OpenGeoData

April 23th, 2012 - May 7th, 2012

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

• The latest news about the license change and the data rebuild-process.
• The OSM project has more than 600 000 registered members now. Pascal created a new webpage which shows the latest active members. You will find the blog post here.
• Apple’s new iPhoto attributes the OSM project as a source now.
• The State of the Map US will take place in Portland on October 13th and 14th, 2012.
• Six OSM projects have been accepted for this year’s Google Summer of Code.
• The next Wherecamp Berlin will take place on June 22nd and 23rd. You can already register here.
• „What we can learn from Wikipedia“ a new blog post by Frederik Ramm.
• Dan Stowell wrote a blog post about how he made a nice map handout from OSM.
• An online cycle map of Oxford was developed based on OSM data and created with Maperitive.
• The “Worst Of OSM” webpage shows some failed OSM mapping or import efforts.
• The new HOT Technical Working Group will start their first IRC Chat on Thursday May 10th at 3pm GMT. Read more here.
• The “Waymarked Trails: Hiking” webpage is available in seven new languages now.
• The new Maperitive version can create its own Walking papers now. You will find a description here.
• A new version of the Overpass API is available. You can find all changes and new features here. For all new readers: The Overpass API is a read-only API that serves up raw XML encoded OSM map data.
• A new plugin for the Leaflet open source library enables a feature to display GPX or KML overlays or a Google layer. You can find the code on github.

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

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

OpenStreetMap will have six projects in Summer of Code this year selected from a bumper crop of 28 proposals. Projects range from tools for data surveys to editor improvements to rendering improvements. Have a look at the full announcement and the list of projects, students and mentors. Students will be posting progress reports to the developers' mailing list so that you can keep up with them.

April 9th, 2012 - April 23th, 2012

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

• You can register for the State of the Map (SotM) conference in Tokyo, Japan now.
• An OSM Hackweekend will take place on June 2nd and 3rd 2012 in Karlsruhe (Germany).
• YOU (OSM) are GREAT!
• The HOT project is looking for mappers for Bogor, Indonesia. Read more here.
• A new version of MapOSMatic has been published. MapOSMatic is a free web service that renders city maps based on OSM data.
• Several results of OSM length calculations for a lot of countries.
• The fastest OSM routing project has a worldwide coverage now.
• The new version of CouchDB supports the import of OSM data now.
• Blog post by Artem Pavlenko about some new Mapnik features. A transcript of Young Hahn’s „Rendering the World“ presentation. 
• „OSM & ESRI Tools“ – Webinar recording available here.
• How can you link your addresses with OSM coordinates? Watch the Google Refine Youtube video.
• WheelMap.org published a Ruby OSM-API-Client on Github and is looking for developers.
• Chad Lawlis wrote an easy tutorial on how to show your OSM contributions on a map based on TileMill.
• With the OpenSource iOS SDK by MabBox you can easily integrate OSM maps into iOS apps. You will find the whole introduction here.

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

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

Registration is now open for the sixth annual OpenStreetMap conference. 

Register for State of the Map. 

Canada Post has filed suit against geocoder.ca in Federal Court. Geocoder.ca provides a crowd sourced Canadian post code database, available as Open Data under ODC's ODbL.

The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic CIPPIC will represent geocoder.ca, and you can help by donating to their legal defense fund.

Details can be found with the announcement on the geocoder.ca web site.

March 26th, 2012 - April 9th, 2012

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

• The OSM database is back in read and write mode since last Thursday. Thanks to the Admins for their incredible work to move everything to the new server! The changes that will be made to the dataset due to the license change will take place in the coming days and will be running in the background. Also, you can find the last CC-BY-SA OSM planet file here.
• "All I Want for OpenStreetMap is …"? Some thoughts and wishes from Mikel and Kate for OSM.
• The organization Development Seed would like to create some new contribution tools for OSM. You can help here!
• Which JOSM version do you use?
• Frederik released a JOSM plugin to record and store data in a separate database. Read more about it here.
• A new Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) project report from Indonesia.
• A blog article about tracing OSM data in the Sahel.
• Almost all videos and slides of the German FOSSGIS & OSM 2012 conference are online. You can find them here (of course in German).
• Pascal wrote a blog post about the geographical distribution of the newly released OSM GPS points. Further Steven created a really nice HeatMap from all points.
• A new blog post by Martijn about "Detecting Highway Trouble in OpenStreetMap".
• Cyclestreets published an "OpenStreetMap community mapping guide – for Cycling Scotland".
• After the OSM 3D workshop in Garching (Germany), the first 3D Map (OSM2World) has been published. You can read the announcement here.
• With Comapp you can create your own OSM web maps with an audio marker. Try it out here.
• A Youtube video about an indoor evacuation simulation based on MATSim and OSM data.
• With YAPIS (Yet Another Point of Interest Submitter) a further web site to add POIs to OSM is online.

