An interesting way to get ROI on Public Domain maps!
This week on the OpenStreetMap list…
OpenStreetMap is growing. There are now around 2,800 users, with a Wiki, a forum, four English speaking mailing lists, a German list and as of today, a French list. With such a quickly growing community we thought it would be cool to sift through the map talk, flames and legal debates and put together a highlight of the best bits from the week on the list. So here we go.
There has been lots of talk about the new phenomena of “Mapping Parties” that is sweeping through the OSM community. Last weekend OSM people were mapping Bath, and there are planned events comming up in Reading, Brighton, Rutland and the New Forest. If you live in the North and feel left out, then don’t. Chorley doesn’t have a map, and it seems that OSM are the perfect people to make them one.
Free The Postcode, OSM’s sister project which is all about making a free database of UK postcodes, hit it’s 1000th postcode recently. With a Geocoder and now with each postcode linked to an editable discription (eg SW1A 0AA, you can leave feedback about bad postcodes, or start a thread about your favourite one.
FreeThePostcode’s not the only thing that has been updated in OSM world. OJW has written a nice web-based app that lets you upload and edit waypoints before uploading them to the OSM database. Check it out here.
Thats all from the list for this week…
Bath Mapping party, day one.
After the first day of mapping in Bath, we’ve covered quite a lot of ground. Here is a screenshot from JOSM, showing what we’ve done after the first day.
After day two most of the central streets had been covered. Join in the fun and come along to the next mapping party.
Bath
This weekend openstreetmap comes to Bath for a Bath Mapping Party. Yes, we’ll have another place mapped in a weekend! Get your hands on the press release and have a look at more upcoming mapping parties in your area.
OSM party
The 2nd anniversary bash in London was a good success with 30-odd people turning up. Get your picture fix and more! 🙂
Futuresonic
I’ll be speaking at Futuresonic in a week and a bits time in Manchester. The program looks awsome, and follows on from mapchester.
OpenStreetMap 2nd Birthday Party!
UPDATED Flame in person in the relaxed atmosphere of a pub at OSM’s 2nd anniversary party. Argue the finer points of GPS devices. Find out what people look like.
Where: Porter House, Covent Garden
When: Saturday 12th August, 1:30pm onward
Nestoria launches
Nestoria is a sweet UK-based tool for finding property. Not really what I’d usually mention on this blog but they’ve sponsored the initial work on mapstraction, which makes them very cool! You too should think this is cool because work like this allows more development of openstreetmap. I’ll let them explain why it’s a good idea:
Why does Nestoria sponsor Mapstraction? The past year internet users have benefited from an unprecedented level of innovation in online mapping. We’re interested in providing Nestoria users with the best possible user experience. Right now we think that means using Google maps. But in the future that might well mean using maps from someone else, perhaps even the open source mapping service being developed by OpenStreetMap. Mapstraction will give us the greatest flexibility to always provide you, the user, with a compelling mapping service.
OSM gets its 20 millionth GPS point
That’s about 231 straight days worth of GPS data if you conservatively have it at 1 point a second. It actually represents a much longer time since a lot of people go out and collect track data for a few hours a day at most, and often at less frequent intervals than 1 hertz. The lucky point (48.30426, 11.919947) was in this GPX upload.
