data in the UK you had three choices.