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

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

State of the Map, the annual OpenStreetMap conference, will be held in
Tokyo, Japan in September 2012. As with previous conferences, a
contest was held to select the conference logo.

Congratulations to the winner. Find out about the winner and more
details about State of the Map at
http://www.stateofthemap.org/we-have-a-new-logo/

March 12th, 2012 – March 26th, 2012

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

• There are new aerial images for Australia available online now.
• A new wiki page has been created to give more details about the expected changes in API behavior due to the license change. Read more here.
• Some OSM coastlines are affected by the license change. A new tool helps you to get ODbL-clean coastlines.
• See the „Current OSM Activity“ on the following website: http://openstreetmap.us/live/
• The Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) has entered an idea for the “Knight News Challenge”. Read more about their plan. And a Report about the first HOT Activation Working Group meeting can be found here.
• There have been a variety of articles and blog posts on the collaboration between the World Bank and Google. Some more can be found here.
• The http://shortestpathtree.org website shows routing based on OSM vector tiles.
• The Open Source Routing Machine (OSRM) project, which offers very fast routing based on OSM data, has a new server and a new website. Read the full announcement here.
• WIWOSM (Wikipedia where in OSM) is a new project which shows geometric objects in OSM for corresponding articles on Wikipedia.
• OSM has been accepted for the Google of Summer Code 2012.
• There is a new web application for the visualization and use of OSM Points of Interests.
• A blog post by Martijn van Excel shows you how to create a self-updating OSM database.
• A new article about the growth of OSM street data over the past two years.
• A blog post about Steve Coast and his idea of creating OpenStreetMap.
• New OSM map styles by Stamen Design.
• The OpenSeaMap project provides vector maps for the built-in Garmin Chartplotter of the GPSMAP series.
• OSMapTuner is a mobile editor for OSM running on Android-based smartphones and Tablet PCs. Read more on their website.

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

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

Much of this work happens in isolation, co-ordinated by IRC conversations or mailing lists. But we also have 'hack weekends', where developers - experienced and newcomers alike - come together to share knowledge and bounce ideas off each other.

Last weekend saw a major hack weekend in Toronto, attracting developers from the US, Britain, and the Netherlands as well as Canada. This weekend saw a rather smaller gathering in Charlbury, a tiny town in the Cotswolds, England, which coincidentally is home to the lead developers of both Potlatch (our online editing software) and Mapnik (the 'renderer' which turns OSM data into map images).

The focus for this weekend was Potlatch, with a vast list of improvements undertaken over the two days. The theme was "little things that mean a lot", so when the new version goes live soon, you'll notice quicker loading, neater appearance, more reliable operation, and so on. (Those of a technical bent can see the long list of code changes.)

OpenStreetMap's users are hungry for new features and our existing developers are run off their feet keeping up. So if you have technical skills, come and join in. Whether your knowledge is Ruby, JavaScript or design (the openstreetmap.org website), ActionScript (Potlatch), C++ (various site components) - or whatever it might be - we'd love to have you aboard. Check out the mailing lists (osm.org site, Potlatch, full list) and the #osm-dev IRC channel, and find out how you can get involved.

February 27th, 2012 – March 12th, 2012

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

• Foursquare switched to OSM. Some additional thoughts on that topic in a blog post by Andrew Turner. Also, Apple iPhoto uses some "old" OSM data now too. Read more about it in the OSM Foundation blog.
• The new OSM Foundation (OSMF) servers are up and running. Also, say welcome to the two new system admins: Ian Dees and Sarah Hofmann!
• Simon’s Cleanmap, which can be used for the remapping process, has a new layer "UNDELETE_IT". You can find some more information here.
• The OSM Inspector License View now supports Relations too. Here is the announcement.
• An article about the Humanitarian OSM Team (HOT) in Indonesia.
• On OSMstats you can find new statistics for "Edits Per Country".
• MapBox.com offers a new mapstyle called “Streets” with global coverage based on OSM data.
• The "LightMap" created by the University of Heidelberg is a transparent overlay which highlights streets that include street lights. A second layer shows the type of street light.
• The Open Mapquest Map has been updated. For instance, street signs are now included.
• A tutorial by Till Nagel about "TileMill for Processing".
• "mapbook: a PDF map book creator" which uses the mapnik renderer.
• The Overpass API now supports permanent IDs to OSM objects.
• A new Open Source framework to create vector maps: Kartograph
• A new rule-based OSM renderer called "Smrender" has been officially released.
• Jochen Topf released a new tool to extract coastline data from an OSM planet file.

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

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