We saw these maps a few weeks ago, and now they have been recognized
as Image of the Week. As described by the creators at Axismaps:

These unique maps of Chicago and Boston accurately depict
the streets and highways, parks, neighborhoods, coastlines, and
physical features of the city using nothing but type. Only by manually
weaving together thousands upon thousands of carefully placed words
does the full picture of the city emerge. Prints are
available.

Very nice, and perhaps these are just the gift for your favourite
mapper, once you have already picked up a copy of each of the new OSM
books for them, of course.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9781906860110/

https://www.packtpub.com/openstreetmap/book

See more pretty maps and wonderful photography of maps on the Axismaps web site.

http://www.axismaps.com/typographic.php

They have a blog entry describing the process of creating these maps, as well.

http://www.axismaps.com/blog/2010/09/typographic-map-posters/

This is a Featured image, which means that it has been identified as
one of the best examples of OpenStreetMap mapping, or that it provides
a useful illustration of the OpenStreetMap project.

If you know another image of similar quality, you can nominate it at

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_image_proposals

OpenStreetMap contributor Toby Murray has had a look at OSM data in
Kansas, with an eye towards roads un-edited, towards automated edits
and towards the upcoming census. What did he find? In part, he found
that he is making a difference.

There are 105 counties in Kansas. 104 of them still have
have 78% of their TIGER data in its original state. One has had 75% of
it modified. Yes, this is the county I live in. Yes, most of it was
done by me. Yes, this inflates my ego.

Share with Toby, the joy he takes in seeing the results of his
participation in OpenStreetMap and read his article on his newly
minted blog.

http://ksmapper.blogspot.com/2010/10/tiger-ways-in-kansas.html

Antony Pegg, of the MapQuest Open Team, has announced even more
OpenStreetMap related news, including the answer to a mystery from a
short while ago. Ant tells us:

I am very happy to welcome Thea Clay to the MapQuest Open
team.

Antony also tells us about MapQuest implementations of Potlatch 2,
nominatim and some documentation goodies that you will want to see in
his complete article. Go read it now.

http://devblog.mapquest.com/2010/10/21/nominatim-potlach2-and-tiger-edited-ma…

Muki Haklay, senior lecturer in GIS at University College, London has
published another academic study of OpenStreetMap data quality. In
this paper, Professor Haklay shows that Linus’ Law applies to
OpenStreetMap. Linus’ Law states

Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow

as applied to OpenStreetMap. Professor Haklay shows how positional
accuracy improves with more data contributors per square kilometer.
Read his entire article

http://wp.me/p7DNf-6b

Original link to article

http://povesham.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/linus%E2%80%99-law-and-openstreetmap…

October 21, 2010

Denver Skyline (flickr cc by Larry Johnson)

The State of the Map (SotM) organizing committee announce Denver, Colorado, USA as the winning bid for the 2011 International conference for OpenStreetMap (OSM). The annual event will be hosted in September 2011.

There were five proposals to host the annual spectacular event: Vienna, Austria, Havana, Cuba, Denver, Colorado (USA), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Tallinn, Estonia. “Deciding on the best location for State of the Map is always one of our biggest and toughest decisions.” says Henk Hoff, chairman of the SotM organizing committee. Among the deciding factors were location, experience of the local committee and outreach potential to new communities.

“Denver is a clear choice because after four great years in Europe, it’s time to branch out and engage with other international communities.” commented Steve Coast, founder of OpenStreetMap.  2011 will host the fifth annual international conference, attracting over 250 people in attendance. Sponsorship details, volunteer opportunities and more information will be available in the near future.

Follow State of the Map on Twitter #sotm

Www.stateofthemap.org

Contact the organizing committee at team@stateofthemap.org.

Wikipedia in German has started to use OpenStreetMap as the default
map in some entries. OSMers / Wikipedians Kolossos and Peter Körner,
announced today, German-language articles with lat / lon coordinates
marked “map” would become a link to display an in-article map. That
map also shows markers to points from similar articles.

These contributors, and others have been doing very interesting things
with OpenStreetMap and Wikipedia. Very nice!

Their original announcement is found on the German OSM mailing list.

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-de/2010-October/077812.html

They aren’t glamorous. They might not be pretty. They can be useful,
but there is one seldom-spoken benefit to mapping a local shopping
mall. It is so satisfying.

What is so satisfying about mapping a local mall, or cluster of shops?
It’s a mapping project of Just The Right Size. More substantial than
adding a single POI, faster than adding a village. Mapping a mall is a
nice meal; more than a snack, less than a feast. But perhaps best of
all, mapping a mall is a task that can be completed. Mapping a mall
can be a perfect 30-minute mapping project including survey and
tagging.

Find out more about this Project of the Week, including tagging
suggestions at the project page on the OSM wiki.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/2010/Oct_20

This is your Project of the Week. Submit your own projects or offer
suggestions to inspire and inform other mappers.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/Proposals

OSM contributor and infrastructure guru has written an interesting
summary of why City Labels can look unusual in some parts of OSM.

http://compton.nu/2010/10/city-labels-in-openstreetmap/

One year after the French land cover import, 69% of the country
includes land cover information.

Details of the French community Corine Land Cover project.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_France/Corine_Land_Cover

This is a Featured image, which means that it has been identified as
one of the best examples of OpenStreetMap mapping, or that it provides
a useful illustration of the OpenStreetMap project.

If you know another image of similar quality, you can nominate it at

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_image_proposals