Parks and green spaces add colour to our cities. They provide organic
shapes and textures to the rectilinear world of glass cladding, formed
concrete and rolled asphalt. These urban oases give an opportunity
walk on grass, rather than pavement, to listen to birds rather than
cars, and to picnic in the shade of a tree rather than at a moulded
plastic table.

Let’s add a local park to OpenStreetMap.

Find information on how to add your favourite park to OpenStreetMap,
and a tutorial for newer mappers here.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/2010/Sep_12

This is your Project of the Week. Make suggestions. Inspire other
mappers. What is it about contributing to OpenStreetMap that
interests you? Postboxes? Bowling alleys? Contribute a Project of
the Week and share your interests with other mappers.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/Proposals

Other Projects of the Week / Humanitarian Mapping
Humanitarian emergencies continue. If you can provide some additional
remote mapping time please consider helping.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2010_07_Pakistan_Floods
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/2010/Aug_15

Manchester, Limerick, Amsterdam, Girona …. where next? Well, that’s
up to you! The call for venues is now open!

So far, three bids have been presented from three continents. Who
will lead the organizing committee to present a bid for SotM – McMurdo
Station?

To be able to make a good decision your proposal should at least
contain the following information:

* Name of the group or individual applying
* Name, address and short description of the proposed conference venue
* A short impression how the State of the Map 2011 would look like
* Ideas for community-building activities
* Information about the city/region (transport, accommodation, etc).
* An estimate of the costs of the venue and catering

Please have your proposal ready by October 15th 2010.

Get more details and prepare your bids now.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2011/Bid

Hat tip to OSM contributor, Pascal.

OpenStreetMap has *now* 300.000 Members ! #OSM http://www.openstreetmap.org/stats/data_stats.html

— Pascal Neis (@pascal_n) September 11, 2010

http://www.openstreetmap.org/stats/data_stats.html

Adam DuVander reviews mapping APIs and asks the question, Whatever
happened to the person who made that Chicago Crime mashup?

Get the answer to this compelling question, and more in Adam’s article.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/09/the-state-of-mapping-apis-five.html

Image of the Week was started four years ago, this week, by
OpenStreetMap contributor OJW.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Ojw

This rendering of Chester was the first image of the week on 02
September 2006.

Since then, Oliver has selected the best images by, for and of the OSM
community, every week and has shown us renderings, contributors,
hardware, animations, products, and more contributors.

Thanks, OJW!

This is the survey log book of OpenStreetMap user seav and
demonstrates that great mapping can be done with a keen eye, a steady
hand and little in the way of high technology. Until you are ready to
edit and upload.

This page of the log book shows this area of the map.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=14.5875&lon=121.06185&zoom=17&layers=B000FTF

The photo was taken by OSM user maning, during the Ortigas-Mandaluyong
Mapping Party.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ortigas-Mandaluyong_Mapping_Party

Log book photo by OSM user maning http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Maning
is licensed CC-By-SA http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

This is a Featured image, which means that it has been identified as
one of the best examples of OpenStreetMap mapping, or that it provides
a useful illustration of the OpenStreetMap project.

If you know another image of similar quality, you can nominate it on
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_image_proposals

OpenStreetMap contributor Kate Chapman had a question on her mind and
an instinctual answer. Then she looked in to the numbers to find out
what they said.

There is no question the collaboration of the
OpenStreetMap community in the month following the earthquake in Haiti
was amazing. People from all over the world traced satellite imagery
and imported data to create comprehensive street data for
Port-au-Prince and the rest of the earthquake affected parts of the
country. After reading this Ethan Zuckerman blog post, I wanted to do
some analysis of who exactly made the map. Was it primarily the
already existing OpenStreetMap community? Or was it those who didn’t
want to just text message their ten dollars and actually wanted to do
something to help and OpenStreetMap became a venue for that? This new
group would mostly individuals coming from CrisisCommons during the
many CrisisCamps that occurred during this time. I’ve always stated
that it was the already existing OpenStreetMap community that did the
majority of the map, but I was going on gut instinct, not actual
statistics and facts.

Read the rest of Kate’s analysis, and find out which OSM user was
first to contribute improvements to the Port au Prince map after the
earthquake on her blog.

http://www.maploser.com/?p=279

The humble postbox. Some might argue that postboxes are less
important in a world of email, cell phones and instant messaging.
Some cities are removing postboxes that are seldom used and finding a
cost savings.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2010/04/20/ns-mailboxes-canada-pos…

Some would argue that the decline of the postbox means that a postbox
is beneath the notice of a modern, on-line, Web 2.0, open data
project.

And others argue that the decline of the postbox is exactly why
OpenStreetMap contributors care about postboxes; those looking for a
postbox must look further afield to find one.

Learn how to add postboxes and other things that interest you in the
Project of the Week.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/2010/Sep_05

Gregory Marler is an OpenStreetMap contributor who cares about
postboxes and he has provided us with this Project of the Week.
Gregory tells us about finding his OpenStreetMap obsession with
OpenStreetMap and postboxes on his blog.

http://www.livingwithdragons.com/2009/06/my-postbox-obsession

This is your Project of the Week. Make suggestions. Inspire other
mappers. What is it about contributing to OpenStreetMap that
interests you? Postboxes? Bowing alleys? Share your OpenStreetMap
obession by contributing a Project of the Week.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/Proposals

Other Projects of the Week / Humanitarian Mapping
Humanitarian emergencies continue. If you can provide some additional
remote mapping time please consider helping.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/2010_07_Pakistan_Floods
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Project_of_the_week/2010/Aug_15

Postbox photo by Frankie Roberto.

Antony Pegg announces on the MapQuest Developers Blog that they have
launched an open directions service on OpenStreetMap data.

A couple of Antony’s highlights are:

– This service is powered completely by free, open-source
OpenStreetMap data, instead of commercial data.
– You do not need a key. To repeat: NO KEY. NO SIGNUP REQUIRED. NO
NEED TO AUTHENTICATE – just go use it.

But you should go read the full article

http://devblog.mapquest.com/2010/08/31/mapquest-directions-service-on-openstr…