Open Street Maps

For those who weren't at the meeting last night, and who might have a
GPS with computer-link capabilities:

I did a brief presentation on Open Street Maps, which is a project
attempting to map the world at street level, and is making the data
available in CC Attribution/Share alike licensing. The premise is, if
you're carrying a GPS and it tracks your path, there is a very good
chance that that path is aligned with a road, cycle path, etc. By
importing those tracks into a mapping application, they become a guide
for drawing street maps. The project is based in UK and if you take a
look around there, you'll find a lot of area is already mapped. When I
checked out Saskatchewan, there was nothing. The map editing is very
wikiish... anyone can participate. All the work is carefully tied to
user accounts for copyright purposes. (if a map company ever accuses
them of using map-derived data, they can simply roll back the offending
user's data.) Oh, that's a good point to make: don't, whatever you do,
enter any info from a copyrighted source. That goes even for street
names. Look at the sign yourself, and record it. Map makers are known
for hiding copyright traps in their maps -- misspellings of street
names, wrong street names, streets that don't exist, and go right
through housing developments. If they find their trap in your map, your
map can be considered a derived work. Anyways, I digress...

Please, please, please upload your tracks to Open Street Maps. Even if
you have no interest in doing the mapping yourself, by uploading your
tracks, it makes it possible for others to draw the
roads/paths/rivers/whatever.

To upload your tracks, first use gpsbabel (links are all in my previous
email) to convert your tracks and waypoints (I'm not sure if waypoints
upload...) into gpx format. Then, make an account at OpenStreetMap.org
and upload them, marking them as public. (private, if you're paranoid,
and plan to do the mapping yourself, but public is more helpful
overall.) If you plan to help draw the maps, there is an online Java
app on their site that works on the live data. If you prefer offline
editing, there are a few programs... JOSM is the one I'm using, that
allow you to check out data for an area, then upload it once you're done
editing. Apparently their server-side software deals reasonably well
with multiple people working on the same area. (although, of course,
that might be a duplication of effort.)

I'm looking forward to seeing more tracks around Saskatchewan very
soon... get to work! :-)

ttyl
srw
Received on Thu Mar 1 09:29:38 2007