State of the Map – Call for Papers

The call for papers for State of the Map-Birmingham is now open.

Rob Nickerson, of the State of the Map organizing committee, sends the following information for you.

It’s that time of year again when we look to you, the mind-bogglingly creative OpenStreetMap community, to tell us what you’ve been up to. That’s right – it time to submit your presentation ideas for the annual State of the Map conference.

Presentations

State of the Map 2013, to be held in Birmingham, United Kingdom, from 6 to 8 September is calling for presentations.

The theme of this year’s conference is “Change” so we are particularly interested in presentations addressing this theme. Our programme will cover a wide range of topics that will interest everyone from the new OpenStreetMap contributor to the old hand to the professional contemplating using our data.

If you have something interesting to present about your work with OpenStreetMap and would like to tell the world, we would love to hear about it. Simply fill out the Call for Presentations form explaining the topic of your presentation. To keep things easy, at this stage we just need a few words, not a full presentation. 🙂

Who can present?

We are seeking presentations from businesses, the public sector, charities, and individuals.

Poster Exhibition

This year I personally want to try and get as many people involved as possible. We are therefore hoping to have a Poster Exhibition for people who may not be able to attend in person (we can print them locally). If this sounds interesting to you, please use the same form and specify “Poster” as the “Session Format”. Posters can be mainly pictorial, or include text. You can bring it yourself or send an electronic copy for local printing

Sponsor the poster exhibition

Sponsorship to cover printing costs would be much appreciated.

If you have something to say, for example, about switching to OSM, barriers to its use, apps for mobile mapping, changing community organisation or behaviour, historical mapping, or just anything that you want to present, then make sure you register your proposal with a a few words to describe the topic.

Tutorials

Tutorial sessions are especially welcome!

Deadline

Call for Presentations closes on Monday, 10 June 2013.

About State of the Map

The State of the Map is the official, annual, international, OpenStreetMap conference. Founded in 2007, previous State of the Map conferences were held in Manchester, Limerick, Amsterdam, Girona, Denver and Tokyo.

Weekly OSM Summary #66

March 25th, 2013 – April 8th, 2013

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

  • The new OSM iD editor reached version Beta 1. You can also find some slides by John Firebaugh that include some background information of iD here.
  • Is someone interested in taking over the OSM editor Merkaartor? Read more here.
  • A first initial dump of all OSM GPX tracks is downloadable now. You can find additional information in the following thread.
  • Frederik Ramm wrote an article about his work at the OSM Foundation Data Working Group.
  • The OSM Inspector Routing View is now available for the whole world as a single layer.
  • A Youtube video about the “ViaAlpin” mapping party.
  • A new mailing list has been created for discussions and questions about tile-serving.
  • The rendering of the OSM France tile server has a neat visualization for soccer and golf fields.
  • Simon Poole’s QA Map service has a new layer. It can highlight way objects with and without name or address-tags.
  • Matthias created a video about the integration of OSM data into SuperTuxKart game.
  • Some notes from the latest HOT meetings and an update on Kunduz mapping.
  • The website formally known as http://www.pistes-nordiques.org , is now available at: http://www.opensnowmap.org . You can find some additional information here.
  • Several US users had some issues using the Overpass-API. This has been fixed now.
  • How to use OSM map tiles from Stamen or MapBox as basemaps in ArcGIS.com.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

Bulk GPX track data

Last year, at about this time, the OpenStreetMap Foundation made a big splash when it released the first Bulk GPS Point dataset. That may have been the largest publication of GPS point data ever. Many users were thrilled to have that raw data and to put it to good use. But they also wanted more. They wanted the track file details.

In fact, requests for bulk OpenStreetMap GPX track files go back to 2007 or earlier. Now, the combined talents of the OpenStreetMap community and the resources of the OpenStreetMap Foundation, make that dream a reality.

Announcing the GPX Planet

The scale of this dataset is fairly large.

  • 848,000 GPX files
  • 2.6 Trillion GPX points
  • 260GB of GPS data (uncompressed)

Not everybody will be able to manage all of this data at once. It is likely, as with planet files and planet extracts, that somebody will offer GPX extracts.

What is this data good for?

Well, it’s interesting and there is a large quantity of it. Many OpenStreetMap contributors have been asking for it for years. Previous uses for this type of data have included

  • artistic organic trip data as maps
  • confirm turn restrictions
  • confirm one-way restrictions
  • confirm speed limits
  • and many more of your ideas in the comments

The future

There are hopes and plans to improve this service over time, including

  • quarterly updates
  • addition of vdop / hdop precision data, where available

You can help

You can help to improve this service by contributing your GPX track data. Upload your GPX files through your OpenStreetMap account. Collect new track files as you survey.

