New Tile Server in Pau, France

Thanks to generous donations and active members of the OpenStreetMap community, OpenStreetMap infrastructure continues to grow.

A new tile server, Lurien, has been added to the OSM tile cache network. Located in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France, Lurien is currently serving tiles to IP addresses from France, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Gibraltar, Italy, Monaco, San Marino and Vatican.

Lurien, highlighted.

Map tiles are delivered to users based on their GeoDNS location. The OpenStreetMap Foundation seeks additional distributed tile servers. If you would like to donate a tile server and hosting, please see the Tile CDN requirements page on the wiki.

We would like to thank PauLLA with support of Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (UPPA) for the server and connectivity and Communauté d’Agglomération de Pau Pyrénées (CDAPP) for the data centre hosting. We would also like to thank OpenStreetMap contributor Christophe Merlet for arranging the donation.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation is a not-for-profit organization, formed in the UK to support the OpenStreetMap Project. It is dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free geospatial data and to providing geospatial data for anyone to use and share. The OpenStreetMap Foundation owns and maintains the infrastructure of the OpenStreetMap project. You can support OpenStreetMap by donating to the OpenStreetMap Foundation.

International Volunteer Day

Today is International Volunteer Day. OpenStreetMap is all about volunteers of course. It’s about people getting out there and mapping their neighbourhood. If we have enough people volunteering in this way (just a little of your time, and local knowledge) we’ll have a free map of the world in no time!

But did you know OpenStreetMap is made up entirely of volunteers? Sometimes people assume that OpenStreetMap is a commercial company alongside other map providers, but OpenStreetMap is something different. It’s an internet-based collaborative project. Not only the mappers, but the entire organisation is built and driven by volunteers in their spare time.

The people who develop the website and the map editing software
…all volunteers.

The people who maintain the servers and keep the database and map view operating smoothly
…all volunteers.

The people in the working groups of the OpenStreetMap Foundation
…all volunteers.

The people on the OpenStreetMap Foundation board
…all volunteers.

We do occasionally discuss the idea of paying people in various roles of the foundation, but as it stands at the moment OpenStreetMap is an entirely volunteer-driven organisation from top to bottom. We’ve got where we are through the hard work and dedication of people who give up their spare time to the project. Hats off to the volunteers of OpenStreetMap, and a very happy International Volunteer Day!

Learn how to get involved

Weekly OSM Summary #57

November 19th, 2012 – December 2nd, 2012

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

A first demo page of a multilingual OpenStreetMap map is online. You can join the discussion at the OSM mailing list.
A new OSM online editor that specializes in translating place names.
Call for Papers for the Open Source & OpenStreetMap FOSSGIS 2013 conference (German language), which will be held in Switzerland.
A new open access research article about automated vandalism detection in OpenStreetMap can be found here.
A new online game, named Train Lord, uses OSM as a basemap.
When will the OpenStreetMap Project reach 1 000 000 registered Members?
Katrina Engelsted did a series of interviews with people who are working with the HOT project.
Some OpenStreetMap projects created by students at the University of Heidelberg.
OSM.org uses Leaflet for map zooming and panning now.
A lot of people helped to improve the US OSM map during the “Operation Cowboy” mapping party. You can find a nice summery from Matthias here.

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

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

Weekly OSM Summary #56

November 5th, 2012 – November 19th, 2012

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

The first videos of the SOTM US conference have been uploaded to Youtube.
The fist OSM Garmin Hack Weekend will take place in Essen, Germany in March 2013. You can find additional information here.
A first prototype integration of OpenStreetBugs on the Main OSM page has been accomplished. You can follow the discussion here.
The OSM Top Ten Tasks have been revised. You can find additional information in the working group’s minutes.
Tom MacWright about the development of the new OSM Editor iD. He also created a video which shows the evolution of the OSM changesets over the past few years.
Pascal created several maps which show the distribution of active OSM mappers per country, population and area.
Some James Bond fans mapped Hashima Island known from the movie Skyfall. How does it compare with Google Maps?
A Leaflet-Port of the Main OSM webpage. You can find the source code on github.
Andy Allan is porting the well-known OSM Mapnik style to CartoCSS.
Last call for Operation Cowboy!

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

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

Operation Cowboy

A guest post from German OpenStreetMap contributor Matthias.

Mapping 24hrs in the US

You remember the Night of the living maps, right? NO?!? Well that was the first virtual global mapping party, where >200 mappers contributed from over 14 countries. As people asked again and again if we could do another 24h party, we do so at the end of November: Operation Cowboy

This time, we book a whole weekend (23.-25.11.) to let everybody decide, when you like to start their local 24hrs mapping sprints. Yes, you heared right, it’s not that virtual, as it consists of local parties, where teams of the community meet, to chat, to train newcomer and to work of course

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Operation_cowboy/join Maybe you already know that this time we picked the **USA as working area**. Mainly, because it’s build up very similar (from an aerial point of view) and has still some problems with [unfixed imported data. Our US members work hard in bigger cities, but most of this nation lacks still in some details. But as we are a really great community, a lot can be fixed by everyone of us

Yes, only using armchair mapping isn’t what we all understand as ‘true’ mapping, as you can only map the reality, when you go out and see what is at a certain place. But currently we just haven’t enough people in America on the ground, so the best what we all can do is, to encourage this users by mapping obvious details (as buildings, landuse, …) and helping them fixing imported data. Maybe, this will attract new users, if they can contribute further more details, just by clicking an OpenStreetBug.

