March 12th, 2012 – March 26th, 2012

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• There are new aerial images for Australia available online now.
• A new wiki page has been created to give more details about the expected changes in API behavior due to the license change. Read more here.
• Some OSM coastlines are affected by the license change. A new tool helps you to get ODbL-clean coastlines.
• See the „Current OSM Activity“ on the following website: http://openstreetmap.us/live/
• The Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) has entered an idea for the “Knight News Challenge”. Read more about their plan. And a Report about the first HOT Activation Working Group meeting can be found here.
• There have been a variety of articles and blog posts on the collaboration between the World Bank and Google. Some more can be found here.
• The http://shortestpathtree.org website shows routing based on OSM vector tiles.
• The Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM) project, which offers very fast routing based on OSM data, has a new server and a new website. Read the full announcement here.
• WIWOSM (Wikipedia where in OSM) is a new project which shows geometric objects in OSM for corresponding articles on Wikipedia.
• OSM has been accepted for the Google of Summer Code 2012.
• There is a new web application for the visualization and use of OSM Points of Interests.
• A blog post by Martijn van Excel shows you how to create a self-updating OSM database.
• A new article about the growth of OSM street data over the past two years.
• A blog post about Steve Coast and his idea of creating OpenStreetMap.
• New OSM map styles by Stamen Design.
• The OpenSeaMap project provides vector maps for the built-in Garmin Chartplotter of the GPSMAP series.
• OSMapTuner is a mobile editor for OSM running on Android-based smartphones and Tablet PCs. Read more on their website.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

February 27th, 2012 – March 12th, 2012

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• Foursquare switched to OSM. Some additional thoughts on that topic in a blog post by Andrew Turner. Also, Apple iPhoto uses some “old” OSM data now too. Read more about it in the OSM Foundation blog.
• The new OSM Foundation (OSMF) servers are up and running. Also, say welcome to the two new system admins: Ian Dees and Sarah Hofmann!
• Simon’s Cleanmap, which can be used for the remapping process, has a new layer “UNDELETE_IT”. You can find some more information here.
• The OSM Inspector License View now supports Relations too. Here is the announcement.
• An article about the Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) in Indonesia.
• On OSMstats you can find new statistics for “Edits Per Country“.
• MapBox.com offers a new mapstyle called “Streets” with global coverage based on OSM data.
• The “LightMap” created by the University of Heidelberg is a transparent overlay which highlights streets that include street lights. A second layer shows the type of street light.
• The Open Mapquest Map has been updated. For instance, street signs are now included.
• A tutorial by Till Nagel about “TileMill for Processing“.
• “mapbook: a PDF map book creator” which uses the mapnik renderer.
• The Overpass API now supports permanent IDs to OSM objects.
• A new Open Source framework to create vector maps: Kartograph
• A new rule-based OSM renderer called “Smrender” has been officially released.
• Jochen Topf released a new tool to extract coastline data from an OSM planet file.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

February 13th, 2012 – February 27th, 2012

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• The State of the Map (SotM) 2012, held in Japan, needs a logo.
• A blog post about the switch of geochaching.com from Google to OSM.
• The Guardian published an article titled „OpenStreetMap: ‘It’s the Wikipedia of maps’“ as part of the „Britain’s 50 new radicals“ series.
• The websites of the European Union are recommending OSM as a webmap.
• An new analysis by Martijn about the State of the OSM Road Network in the US can be found here.
• The Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) is looking for help to create a creole OSM-Book in Haiti.
• Version 0.3 of the Leaflet JavaScript library for interactive maps has been published.
• A python module implementing the Overpass API for OSM map data queries.
• A new map for on the road showing hotels, camping areas and other useful information.
• An OSM map with ASTER hillshading (30m raster) of the University of Heidelberg.
• The open source tool Freemind allows the integration of geo-positions and OSM maps now.
• A new open source tool termed OSM Explorer allows rendering and routing on Windows.
• SteveC initiated a new project: opengeocoder.net
• A Youtube video about a mapping party in Russia can be found here.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

