Nicolas and Robert are flying to Haiti this weekend. They need your back. Read the details on Mikel’s weblog

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Edmonton, Toronto and Vancouver have joined the municipal open data
movement. They show vision in recognizing that providing detailed
information about their cities is good for their citizens, the
environment and the local economy. They should be feted for their
leadership. Thank you, Canadian cities, for believing in Open Data.

But there are risks in the waters of open data, and new swimmers
always swallow a few mouthfuls of water. In this article we analyze
the terms and conditions used by “Edmontorcouver” and find that their
data license is currently unsuitable for OpenStreetMap. And most
likely unusable everywhere else as well.

http://weait.com/content/unintended-restrictions

Lighthouse photo ccby DaveBleasdale on Flikr

The project of the week is a fun way to get out and map something that
you might not map otherwise.

World Cup 2010 facilities in South Africa

Taking inspiration from the suggestion page we’re going to add more
sports facilities to the map. Ideally, you’ll live near the venues for
World Cup 2010 and be able to add the stadiums, surrounding roads and
points of interest. You’ll find starting points linked in the full
article.

In your area

But you don’t have to live in South Africa to contribute sports
facilities to OSM. Add a local baseball field, hockey rink, curling
rink or football pitch to the map. Hey, why not add a dozen of them?

More details here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/2010/Mar_14

Curling practice photo cc-by brianholsclaw
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brianholsclaw/

Every municipality that is releasing open data is “doing the right
thing”, but some are doing a better job of it than others.
Municipalities are new to open data, so these teething pains should be
no surprise. The wider open data community is obliged to point out
where municipalities are falling down but we are also obliged to point
out who is opening their data more effectively.

See how well Washington DC measures up in this article.
http://weait.com/content/better-approach-municipal-open-data

“Thinker” statue photo CCBY by Brian Hillegas on Flickr

http://www.cyclestreets.net/blog/2010/03/10/lessons-from-the-developer-day/

“Lessons from the Developer Day
On Saturday we held an intensive but successful event that focussed on the development challenges for CycleStreets. It was attended by computer scientists, software engineering professionals and webmasters who have experience in managing online services. This summarises some of the stuff we talked about.

Processing OpenStreetMap (OSM) data to build a Graph for Cycle Routing

We began by focussing on how CycleStreets processes OSM data into edges and vertices that can be used by a routing engine.”

Just like cartmanland! “So much to do at cartmanland but you can’t come! (Especially you Stan and Kyle)”

Best of luck to everyone going, seriously 🙂 , but hope we can organise an overflow quickly…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIoQJmK7Vto?wmode=transparent]

I brought my wherecamp ’09 tshirt and everything

Does anyone have a spare wig, mustache or other disguise to get in to wherecamp.eu? The liberal elite at wherecamp.eu have denied your humble author entry.

Seems there are quite a few people who can’t get in, too :-O I propose all of us proles meetup for an impromptu overflow meeting. We’ll call it RealWhereCamp.EU or something, we can do maybe fri/sat or maybe just Sat. I can organise some space probably for a meet.

Can the Wherecamp.eu people please message all their members and those on the waiting list with this post? We can organise things in the comments to this post, lets see how many people are about and up for it, please tweet this post too.