08/16/2016-08/22/2016

About us

When reporting on OpenStreetView last week we made a mistake. Thank you Jochen for pointing it out.

Mapping

Voting on the proposed tag healthcare=midwife started on August 22nd and closes on September 5th.

started on August 22nd and closes on September 5th. More on the ‘MAPS.ME’ – a new application version is rolled out by them which includes an extra “name:<language>” key (also a Github isssue is filed on the same).

In a blog post, Seth Fitzsimmons explains the technical details of ‘Portable OSM’.

Joost Schouppe reported about ‘open’ road data in Flanders (Belgium) and how it can be used in OpenStreetMap.

Mapbox mapping employees have lately been looking at possibly “suspicious” change sets. User manoharuss asks in his blog about how long it is suggested to wait for an answer in the changeset discussions. His colleague nammala listed questionable changesets in his user’s blog on OpenStreetMap.

Christian Quest wrote a bash script that allows him to copy and georeference a Linux-mounted iPhone’s Mapillary images via exif data to use them directly in JOSM before uploading.

Community

Escada interviews Jorieke Vyncke from Belgium, as this month’s “Mapper of the Month”.

“OpenStreetMap at the Crossroads” is the subject of Laura O’Gradys message on the Canadian OSM talk mailing list describing how communication stopped between her a “local craft mapper” and a “robot Mapper”. Laura refers in her e-mail explicitly to the blog post OpenStreetMap at the Crossroads from Jonathan Crowe who qualifies and discusses the statements of Migurski.

Imports

This Minneapolis Maptime announcement caused a certain amount of amusement in some quarters (” … techniques bringing in large open source datasets to Open Street Map … No previous Open Street Map experience is necessary”). However Minneapolis did get 3 new local users last week, and a few more further afield.

The OSM versus TIGER Battle Grid has been resurrected, now with Stamen tiles in the background. The Battle Grid points out areas where recent USA Census TIGER data is different from OSM data. This usually means OSM data needs to be updated (but sometimes it means TIGER is worse than OSM). 🙂 If you have not tried it, go to http://184.73.220.107/battlegrid and solve a few squares.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

Following some issues with its current bank, OSMF is on the look out for an alternate bank which will provide the board more flexibility in terms of multiple currencies and international access. Frederik Ramm asks for advice.

Events

The State of the Map will host a social event for the participants of the conference on September 24th.

On Friday, 26 August 2016 an interesting Mapathon will take place in Colombia from 08:00 AM to 12:15 PM. Targets among others are highway=tertiary . This Mapathon is aimed at a group of Spanish speaking students which are part of YouthMappers, students from Universities in Colombia and the general Colombian OSM community. There are awards up for grabs (including field trips and tablets) in multiple categories.

Maps

[1] Lukas Martinelli published osm-activity, a global heat map of OpenStreetMap where one can see the number of changes made to OSM in each tile dating back to 2008. The sources are available on Github. Lukas Martinelli says: “When you click on a region a timeline is displayed and you can see imports and long-term trends.”

Opentopomap doesn’t update anymore? Stefan Erhardt is looking for help. (automatic translation)

(automatic translation) The New Cloud Atlas is a special map for telecommunications infrastructure presented by Tim Waters on the talk mailing list and in his blog.

Paul Norman asks how “handling the need to do both cartographic and technical review”.

switch2OSM

ImmobilienScout24 a German property website shows data from Wheelmap showing wheelchair suitability of nearby POI. Data are provided by Sozialhelden and thus from OSM. However, the base map is still the one from a competing map provider.

Licences

Due to the confusion about Mapbox vector styles, Simon Poole asked Mapbox about 2 weeks ago to clarify their licences.

Software

Mapbox has now acquired Human, a company which developed an app focusing on activity tracking.

The latest version (6.3.2) of Maps.me offers several improvements, such as considering gradients in bicycle routing, and a clearer map layout.

The OsmAnd developers work on a new rendering engine with multi-threading.

Programming

Mapz provides two job vacancies for “people with a penchant for OpenStreetMap”.

Frederik Ramm proposed in a pull request on GitHub to reduce the maximum size of change sets from 50,000 to 10,000 objects. He received only affirmative responses.

Want to install Overpass yourself? It’s really not that difficult 😉

If the indexes of your PostgreSQL database are too large, may be pgindexrebuild by Rory McCann can help.

Weather Decision Technologies released on Github a Java library for processing Mapbox vector tiles under the Apache License.

Releases

Provided by the OSM Software Watchlist.

(*) unfree software. See freesoftware.

Did you know …

… the correct number of braces for URLs in uMap popups?

… OSM Algeria published the OSM-development in the capital Algiers from 2008 until today?

… the WebGL Globe for visualizing spatial data? There is also a live demo.

… the users blocked from editing OSM are listed with details of duration and reason?

Other “geo” things

The Toronto Public Library exhibits visually stunning maps from the 15th through the 19th centuries.

The International Business Times explains once again, why Google Maps doesn’t display reliable geospatial information in Chinese territory.

Why Apple Maps was a disaster for Apple? Because the map in Cupertino was “pretty darn good”, not the case for other locations. This incident led to a big change for the company.

Upcoming Events

Note: If you like to see your event here, please put it into the calendar. Only data which is there, will appear in weeklyOSM. Please check your event in our public calendar preview and correct it, where appropiate..

This weekly was produced by Laura Barroso, Nakaner, Peda, Polyglot, Rogehm, SomeoneElse, SrrReal, TheFive, derFred, jinalfoflia, kreuzschnabel, mgehling, seumas, wambacher.