David Earl (who mapped much of Cambridge) writes to the talk list to say “OSMers may be interested to know that this map […] is currently being distributed to every home in Cambridge and most Cambridge University students via the colleges.”
Awsome
Events near you this weekend
As my fake self points out, the OSM Christmas Party is on Friday evening. On the weekend there are mapping parties in Medway and Newcastle.
OSM eats itself
Fake SteveC joins Fake Ed Parsons
OSM Brighton launched
On all accounts the OSM Brighton launch went swimmingly with posters distributed to all:
It was also the launch day for The Deckchair Guide – a guide to Brighton – using OSM maps!
Falklands, mapped
Stanley in The Falklands are now mapped thanks to work by Russ Phillips
Google gets collaborative
Google now let you fix their bad geocoding for free. It probably breaks their own license terms, but hey, let’s help them get back above $700/share. 🙂
Some links
Pretty pictures of bike trails around dartmouth.edu.
Interesting blog GIScussions (geddit?!) and post (comments) on the campaign to Free Charles Arthur.
Revert warfare of street names in disputed land (previous post) is ongoing.
Upcoming talk in Dublin, and mapping parties in Toronto, Utrecht, Medway and Newcastle.
OSM Brighton Launch
OSMs first edit war
Live in a disputed area like the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus? How should you name your streets when major governments near you disagree on things like whether they exist?
Such is the dilemma facing David Janda on the talk mailing list:
I am one of two people who are making an effort to map northern Cyprus. For those who do not know, Cyprus is a divided island since 1974. There is the Republic of Cyprus which is internationally recognised in the south, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in the north, which is not. For a backgrounder do a timeline in Google.
The issue I have is regarding names of places.
Since 1974 places were renamed, and as an example, the village where I live, and where I have started the project is called Ozanköy (Turkish). Prior to 1974 it was called Kazaphani (Greek). Now, all signs for the past three decades have been in Turkish, and as OSM is used as a navigational aid I have used the Turkish names and Greek as a secondary where applicable. Example:
name=Ozanköy
old_name=Kazaphani
However, after a few days of editing I noticed that one user using Potlatch changed the tag to:
name=Kazaphani
This has been going on for the past week, and it is taking up my time to correct them.
So, what to do? Is there some adjudication procedure with OSM?
Routable OSM
Routing is going to be the next big thing in OSM. It adds a huge amount of value to an already valuable dataset, and several methods are being explored over on the routing mailing list. Check out this video demo of pyroute:
