What is the best song for your music player while you survey data for OpenStreetMap? Can you keep yourself entertained and inspired with a great playlist while you survey, or is the music too distracting? Are there songs that remind you of mapping? In past, some have suggested specific songs as anthems for mappers.

The following songs each have the words open, street, and map in them, though not in the string we prefer.

• Map of Tasmania – Amanda Palmer
• Soldier – Destiny’s Child
• Movies – Lil’ Boosie
• Home to Me – Jimmy Robbins
• My Crew – Jean Grae

Are there more songs with the words Open, Street, and Map in them?  Which songs or music would you suggest as a mapping anthem, or to inspire and motivate your surveys? Use the comments below to discuss. I’ll add some CanCon suggestions tomorrow.

Back in July I wrote about building a new, friendly map editor for OpenStreetMap in JavaScript. Since then, and in particular in the last two months, the project has come on in leaps and bounds – and today marks the first alpha release.

Codenamed iD, it aims to provide an easy-to-use, comfortable editing environment for the OpenStreetMap newcomer that’s nonetheless fully featured – you’ll be able to edit any OSM data with it. Clear modes such as “Move map” and “Add point” make it easy to get started without having to read swathes of instructions.

So – try it out! You can play with a working instance at geowiki.com/iD. It’s connected to a test database, not the main OpenStreetMap database, so don’t worry – you won’t break anything.

If you find a bug, use github to check it’s not already been reported, and file one if not.

The fast progress over the past few months is entirely down to the work of Tom MacWright and Saman Bemel Benrud, John Firebaugh, and others. Some of them have been funded to work on this by a Knight Foundation grant from the Knight News Challenge programme.

As ever with OpenStreetMap, the code is fully open source, and we’re looking forward to the community getting involved with helping to build the project. For the first time since OSM was founded in 2004, this will give us a full suite of editing tools – iD and mobile tools for new users, Potlatch 2 and Merkaartor for intermediate editing, and JOSM for power users – so that anyone can bring their local knowledge to the map, whatever their expertise.

Read more about the alpha release in Tom’s blog post.

The OpenStreetMap foundation announced today, another new tile caching server.  That’s three new servers that have been donated in 2012Q4, for those keeping score at home.  🙂  See the details on the OSMF Blog.

http://blog.osmfoundation.org/2012/12/18/new-tile-server-in-pau-france/

Today is International Volunteer Day. OpenStreetMap is all about volunteers of course. It’s about people getting out there and mapping their neighbourhood. If we have enough people volunteering in this way (just a little of your time, and local knowledge) we’ll have a free map of the world in no time!

But did you know OpenStreetMap is made up entirely of volunteers? Sometimes people assume that OpenStreetMap is a commercial company alongside other map providers, but OpenStreetMap is something different. It’s an internet-based collaborative project. Not only the mappers, but the entire organisation is built and driven by volunteers in their spare time.

The people who develop the website and the map editing software
…all volunteers.

The people who maintain the servers and keep the database and map view operating smoothly
…all volunteers.

The people in the working groups of the OpenStreetMap Foundation
…all volunteers.

The people on the OpenStreetMap Foundation board
…all volunteers.

We do occasionally discuss the idea of paying people in various roles of the foundation, but as it stands at the moment OpenStreetMap is an entirely volunteer-driven organisation from top to bottom. We’ve got where we are through the hard work and dedication of people who give up their spare time to the project. Hats off to the volunteers of OpenStreetMap, and a very happy International Volunteer Day!

Learn how to get involved

A guest post from German OpenStreetMap contributor Matthias.

Mapping 24hrs in the US

You remember the Night of the living maps, right? NO?!? Well that was the first virtual global mapping party, where >200 mappers contributed from over 14 countries. As people asked again and again if we could do another 24h party, we do so at the end of November: Operation Cowboy

This time, we book a whole weekend (23.-25.11.) to let everybody decide, when you like to start their local 24hrs mapping sprints. Yes, you heared right, it’s not that virtual, as it consists of local parties, where teams of the community meet, to chat, to train newcomer and to work of course 🙂

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Operation_cowboy/join Maybe you already know that this time we picked the **USA as working area**. Mainly, because it’s build up very similar (from an aerial point of view) and has still some problems with [unfixed imported data. Our US members work hard in bigger cities, but most of this nation lacks still in some details. But as we are a really great community, a lot can be fixed by everyone of us 🙂

Yes, only using armchair mapping isn’t what we all understand as ‘true’ mapping, as you can only map the reality, when you go out and see what is at a certain place. But currently we just haven’t enough people in America on the ground, so the best what we all can do is, to encourage this users by mapping obvious details (as buildings, landuse, …) and helping them fixing imported data. Maybe, this will attract new users, if they can contribute further more details, just by clicking an OpenStreetBug.

Sounds like an interesting event before the busy Christmas time starts? The first local parties in Germany are already announced, so how about your local chapter? Time to meet your OSM buddies again 🙂

Dear friends of OSM,

(WhereCamp) Organizing team