New SotM logo!

SOTM logo

A New Logo for the State of the Map from stateofthemap.org:

“The logo for this year’s State of the Map was designed by Sofiya Merkulova and was chosen from over 35 designs. The SOTM09 organizing committee felt that Sofia’s design was powerful, fun and conveyed the global nature of OpenStreetMap and SOTM09.

The organizing committee’s congratulations go to Sofia and our thanks go to all of the competition entrants. It was not an easy choice to make, but we’ve now got a great logo for a conference that is shaping up to be the best State of the Map yet.

The logos are available under a Creative Commons Licence. You can download a bundle that includes different resolutions and greyscale versions here.”

Discounts available for OpenStreetMappers to attend Where 2.0

The title says it all. The guys at O’Reilly have given a generous 20% off the ticket price for this year’s Where 2.0 conference to anyone involved in OpenStreetMap.

OpenStreetMappers always make a prominent appearance at Where 2.0 and this year is no exception. To get your discount, use the code “whr09osm”.

Fun at Where 2.0

If you’re in the Bay Area for Where 2.0, make sure you come along to WhereCamp, the unconference for geo-hackers, mappers and location people. You can find out more about WhereCamp here.

Call for Presentations for the State of the Map 2009 Closes Soon

The call for papers for the State of the Map 2009 closes on the 3rd May.  You have just over one more week to get your presentations in.  As a reminder, here are the themes for this year’s conference:

  • OSM 2011 – How do we take OpenStreetMap from 100,000 to 1,000,000 contributors?
  • New Mapping Frontiers – Learn how OpenStreetMap is expanding into new communities, new regions and mapping new features.
  • OpenStreetMap Application Development – Hear about the latest and greatest applications developed by the OpenStreetMap community
  • Tools Tips and Techniques – Get expert advice from the people who created the tools!  Learn about editors, map renderers and more.

We had some fantastic submissions and ideas so far, on subjects ranging from how OSM can combine data from other sources to create a richer map, exploration of the quality of OSM data, how we’ll build the community out to 1,000,000 contributors to building the next generation of slippy maps that will render vector data in the browser.  If you like OSM, you’ll love the State of the Map.

sotm_button_talk

OSM API 0.6 on the way

The OpenStreetMap API is now in Read Only mode while the upgrade/migration to 0.6 is undertaken. The API will be in this mode (or at times totally unavailable) until the changes are complete, which at the moment is expected to be some time on Monday April 20th.

During the upgrade OSM contributors will not be able to save their editing to the OSM database and the online editor, potlatch, will be disabled.

Once the upgrade is complete be sure to also upgrade your OSM editing software to ensure compatibility with API 0.6. Potlatch will be updated as part of the migration process.

For up-to date progress keep an eye on the front page of the wiki or drop in on IRC to #OSM

For more information on the upgrade see here

Some changes to OSM

With the upcoming API 0.6 the technical team have made several discoveries of the overall performance of Ruby, MySQL and the code used to run OSM. They’ve found that with MonetDB and the cherokee webserver we can speed things up considerably, and reduce the CPU count. This system has been reliably tested by Tom Hughes and Matt Amos as hundreds of times faster than the current setup. The speed increases are incredible to the point where the DB almost seems to know map edits before they happen and the HTTP and DB transactions tend to 0ms over time, and 0% of the XML API transaction itself.

Of course partly this is because it’s been re-written in C++ and all clients, particularly potlatch, now will be using the new binary protocol. Richard Fairhurst, the potlatch dictator, has been in close and positive contact with the authors of the new system to make this shift and has been working openly to encourage new developers to help rework potlatch. Improvements will include basic usability.

Unfortunately some of the work has pushed back the API switchover and a working group has been set up to decide on a date to announce the new date for switchover.

To counterbalance this bad news however, there is a silver lining – the license process has completed. From today the OSM database is available under the NDL [1], a variant of the original ODbL and closely similar in purpose and intent of the Duke Nukem Forever release process, which has shone industry-wide as an example of best practices.

[1] – NilDesperandumLicense

OSM WordPress plugin

Michael Kang writes:


faktor is a group of photographers, we started an open photoproject in 2004, to collect one photo for each location. Last month we decided to add geo data and geo links on this site. To handle this I wrote a plugin and after some lines I thought it could be usefull for others, too.