January 30th, 2012 – February 13th, 2012

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• The “License Change View” of the OSM Inspector is updated every four hours now.
• Several OSM Users reported that the Bing aerial imagery has been updated or that new images have been added. Read more here.
• OSM data and Garmin GPS Maps for Syria generated on an hourly basis are available now. Based on the Bing aerial imagery you can add missing streets.
• A Hack Weekend will take place in March in Toronto. Get more information here.
• Belarus has a new OSM Project page now too: openstreetmap.by
• Some OSM users noticed that several military areas in Germany are now masked in the German Bing aerial images. According to Steve Coast, a German agency requested this.
• The Tiles @ Home server will be shut down by the end of February 2012. A big thank you for hosting this service in the past! Read the full announcement here.
• A new JOSM-Plugin speeds up the download time of OSM data. Read more about it here.
• On OSMRanking you can create daily updated rankings based on your edits in the OSM database. You can find an example of the “Members of the OSM Foundation Board” here.
• Steve Kay created an OSM Tag Network of Edinburgh.
• Lanyrd.com shows upcoming events on an OSM Map now. For instance the German FOSSGIS & OSM Conference 2012 in Dessau
• With Active.com and Toursprung two additional websites switched from Google to OpenStreetMap.
• A video of Patrick Meier’s presentation about “Crisismapping” at the re:publica XI: “Changing the World, One Map at a Time“. Also, a video of a presentation by Richard Cantwell at the Ignite Dublin about OSM and in particular about Haiti can be found here.
• “Around the Alps in 80 days“ a mapping project for the summer of 2012.
• A nice Blog Post about “OpenStreetMap Philippines: 2011 Year in Review” by Eugene Alvin Villar.
• An iOS App for OpenSeaMap is available now.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

January 16th, 2012 – January 30th, 2012

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• On Tuesday, Feb. 7th, 2012 the Night of the Living Maps will take place. It is a global Mapathon. Get more information here.
• The new webpage http://switch2osm.org is online! It helps you to switch your application to OSM (go figure). Ushahidi also uses OSM as their basemap now.
• The License Working Group (LWG) wrote about the license change here and a new mailing list for the “Remapping Process” has been created.
• The design and layout of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (H.O.T.) webpage has been updated. Also, a HOT presentation by Richard Welty can be found online here.
• On February 25th and 26th a Hacking Weekend will take place in Karlsruhe, Germany.
• With MapBox light a new online service has been published to use OSM maps for the visualization of different data. Read more here. Also, a minimalist OSM baselayer for MapBox.
• A map of Ireland showing hospital accessibility using an OSM basemap and Flex.
• Summary of all Stamen Maps which were created in 2011 based on free geodata.
• Andy Allan created a new Snapshot Server. It is a new and simple solution to use OSM data in overlays.
• An Open Source iOS App has been published. Read more here.
• An article explaining how to use R or more specifically the Maptools library instead of ArcMap. You can use the osmar package in R too.
• The new Red Sea volcanic island of the Zubair Group is already digitized in OSM.
• Want to create your own OSM key fob? Watch this.
• An article about OSM in Bangladesh.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

