Author Archives: Jonathan Bennett

OpenStreetMap wins Document Freedom Day award

It’s Document Freedom Day, and we’re delighted to announce that the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has given OpenStreetMap an award recognising the project’s work on Open Standards and Emerging Standards.

Members of OpenStreetMap produce the world’s most up-to-date, accurate, and yes, open map of the world for anyone to use for any purpose. It’s used by outdoor enthusiasts, relief efforts, mobile device users, governments, web-based mapping applications and commercial organisations, showing just how useful Open Data can be.

Although the award went to the entire project (that’s You), the FSFE didn’t have room for all 1 million+ of us to turn up, so members of Mappa Mercia, the West Midlands, UK group of OpenStreetMappers met the FSFE representatives in Birmingham on Saturday 22nd March. Brian Prangle received the award, saying “It’s always great to have your work recognised, so thank you, on behalf of all the hundreds of thousands of contributors to OpenStreetMap, to FSFE for their award. We’re thrilled that you see OpenStreetMap as making such an effort towards open standards and it’s especially pleasing that you position us as an ’emerging standard'”.

Anna Morris from the Document Freedom Day campaign explained how useful the meeting was. “This was a wonderful opportunity to learn about the achievements and problems faced by a sister movement,” said Morris. “We found that we have many common goals and ample opportunity to share skills and resources.”

Welcome, Apple!

Yesterday Apple launched iPhoto, its photo management app, for the iPad and iPhone… and we’re rather pleased to find they’re the latest to switch to OpenStreetMap.

The desktop version of iPhoto, and indeed all of Apple’s iOS apps until now, use Google Maps. The new iPhoto for iOS, however, uses Apple’s own map tiles – made from OpenStreetMap data (outside the US).

If you don’t have iPhoto, you can view the maps using this unofficial viewer  from Dair Grant or a transparent comparison from Iván Sánchez.

The OSM data that Apple is using is rather old (start of April 2010) so don’t expect to see your latest and greatest updates on there. It’s also missing the necessary credit to OpenStreetMap’s contributors; we look forward to working with Apple to get that on there.

03 May 2012 Update: Apple appear to have added OpenStreetMap attribution in their iPhoto v 1.0.1

But we’re delighted to see another prominent map user make the switch to OpenStreetMap, and look forward to many more.