Nick Black

Hello. My name is Nick Black and I’m a web developer based in London. You can find more information about me at

My main focus of interest is web-based mapping, GIS and geo-hacking. As well as my day-job, producing web-based mapping services, I work with Openstreetmap. Education

I studied GIS at University College London, where I specialised in Internet GIS, Mobile computing and Global Positioning Technologies. Experience

I have experience of advanced use of commercial GIS, like ESRI’s Arc GIS suite, photogrammetry packages such as BAe System’s SocetSet and Leica’s Photogrammetry Suite and commercial databases like Oracle Spatial. My main interest however, lies within the world of Open Source software. I use Linux in both a desktop and server environment and have experience using numerous open source packages to deliver professional results. I always like to use the best possible tool for a job and most of the time an open source tool can be found that either equals or betters its proprietary rivals.

My main development language is Ruby, which I use for web programming, along with the powerful Rails platform as well as for desktop scripting. I also have experience programming Java to produce web-based applets and mobile applications using J2ME. For database work, I am equally comfortable with MySQL and PostgreSQL (including PostGIS).