You can also help by using the data for something interesting and / or by publishing some code. OpenStreetMap user Zverik has started the ball rolling by creating gpx2pgsql to put the gpx data into your rendering tool chain.

Thanks

Thanks as always to the million-plus OpenStreetMap contributors over the eight years of the project so far. Especially, thanks to the thousands of contributors who collected and uploaded their GPX track files, and to Lars Franke, who wrote the first Java GPX dump code in 2010, and to Ian Dees who rewrote that into the current Python code, and to the many others who were involved in ways large and small.

So, where is it?

Find the GPX planet on the planet site and mirrors.

The image in this article is a visualization of some of the GPS point data in Europe. The image is licensed CC-By-SA and was created by Dave Stubbs.

Database maintenance

Updates included below the original post.

OpenStreetMap database unavailable on 31 March 2013

There is a current problem with the OpenStreetMap database and so the data API is currently unavailable due to hardware failures.

The current issues were first observed early on 31 March 2013 when the primary database server became non-responsive. The system administrators are aware of the problem and will resolve it as soon as possible. A complicating factor is the observation of a holiday at the hosting facility that prevents physical access to the server until Tuesday morning.

With the database unavailable, editing is not possible. Other database-related activities, such a new-user-signups, are also unavailable.

Other non-database-related services should operate normally. Tiles are being served with current data.

The system administrators will continue to take steps towards the return of normal operation. Given the aforementioned holiday at the hosting facility, normal operation may not return until some time Tuesday, 02 April 2013.

2013-03-31 1810 UTC – Admin on site

One of the OpenStreetMap Foundation hard working system administrators is currently on-site at the hosting location and working on a solution.

Thank you to the facility and everybody involved for permitting access during the holiday.

Corrective actions are in progress. Services are not yet restored. Stay tuned.

2013-03-31 1900 UTC – Return to normal operation

The database has been returned to normal operation. All OpenStreetMap services should be operating as expected.

Thanks again to the admin team and our hosting providers for the prompt resolution to this unscheduled outage.

Weekly OSM Summary #65

March 11th, 2013 – March 25th, 2013

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

Join OSM PLUS – the OpenStreetMap Commercial Users Summit

Osmplus

Henk Hoff and I have been working with Steve Coast to develop the idea of a OSM commercial users conference. We have called it OSM PLUS – the OpenStreetMap Commercial Users Summit (http://osmplus.co/). Here is the announcement email:

The OpenStreetMap Professional Large Users Summit is going to be held just after SOTM US, on June 10th in San Francisco at the Marriott Union Square. You can register here. Be quick, space is limited.

OSM PLUS is new and focused on professional users of OSM data and toolchains commercially, academically, in government and elsewhere. It is a paid-for event and we expect it to be more of a conversation than a traditional presentation. Many professional users have similar concerns and expectations for OSM. We want to explore these in an environment focused on coming up with solutions.

Today, OSM is a volunteer-only organization. This focus doesn’t always satisfy the needs of many users. We want to have an open conversation about ways to make OSM better. Because of that, the program will be influenced by those who attend.

PS you can use the code “GPS” to get 20% off the ticket price if you register soon.

Weekly OSM Summary #64

February 25th, 2013 – March 11th, 2013

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)

Scheduled Maintenance – 08 March 2013

Some OpenStreetMap services will be off-line on 08 March 2013 for scheduled maintenance.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation, Operations Working Group advises that on 08 March 2013, scheduled maintenance of OpenStreetMap services will occur from approximately 0900H to 1600H UTC. The following service changes are expected:

  • API read-only from 0900H to 1500H UTC
  • Diffs off-line from 0900H to 1500H UTC
  • Wiki off-line/read-only from 1000H to 1600H UTC

The scheduled maintenance includes upgrades for the database server and improvements for the wiki server. Some more specifics given on the wiki. Actual service times may vary within the service windows described above.

Thank you, in advance, for your patience and understanding during the maintenance window.

Thank you, as always, to the Operations Working Group, for their tireless efforts that keep OpenStreetMap services working smoothly.

Weekly OSM Summary #63

February 11th, 2013 – February 25th, 2013

A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap (OSM) world.

Did we miss something? You can contact us via weekly.osm@googlemail.com

Authors: Pascal & Dennis – (thx @ “Wochennotiz”)