To add a map into your wordpress blog you just have to install the plugin and use the shortcode like:

[osm_map Lat=”37.5665″ Long=”126.9779″ zoom=”5″ width=”450″ height=”300″]

in your post/page (no configuration is needed).

Details and the plugin is here:

http://www.Fotomobil.at/wp-osm-plugin

Also see geopress

SOTM needs a logo!

From stateofthemaporg:

The SOTM working group is pleased to announce a call for logo designs. Our existing logos have served us well and the time is right to look further afield to make sure we have the best design possible. We’ve put together a Design Brief which outlines what we’re looking for in a logo. We invite you to either build a logo yourself, rope in some friends/co-workers or use a site like elance.com and a spare £/$/€50 and get a freelancer to have a go.

The logo must be licensed CC-BY-SA and received by email within two weeks (by midnight Wednesday 8th April UK time). The team will decide by vote the logo to go with.

The winning entry will be rewarded with a full weekend ticket to SOTM!

The SOTM team can’t wait to see your entries!

The Crowd Sourced Approach Gathers More Supporters

The Geographers, GIS buffs and spatial analysts at UCL have always been big supporters of OpenStreetMap.  Over the last few years more and more of their attention has been turning to the study of crowd sourcing as a way of creating geographic information.  One great example of applying academic research to OSM is Muki Haklay’s 2008 OSM Quality Evaluation work, in which Muki compared OSM data to data sets produced by the UK Ordnance Survey (OS) – the UK Government body charged with mapping the UK.  The OS has a fierce reputation for for producing some of the most accurate and most detailed maps in the world, so its impressive to hear that: “The positional accuracy [of OSM] is about 6 metres, which is expected for the data collection methods that are used in OSM. The comparison of motorways shows about 80% overlap between OSM and OS…”.  Of course OSM moves quickly – there are now more than 100,000 OSMers around the world compared with 35,000 this time last year – so when I spoke to Muki earlier this year I was excited to hear that there is more OSM data analysis on the way.  Watch this space and in the meantime, take a look at this recent presentation.

A team of UCL Geographers are taking their interests in crowd sourcing on the road, speaking at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting in Las Vegas next week (22nd – 27th March).  Papers include: “Neogeography: Crowdsourcing and Mapping for Masses” – something that should be of interest to any OSMers in the area.  Another interesting looking title comes from TeleAtlas Chief Scientist Don Cooke talking about “Neogeography and Crowdsourcing: the View from a Walled Garden“.  I got the opportunity to talk to Don after giving a presentation about OSM and crowdsourcing at last year’s Where2.0 conference.  He was a big fan of OSM and the crowd sourcing model.  One thing’s for sure – the often distainfuly labelled “paeleo” generation are not going to roll over and die.  Guys like Don Cooke or the UCL geographers are veterans of an industry that has created vast data sets, empowered millions of people to make better decisions, as well as creating companies with multi-billion dollar price tags.

How will OpenStreetMap react when the “walled garden” approach to crowd sourcing puts the power to edit and create maps in the hands of everyone with a mobile phone or a sat-nav?  To make sure that the open approach to crowd sourcing keeps on producing data sets that can be favourably compared with those of the walled gardens we need to keep one step ahead.  Learn from the acheivements and mistakes of companies like Tom-Tom, who are embracing crowd sourcing.  Openess alone isn’t going to build a free world map.  We need to expand the reach of OpenStreetMap – attract 900,000 more mappers in more places of the world and help them produce better maps.

OSM passes 100,000 users!

A great day for celebration! Sometime during Monday 16th March 2009 OpenStreetMap gained it’s 100,000’th registered user account!

It’s been a fantastic journey since 9th August 2004 when User:Steve registered the domain and started the project. Today we have a fantastic set of sysadmins keeping the OSM clockwork going, brilliant developers and a massive and stunning community building… the map.

Our map goes from strength to strength with such fantastic detail being built it’s unreal. Check it out!

Now, roll on our 1,000,000’th user please! Help OSM get there by submitting a talk to our upcoming conference – it’s going to be a blast!