January 2nd, 2012 – January 16th, 2012

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• The State of the Map (SotM) Conference 2012 will be held in Tokyo. Congrats Japan!
• The call for bids to host the State Of The Map US Conference is out now.
• The first US OSM Hack Weekend will take place in Washington on February 18th and 19th.
• Toby wrote a blog post about “License Change Mapping” a.k.a. Remapping.
• Simon’s CLEANMAP has a second new layer. The BADMAP now displays all data which will likely be removed after April 1st, 2012.
• A big “Thank you!” to all volunteers who supported the World Health Organization (WHO). Read the full letter here.
• StreetEasy.com is another webpage, which recently switched to OSM. You can find a general article here and a more technical one here.
• Wired.com published an article on how to switch to OSM.
• Pascal, Dennis and Alexander conducted several analyses regarding “OpenStreetMap in Germany 2007-2011”. Their study has been published as an open access paper.
• OSM Israel uses the OSM Germany webpage design now too.
• The new WordPress Plugin “MapsMaker” integrates an OSM map into your blog.
• Rob wrote a really nice tool to create a HTML report for your GPS/GPX track. You can find more information on his webpage and his project on github.
• The aerial imageries of the GeoEye’s OrbView-3 satellite are Public Domain. For more details on how to use them, read the announcement here.
• Gael presented the OSM project to the French senate. Watch the video (in French) here.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

December 12th, 2011 – January 1st, 2012

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• On Dec. 24th, 2011, OSM reached the goal of £15,000 in donations for new hardware that is needed for the OSM project. Thanks to all donators!
• A new video shows all edits made in OpenStreetMap in 2011.
  
• The OSM system administrator created a list with the “Top Ten Tasks“. Developers are welcome!
• The OSM domains are now registered at gandi.net. Why?
• A blog post by Nestoria about switching from Google Maps to OpenStreetMap and some interesting comments. MIT published a similar article about the switch from Google Maps to OSM.
• “The World Health Organization (WHO) has asked HOT and the Stand By Task Force (SBTF) to be activated to map health facilities in Libya.” Read more here. Also, the HOT Board has two new members.
• How are your road conditions? A nice OSM application for St. Petersburg.
• The Overpass API has been updated to a new API version wich included some bug fixes and new features. More about the Overpass API can be found here.
• The ArgGIS Editor OSM 2.0 beta has been published. To be able to use this editor you need to purchase the ArcGIS for Home software.
• Blog post by Chris Hill about the OSM license change and the remapping procedure.
• Simon Poole created a first CLEANMAP. A map using ODbL licensed OSM data only.
• A Youtube video shows how you can resolve license problems in OSM Editor JOSM.
• Taginfo also shows tag combinations now. You do not know Taginfo? Read this.
• Osmbugs.org has a new GUI and is no longer redirecting to openstreetbugs.schokokeks.org.
• MapStalt – A simple OSM POI-editor for Windows phones.
• OpenFixMap is an android application that shows OpenStreetMap errors from MapDust, OpenStreetBugs and KeepRight. The source code is available here.
• With Smrender you can render sea maps based on Mapnik and OSM.
• A new JOSM APT repository for Ubuntu is available online. For details see here.
• A new plug-in helps to add SRTM elevation information to OSM Nodes using OSMOSIS.
• The X-Plane flight simulator uses OSM data? How? Read this blog post to get some more information.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

November 28th, 2011 – December 12th, 2011

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• You can donate for the new OSM server! A list of all donators so far can be found here.
• Since November 27th, 2011 the OSM project has more than half a million registered members and a few days later the 10 millionth changeset was created.
• Last week a new set of e-mails has been sent to all users who did not agree to the new contributor terms yet (No. 5 in the LWG minutes). You can follow the development by checking the statistics after December 7th here.
• You can find the current status of a user’s agreement to the new contributor terms at each user’s OSM page now. For example: http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Firefishy
• The Strategic Working Group is collecting suggestions/comments from the OSM community about the future direction of the project. You can find it in the wiki.
• Help the OSM Foundation to communicate with more Mapppers in their native language.
• The call for venues for the next State of the Map conference 2012 is open now.
• The Weekly OSM Summary is now also available in Spanish, gracias Chile!
• A FLOSS manual about OpenStreetMap – A really nice overview about OSM, Mapping tools and other important things.
• A „3D Dev weekend“ for developers of OSM 3D is planned for March 2012. You can find some more information here.
• Two attorneys in the USA have been asked whether the OSM map data falls under copyright or not. Read more here.
• The OpenLinkMap is back online. Find out more about it here.
• With ShareMap you can create your own map and present it in several formats like SVG, bitmap raster or interactive web map. Try it out here.
• A nice animation about the edits in Prizren (Kosovo) made by geocommons.
• Konstantin Käfer created a tiled version of Gregor Aisch’s map “Streets of Berlin” inspired by Fathom’s “All Streets” map.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

