October 17th, 2011 – October 31th, 2011

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

• During last weeks Google Doc Summit 2011 an OSM book for beginners has been created. You can buy it here and find a preview here.
• The translations of the documentations for our well-known OSM Editor JOSM for Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic and Turkish don’t fulfill the minimum standards. You can help to improve it. Otherwise they will be dropped in future releases. Other languages require updates as well!
• The “ODbl coverage map” has been updated. The map shows the status of the OSM data related to the license change.
• For Toulouse (France) several datasets have been announced under the ODbL. Read more in our wiki.
• The official Maps for the “Giro d’Italia” are based on OSM data. Original – Translated.
• Annette and Peter won the inaugural Torsten Brand Award for their OSM project: “Look and Listen Map”. Keep up the good work!
• On October 23rd, 2011 an earthquake struck Turkey with a magnitude of 7.2. If you would like to help, you can find some information about which data sources you can use in our wiki.
• A new website with general OSM stats is online. It will be updated daily.
• Andy created a tool for Cyclestreets that imports and merges cycle way data of the Dft (Department for Transport) in Great Britain.
• The “London Cycling Guide” is now using OSM data. You can find a book review here.
• The “Heart of the Elephant and Castle Urban Forest Map” shows detailed positions of trees in London.
• Martin created an animation showing the mapping progress in Rome (Italy).
• You can add your ideas or suggestions for the Itomap to an OSM wiki page now. The First suggestions have been implemented already.
• Thomas developed a webpage which displays the data of several Web 2.0 services such as Wikipedia, Twitter, Flickr, Panoramio, Gowalla … on an OSM map.
• A really nice OSM map with 3D visualization for buildings in Poland.
• The Public Transport Map (OpenPTMap) will now be updated on a daily basis.
• A new PHP framework allows you to interact with the OSM API. Read a little bit more here.
• Matthias created some pie charts, which visualize the usage of the OSM tileserver by different programs and services.
• The Spanish administration has now an open data portal.
• At the OpenDataCamp several projects used OSM data. You can find the results in their wiki.
• The South African Census 2011 is using OSM for their “Verify Census Fieldworker” website (via Grant)

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

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

October 5th, 2011 – October 17th, 2011

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

• Nearly 100% of Denmark’s streets have been mapped by OSM. Currently 97.2% have been mapped. You can use a map or a form to search for missing ways.
• In Wales the road names show a completeness of more than 95%. Thx at Ito for their analysis. You will find further results at their webpage.
• The “Big Baseball Project 2011” tries to map all baseball fields around the world until October 27th, 2011. You will find the user ranking, a baseball-map and a beginner’s guide in our OSM wiki.
• France has now its own local OSM chapter.
• Martijn van Exel, Randy Hale, Jim McAndrew and Michal Migurski have been elected and Richard Welty has been reelected for the US local chapter. Congrats to them!
• Because of an Edit-War about the name of the city “Jerusalem” the name-tag will not be used any longer in this specific case. The question is should the name be written in Hebrew or in Arabic?
• The OSM Inspector “Routing view” is now available with a worldwide coverage. It shows errors in the OSM street network such as unconnected or duplicated ways. Read the full blog post and further news here.
• Researchers from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth conducted a „Comparison of the accuracy of OpenStreetMap for Ireland with Google Maps and Bing Maps“. Read their full paper here.
• The project OpenArialMap added some new images.
• Get your own Hiking Map in ten steps with Maperitive.
• Richard Fairhurst created a Ruby ODF Renderer for OSM data. Read his full announcement here.
• Peter Körner created some new extracts of the OSM full history database dump. His announcement at the OSM developer mailing list can be found here.
• Kai Krüger built some packages, to install and run your own OSM map tile server on an Ubuntu operating system. Find more information on the OSM wikipage.
• The Android app for the wheelmap.org project is now available at the Android market.
• “MapQuest launches Mobile Flash Maps API”. You can use it within Flash Builder 4.5 native mobile applications.