Sounds like an interesting event before the busy Christmas time starts? The first local parties in Germany are already announced, so how about your local chapter? Time to meet your OSM buddies again

WhereCamp XMas edition [Berlin]

Dear friends of OSM,

We are proud to announce that the global concept WhereCamp is coming back to Berlin on 7th of December at Beuth University. Our purpose is to offer to geo communities the opportunity for sharing the newest projects in the area. That’s why we would like to invite you to this great event and to bring into discussion some of the innovative projects that might be interesting for our community.

The success of our WhereCamp summer edition, held this past June, brought more than 250 participants, involved in constructive debates and innovative presentations about location industry trends. Now, it’s time to talk about what’s ahead for 2013.

Until now we have more than 90 participants registered and some OSM members have joined us too.

Be aware that attendance is free and opened to everyone. We also want to remember you that participants will drive the content of the sessions of the day, following the usual barcamp format.

For more details or suggestion that you have please contact us at berlin@wherecamp.de

In the same time feel free to share this event with people who might be interested.

Yours sincerely,

(WhereCamp) Organizing team

Weekly OSM Summary #55

October 22nd, 2012 – November 5th, 2012

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

Thank you very much to Yandex for providing a new Tile-Server in Moscow.
The OSM User page supports Gravatar user images now. You can activate this in your user settings.
The OpenStreetMap website and API are now available via IPv6.
After the “Night of the Living Maps” we have a new event coming up. “Operation Cowboy” is a Global Mapathon event. Read more about it here.
Richard Fairhurst and the new OSM Javascript editor iD. Tom MacWright wrote a blog post about it too.
An article about the first two weeks of the new Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) EUROSHA project.
OSM data density on a map.
Frederik Ramm wrote about the “Anti Business” allegations.
The “How did you contribute to OpenStreetMap?” webpage got an update. Read more information in a blog post.
Simon Poole created a new “live” layer with streets which have no name.
Martijn van Excel wrote a blog post about OSM US TIGER Deserts.
MapRoulette has a new Challenge: Connectivity Bugs. You can also find several other potential error sources at the OSM Inspector website and its Routing layer.
Tom MacWright wrote an article about “CSS For Maps“.
The source code of the iOS POI+ editor and FixMyStreets have been released.
Mike Niceman published some source code which allows the conversion of OSM to GTFS data.

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

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

New Tile Server in Moscow

For the second time this month, the OpenStreetMap Foundation has a generous donation of OSM infrastructure to announce.

A new tile server, gorynych, has been added to the OSM tile cache network.

We would like to thank Yandex for providing the new tile server in Moscow. We’d also like to thank the local OpenStreetMap community, especially Dmitry, who was instrumental in the Yandex donation.

Yandex is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the most popular search engine and the most visited website. Yandex also has demonstrated support for Open projects by hosting a mirror for Linux distributions and other F/LOSS projects and a jabber server.

Weekly OSM Summary #54

October 8th, 2012 – October 22nd, 2012

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

The OpenLayers project is calling for funding. You can support this great project here.
Tom Hughes added functionality similar to OpenStreetBugs to the main OSM site. You can find some additional information here.
Last weekend the State of the Map Scotland was held in Edinburgh. You can find some information at the wiki page or in the tweets by Shaun McDonald.
ITO introduced a new video at the State of the Map US conference, which shows edits made in the United States from 2007 to 2012. Martin Davis published some notes about the State of the Map US in his blog.
A new streaming replication mechanism has been developed to keep a local OSM database up to date.
You can find Alex Barth’s summary and wishlist regarding future work at MapBox, based on the Knight Foundation funding.
Do you want to actively contribute to the Leaflet project? Leaflet is an open-source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps. Find more about it here.
The OSM Inspector has a new layer with routing errors (islands) which is provided by the OSRM Team. Find more information in Dennis’ blog post.
Do you want your own OSM Mapper Baseball card? Check out Richard’s idea.
Steve Coast introduced the new OSM Commercial Users Conference: http://signup.osmcuc.com

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

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

Weekly OSM Summary #53

September 24th, 2012 – October 8th, 2012

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

A new Australian tile mirror is online and overall the OSM project has four worldwide mirrors now. Additional mirrors are always welcome.
Ilya Zverev created a new web service: Who Did it? – It shows the latest changes made to the OSM data.
The HOT project is looking for an OSM Trainer.
How can we welcome new OSM members? A proposal for a working group by Richard Weait.
Mark Iliffe wrote a manifesto for an OSM Academic Working Group.
Chris Lawrence developed a tool to cleanup GPS traces and create ways: osm-makeroads.
Lanyrd.com, a social conference directory, also switched to OSM to visualize conference locations on a map. For example the SotM US.
Pushpin is a new iOS (iPad & iPhone) OSM POI Editor.
The source code of Paweł Paprota’s “OpenStreetMap Activity Server” is online at github now.
All OpenStreetBugs of 2008-2011 have been moved to a different map.

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

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

OpenStreetMap Blog