OSMF: Geospatial Content Organisation of the Year 2012

The Geospatial World Leadership Awards Jury has conferred the OSM Foundation with the “Geospatial Content Organisation of the Year 2012″ award. This award on earlier occasions has been presented to both Google Earth and Bing Maps and is given out by Geospatial Media based on nominations by the Geospatial World Magazine.

According to their statement, the jury “was convinced and felt overwhelmed with vision and capabilities of the Foundation in developing, maintaining and making available, the voluminous, exhaustive and constantly updated geospatial data.”

The award was received by Henk Hoff, board member, on behalf of the OSMF, during the Award Night of the Geospatial World Forum. Henk thanked the organisation for the award and with that recognizing the project as a reliable source for global open geo-data. He continued with: “The real success behind OpenStreetMap is it’s community. A community of more than a million volunteer contributors around the world. I would like to dedicate this award to them.”

OpenStreetMap, the user-created map used by many of the biggest sites on the web, has today unveiled an entirely new editor that makes it easier to contribute than ever before.

The new editor, codenamed ‘iD’, boasts an intuitive interface and clear walk-throughs that make editing much easier for new mappers. By lowering the barrier to contributions, we believe that more people can contribute their local knowledge to the map – the crucial factor that sets OSM apart from closed-source commercial maps.

To accompany the expected growth in OSM’s contributor base, the OpenStreetMap Foundation is launching an appeal to fund new hardware for the project. The appeal aims to make the editing experience more resilient, so that the OSM community can continue producing the most extensive and up-to-date map of the world.

You can donate online at donate.openstreetmap.org.

“OpenStreetMap’s growth in the past two years has been phenomenal,” explained Simon Poole, chairman of the OSM Foundation. “We’ve seen an explosion in the amount of local knowledge our mappers contribute to the map. This has encouraged more and more big-name websites and apps to switch to OpenStreetMap, while also enabling map hackers and geo enthusiasts the world over to build startling, imaginative visualisations from our open data.”

“Now, with the new editor and our plans for new hardware, we’re stepping up another level to make OpenStreetMap, not Google, the default choice for mapping and map data.”

The new editor

The new iD editor is a pure HTML5 experience, using the cutting-edge D3 visualisation library. Behind the clear design and intuitive interface is a sophisticated back-end that automatically recommends the most popular ‘tagging’ conventions used by the OSM community.

Development began as a community project in July 2012, and has since been taken forward thanks to a $575,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, with development being co-ordinated by MapBox - one of several companies which offer commercial services on OpenStreetMap’s open data.

From later today, new OpenStreetMap users with a modern browser will automatically use the new iD editor. Users can switch between this and the existing Flash-based Potlatch 2 editor (which is being refocused as a tool for intermediate users) using their settings page or the drop-down ‘Edit’ menu. Advanced desktop-based editors are also available.

The editor software is entirely open source, with code available on github under an ultra-permissive licence.

The funding drive

The funding appeal will pay for additional server infrastructure at the heart of OpenStreetMap – where the geographic data and edits are stored – and other key hardware upgrades to improve reliability and performance.

The new server will greatly increase the reliability and performance of OSM’s website and editing service, such that the editing database continues to be available even if one server fails, and providing a more responsive experience when users upload their changes to the map.

OpenStreetMap’s volunteer-led operations team has put a lot of work into designing the new server for maximum performance. Together, these investments will lay the foundation for the continuing growth of OpenStreetMap over the years to come.

You can contribute directly to the appeal at donate.openstreetmap.org, or contact the OpenStreetMap Foundation for more information about sponsoring. Technical details are available on the OpenStreetMap community wiki.

Update 13 May 2013: Bitcoin Donation? Our Address is 1J3pt9koWJZTo2jarg98RL89iJqff9Kobp

OpenStreetMap, the collaborative map of the world often called “the Wikipedia of mapping”, has unveiled a new feature designed to make it even easier to contribute.

For the first time, anyone viewing the map can suggest a correction – such as a renamed business, a missing footpath, or a changed road layout – without learning to use map editor software.

The corrections will be picked up by OpenStreetMap’s million-strong army of volunteer mappers. A local mapper can visit the location to check the suggested information, and then update the map.

OpenStreetMap’s data is used by some of the biggest mapping names on the web, including Foursquare, Craigslist, Wikipedia, Mapquest, and Apple’s iOS Maps app. It is also extensively used in humanitarian operations, most famously after the Haiti earthquake of 2010.

The new feature is part of a drive to open up OpenStreetMap contributions to more people – so that everyone can add their local knowledge to the map. Later this spring, an all-new HTML5 map editor will be coming to openstreetmap.org; its intuitive controls and clear walk-throughs will encourage more map users to take the plunge and become map editors.

“It’s the detailed local knowledge of our contributors that makes OpenStreetMap so much in demand from web and app developers,” explained Simon Poole, Chairman of the non-profit OpenStreetMap Foundation and a Switzerland-based mapper himself.

“By making it even easier to add to the map, we’re increasing the amount of on-the-ground knowledge we can capture – further distancing OSM from the traditional map data companies and their lack of local expertise.”

To add a note or correction to OpenStreetMap, find your area on openstreetmap.org and click ‘Add a note’ in the bottom right corner.

Background information

Notes are freeform natural text, read by other people, making this is a very simple way to communicate any problems we notice about the map without needing to get to grips with OpenStreetMap and its tagging system. Although this functionality has been available for a while on the third party site OpenStreetBugs, adding it to the main OpenStreetMap site brings it to a much greater audience.

Although it is not necessary to have an OSM account to create a note or comment on it, registered users can see all the notes they have created or commented on, and will receive automatic email notifications if the status of a note changes. OpenStreetMap’s enthusiastic community is its greatest strength, and these notifications facilitate an exchange between the original reporter and experienced mappers.

A full API is available for the notes so that third party sites or apps can query existing notes, create and comment on them – opening up possibilities for mobile bug reporting and fixing. The system is expressly designed for high-quality reports from individual users, not automated error checks or ‘bots’.

OpenStreetMap takes copyright very seriously. Registered users agree not to copy from other maps when signing up, and are requested to verify each suggested correction from non-registered users using ‘on the ground’ information. OpenStreetMap is a map for the people, by the people, and made with personal local knowledge.

Further details are available on the OpenStreetMap community wiki.

The OpenStreetMap Professional Large Users Summit is going to be held just after SOTM US, on June 10th in San Francisco at the Marriott Union Square. You can register here. Be quick, space is limited.

OSM PLUS is new and focused on professional users of OSM data and toolchains commercially, academically, in government and elsewhere. It is a paid-for event and we expect it to be more of a conversation than a traditional presentation. Many professional users have similar concerns and expectations for OSM. We want to explore these in an environment focused on coming up with solutions.

Today, OSM is a volunteer-only organization. This focus doesn’t always satisfy the needs of many users. We want to have an open conversation about ways to make OSM better. Because of that, the program will be influenced by those who attend.

PS you can use the code “GPS” to get 20% off the ticket price if you register soon.