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

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

September 19th, 2011 – October 4th, 2011

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

• “LearnOSM.org provides a simple-to-use, step by step approach to learning how to make maps with OpenStreetMap”. Visit the new website here.
• The new OSM servers zark, soup, fiddlestick and eustace are online! Thanks to bitfolk.com and Nokia UK.
• “The Licensing Working Group has obtained explicit special permission to incorporate geographic datasets from data.gov.au in the OpenStreetMap project database published under any free and open license …“ Read the full announcement here.
• A new tool that helps to coordinate upcoming Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) projects is online. Read the full blog post about the “OpenStreetMap Tasking Manager” here. And the next HOT meeting will be on October 5th at 11pm.
• New international boundaries from the US Department of State are available. Read more here.
• Google released a new commercial spot for their Chrome browser in which they featured the Wheelmap.org project. Watch the German video on YouTube. Also, they are searching beta-testers for their Android-WheelpMap app. If you are interested, drop a mail to: android@wheelmap.org
• A nice blog post about mapping in Afghanistan.
• If you want to see “live” editing in the OpenStreetMap World, you can check “OSM Live“, “khtml.org” or “GeoXP“.
• A new blog post by Martijn van Exel: “Taking the Temperature of local OpenStreetMap Communities”.
• The Geofabrik also supports a free shapefile download of OSM land use areas now. You can read the full blog post here.
• OSMT is a new tool for splitting or merging OSM data.
• A new HTML5 demo shows the rendering of OSM data within the web browser. Try it out here.
• Michal Migurski provided a new website where you can download OSM data “for major world cities and their surrounding areas“. You can find it here.
• The 2.0 version of Mapnik is finally out! Mapnik is the software we use for rendering the main map layer for OSM.
• Michiel Faber and Guttorm Flatabø created a script that merges several GPS tracks into a “line of best fit” / average track.

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

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

September 5th, 2011 – September 18th, 2011

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

• The elections for the new board members of the OSM Foundation (OSMF) are over: “Congratulations to our new board members: Richard Fairhurst, Matt Amos, and Dermot McNally. Mikel Maron was also re-elected for the board.
• Several slides and videos of the State of the Map (SotM) 2011 in Denver are online. You will find everything here.
• Some notes from the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) Meetup at the SotM 2011 in Denver are listened here.
• “The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is currently investigating the use of OSM for the capital of the Guinea-Bissau“. Read the full announcement here. You can help here!
• Blog Post about MapKiberia and the accident in Mukuru: „Building community resilience, because it’s not if but when“.
• Interesting article at iRevolution about „OpenStreetMap’s New Micro-Tasking Platform for Satellite Imagery Tracing“. Read the full blog post here.
• Nice video of the mapping progress in Georgia, watch it on Youtube.
• „The OSM-US GeoBus is back!“ WTF? Read more here 🙂
• A new mailing list has been created for the development of the “Ruby on Rails-powered“ OSM webpage.
• If you want to create OSM maps with the Adobe Illustrator, you can find a nice tutorial with seven steps here.
• The new OSGeo-Live DVD with a bunch of geospatial open source applications has been released.
• Osmo is a free tool which can import OSM data into a MongoDB collection.
• The Main OSM website is now running with OpenLayers 2.11. With this change it has improved mobile support.

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

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

August 22, 2011 – September 4, 2011

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

• The 7th OpenStreetMap Anniversary Birthday party was celebrated worldwide. See the best birthday cakes here.
• Elections for the OSMF board started! You can find additional information here and here.
• The Licensing Working Group (LWG) will schedule a second mass-email to OSM contributors which have not agreed to the new license yet. Additional important information: „A very small number of contributors have declined the new contributor terms and asserted that their contributions are in the public domain. This does not mean that the collective data in the OSM database is public domain. Their “PD” position contradicts the explicit decline. Therefore the LWG takes the position that their contributions cannot be published under ODbL without acceptance of the contributor.“ Read all meeting minutes here.
• You can pay your OSM Foundation membership with bitcoins too!
• The Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) prepared a data import for Somalia. You can help to integrate this data to OSM. Read the announcement here.
• „OpenStreetMap and Warm vs. Cold Geography“. Nice blog post by Martijn.
• Simon enhanced the ODbL statistics with some new countries. Read more at his webpage.
• A new version of the “Overpass API” now returns metadata such as timestamp and user name too. “The Overpass API (or OSM3S) is a read-only API that serves up raw XML encoded OSM map data. Overpass API includes functionality similar to that of XAPI“ (Wiki).
• Last weekend the “State Of The Map Scotland 2011” took place in Glasgow (Scotland). 