November 14th, 2011 – November 28th, 2011

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• The OSM Foundation is planning the final steps to switch to the new license. Read the full blog post here. Also, the Licensing Working Group (LWG) announced some information about the database re-build here.
• The OSM.org website had a minor update. You will find two new selections in the layer switcher in the upper right corner. The Transport Map by Andy Allan and the Open.Mapquest map.
• The German OpenStreetMap community has a new website too. You can find a blog post about the new layout and design here.
• Some important information from our Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT). All members need to confirm their membership. Read the full text here. Further the HOT Team is asking for help for their Samoa simulation.
• First results of the new Engineering Working Group (EWG) can be found here.
• More information about the past Hackweekend in London can be found here.
• The Portugal community turned in a proposal to host the upcoming SOTM 2012. Read it here.
• Pascal conducted a new analysis of the OSM Inspector routing view.
• In preparation for Christmas: A XMAS Map.
• “The Brave Mappers Project – The story of OpenStreetMap in Amsterdam in pretty shapes and colors” by Martijn.
• Peter developed the new “OSM History Renderer” tool. It creates your own OSM history animation. Find his project and an example for Karlsruhe (Germany) at github.
• Two employees of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation created a more US style tileset. You will find the github URL and the map URL here.
• ITO World created a new US road fatality map using OSM as a basemap.
• With World Airport Codes the next website changing to OSM has been introduced. Read more about the change here.
• Osm2pgsql is used for example to create a database for rendering OSM data. The latest version of this tool has several updates. It would be great to gather some benchmarks now.
• Jochen created a plug-in for QGIS that allows the user to use the JOSM remote control feature.
• The Overpass API has now a mirror in Russia. What is the Overpass API and what can you do with it?

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

October 31th, 2011 – November 14th, 2011

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

• The OSMF board suggested April 1st, 2012 for phase 5 of the OSM license change.
• Mikel Maron wrote a blog post about the last OSMF board meeting in Seattle.
• An Article by the OSM Foundation about the latest chances on the OSM.org webpage.
• Several up to date satellite images (DigialGlobe, FirstLook) for the Turkey earthquake area are available. The work is coordinated by the “OSM Tasking Manager”.
• A Blog post about the new Tasking Server of the HOT OSM Team.
• Notes by Andy Allan about usability for OSM newbies.
• The next FOSSGIS conference will be held from March 20th to 22nd 2012 in Dessau (Germany). It is a German conference for Open Source GIS Software and free geodata. The call for papers is out now!
• A new Map in Friulian language, based on Maperiative (rules) and Leaflet.
• New topographic OSM map for France.
• Ito created a new map overlay which shows edits in the OSM world for the last 7 or 90 days.
• Mashup Mental Maps and OpenStreetMap.
• An updated analysis for unmapped places in OSM Europe.
• An unofficial webpage visualizing the 2012 Olympic Torch Relay in London on an OSM basemap.
• A new webpage shows the US with its “facilities that have emitted hazardous chemicals into the air“. The map is based on OSM and the TileMill renderer.
• The new Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) digital elevation model with a 30 meter raster is available as free download here.
• Sam Wilson uploaded GPS traces from his company’s fleet in Australia.
• “The National Land Survey of Finland (NLS) has opened some of its datasets to be used free of charge with extensive access rights.” Read the full announcement here.
• A Youtube video about the semi automatic mapping of traffic signs for OSM using a Segway.
• Further video about OSM Indoor-Mapping (German, but nice visualization).

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)