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

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

August 10, 2011 – August 22, 2011

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

• OSM has more then 450 000 registered members by now. About 150 000 of those contributed at least one node to the project.
• The OSM Licensing Working Group (LWG) announced some guidelines for the preparation for the license change. Read more details in the wiki page.
• The OSM Foundation announced that the 2011 annual general meeting and election board members will be held at State of the Map, in Denver. You can find more information here.
• Harry Wood created a map with an overlay of the riots in London. You can access the map here.
• Serge created basic information videos about OSM with a total length of more than 2 hours. See the videos at youtube.
• Pascal created a website last week which shows your or other OSM member’s contributions in a Heat Map. You can find his blog post here, and the webpage here.
• In the OSM Wiki you can find a first proposal “to enable linking different datasets with OSM data” (OpenMetaMap).
• Last week the Wired magazine published an article about “Amateur cartographers mistaken for criminals“.
• The new „Engineering Working Group“ has its first meeting on Monday 22nd at 5pm GMT. Read the full message here.
• The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) wrote about their work in Somalia. And they created some OSM manuals and guides. Read the announcement here.
• In the fourth and final episode of “Geospatial Revolution” the Map Kiberia project is mentioned. See the complete video at youtube.
• Some aerial imagery is now available for the mapping of the city of Dedaab in Kenya, Read the wiki page or the announcement at the mailing list.
• The Ministry of the Interior and Sports of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, published a raster map of entire Ruanda and permitted usage for OSM. Read more at the wiki page.
• Harry Wood gave a presentation about humanitarian mapping with OSM. You can see his slides and slide notes here.
• The Flosm-Map has now an Inkscap and Illstrator Export. Try it here (only available in German).
• The OSM contributor “Ogmios” created a map (http://www.openqueermap.info) with a special overlay containing information for the homosexual community.
• The “OSM Amenity Editor” is now Open Source. This tool allows you to edit OSM node features within a web browser. You can find the project at github.
• The JXAPI now supports polygon queries. Read details here.
• A new version of the German OSM flyer is available. You can order the flyer for free at the GeoFabrik. Read the announcement at the German Mailing List.

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

July 24, 2011 – August 9,2011

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap world.

• The Map Kibera Team asked for donations so they can keep up their work. Please help them out so that this great project can go on!
• “Buddy tickets” are now available for the State of the Map (SotM) in Denver. This means: “With our buddy-project you can get a second ticket with 50% off“. Read more here.
• Andreas Hubel created a first alpha version of an indoor navigation website based on Javascript and OSM. You can test the website here.
• The Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) had their first „HOT Chat“ on July 27 at 1 a.m. CET. Two chats a month are planned for the future.
• A contributor in Great Britain was arrested during his mapping activities for the OSM project.
• SimpleGEO announced that their Point-of-Interest database with more then 21 million points is now available for download under CC0 license.
• A new service by Stephan Knauß shows the “areas” that you or other users have been editing in the world. Try it out with your own or a different user’s OSM username.
• “MapQuery” is a new jQuery plugin and it uses OpenLayers to show maps on your website.
• OSMSharp is an Open Source C# library to process and display OSM data. Read more in the OSM wiki.

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

July 11th, 2011 – July 24, 2011

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap world.

• The OpenStreetMap Project will celebrate its 7th anniversary in August 2011. There are several parties planed all around the world.
• The State of the Map Europe (SotM-EU) conference is over and had more than 200 attendees from about 26 countries. You can find the videos of the talks and slides here.
• The License Working Group released recommendations for „reconciling the data touched by users who have explicitly declined CT/ODbL“. Read it here.
• Pascal Neis created a website where you can „fight“ against other OSM contributors: „OSMFight“. You can read more about it in his blog post.
• Dennis Zielstra compared „Free versus Proprietary“ geodata in Florida. The complete analysis is available here.
• There is an interesting discussion at the OSM mailing list about „Commenting and thumbs up/down feature for changesets“. Read the thread here.
• A new map with “Marked Cycling Routes around the World” is online. It is available as an overlay and you can find it here.
• The Humanitarian OSM was in Indonesia and reports about their activities in a blog post. Further they are searching for writing volunteers and plan to organize regular IRC “HOT Chats”.
• CycleStreets, providing OSM cycle routing for the UK, is now available on Android.

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

June 27th, 2011 – July 11, 2011

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap world.

• In the upcoming weeks, several OSM servers will go down for maintenance. Read more about it here.
• The new country South Sudan is already in the OpenStreetMap database.
• You can use OSM Emitter to create OSM POIs with your Twitter account and a simple tweet.
• A re-utilization of the Ordnance Survey Open Data under the ODbL is possible.
• The ODbL-Map is back online. It shows the current license condition of OSM ways in a map.
• The OpenStreetMap mailing list (OSM-talk) will get a list-moderation.
• A nice video of the OpenStreetMap Smolensk mapping party.
• The Kindle device will support „high quality street maps of cities in the near future“.
• Kate Chapman wrote about her work for the Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) in Indonesia. Further the HOT Team asked for help for Libya. Read more here.
• „Google+ for Crowdsourcing Crisis Information, Crisis Mapping and Disaster Response“.
• “A new kind of map based on open data“ is a new project between MapQuest Open and Stamen Design. Check it out here.
• At Nicolas Mollet webpage you get several free POI icons for OSM.
• In the Netherlands: Current train movements on an OpenStreetMap map.
• A nice visualization from GeoCommens of Wal-Mart taking over the United States.

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

June 14th, 2011 – June 26, 2011

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap world.

• Potlatch 2.2 is live and has some new features.
• Thanks to the server admins for the fast OSM server move. You can see some photos here.
  
• Phase 4 of the license change started at June 19th. There’s now even a very simple and non-time consuming way to stay up-to-date on the license change progress here.
• Walking Papers is back online! What is Walking Papers?
• “How to walk across Dublin without passing a pub” based on OSM.
• Richard Weait created daily summaries of mapping activity, by day and by mapper.
• “Addresshunter – Fun game to improve OSM address database” – Blog post by Philipp Kandal.
• A pair of short tutorial videos has been recorded to demonstrate the absolute basics of OSM editing with Potlatch 2. Part 1: Add points of interest. This covers getting into Potlatch 2, screen familiarization and adding a POI. Part 2: Trace roads and areas. This covers tracing roads, paths and areas from Bing aerial imagery.
• Past Sunday in the well-known German “Tatort” TV show, you were able to see an OSM map of Leipzig in the background. You can watch this snippet on YouTube.
• The DC Sidewalks project by Serge Wroclawski is an effort to put pedestrian routing data into the OSM project. You can read more about it here.
• An article by Derick Rethans explains the import and usage of OSM data in the search platform “Solr”.
• „Loading OpenStreetMap data into PostGIS: An Almost Idiot’s Guide“.
• Martijn van Exel wrote about a new approach to visualize the quality of OSM data.
• Christoph created a wiki page with best practice hints to solve „Self-Intersection-Errors“ of the OSM Inspectors.
• A benchmark between 32bit and 64bit IDs with PostgreSQL 8 and PostgreSQL 9.
• MapQuest announced an “Open Flash Maps API with OpenStreetMap Support!“
• An article which describes how you can build your own maps with Tilemill and OSM data.
• Markus Weber developed a new OSM file Format .O5m. It was designed to be a compromise between .osm and .pbf format.
• An interview with Steve Coast about „Choosing the right license for open data – Why OpenStreetMap is moving from Creative Commons to the Open Database License“.

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