Found OpenStreetMap on the tinterweb a couple of weeks ago.
I have had a handhelp GPS since January 2002, the Garmin eTrax Legend and have random tracks and waypoints stored on it from wherever I have been since.
I had never until now downloaded any of the data from the device. I could not find the data cable I got with it bought a new one. Found one with USB to Serial all in one cable.
I looked around for some software and I am now using GPSbabel to get data of my GPS. I downloaded all my old tracks so I could clear the device.
With the device clean I have recorded two tracks and upload to the website.
I have used the editor on the website to start drawing over my tracks.
I live in Ingleby Barwick in Stockton-on-Tees in the UK and the only thing on the map for Ingleby Barwick in the place name so I am setting about mapping it.

sharon

Paul Fortuyn en Rogier Leengoed

Faced with the necessity of buying a few presents in an ugly part of Prague filled with concrete, asphalt, and shopping hangars, I decided to lighten the experience by wrapping it inside a mapping trip. Thus, it took 7.5 hours whereas a direct trip would take 2.5. A clear win :-)

Walked through the fields that still survive between the expanding suburbs and discovered abandoned orchards, as well as well hidden huts of the homeless. Observed that some suburbs manage quite well without one-way streets while others happily stick four road signs within three meters. Wasteful. Nearly got lost among dead Czech actors.

Came home tired, with a running nose, spent next 3 hours clicking up the results.

I've done about as much as I can do of Скопје for now, beyond just more tracing of the imagery. All the Bulevards are filled in around the central area, and most of the other roads and streets are marked on the journey between where I lived and the centre. I was able to get some of the road names that I wasn't sure of by searching for landmarks along them that I remember (embassies, major shops, etc). I've entered most names as English transliterations (I wanted to use name:en and name:mk for some of them but couldn't work out the magic incantations required in Potlatch to do that). Most of the streets signs are only in Cyrillic, and transliterations aren't always the same everywhere, so if there's a more "official" English version of anything, someone can change them later. There are quite a few of streets named after important dates in the country's history: 9 May, 20 October etc. These I translated directly, rather than just transliterating ("9 Maj" "20 Oktomvri").

Following a comment by Alex Willmer (moreati) on the Radio 4 PM blog, I went into Radio Oxford's studios at lunchtime today to record a few quotes for their Saturday "iPM" programme about maps in general, and OSM and npemap in particular.

Unfortunately, come the finished programme, they didn't use them - choosing instead to go with an interview with Tom Steinberg, who'd said approximately the same things as me but without the OSM/NPE references! Which is a bit exasperating.

According to the iPM blog, however, they were "short on time" and will include the quotes in the podcast version. I'm a bit of a podcastophobe (why listen when you can read something in a quarter of the time?), but would be interested to hear if anyone does download it.

Wie auf Bestellung schönstes Wetter, aber auch kalt. Die paar Stunden zwischen Aufstehen und Sonnenuntergang auf dem Rad verbracht und den neuen GPS-Halter eingeweiht. Groß Brunsrode und der Ostteil von Essenrode sowie Feldwege dazwischen sind mit unter die Räder gekommen.

Between the Dr.-Enk-Straße and Hermann-Hiller-Straße should be a small way (footpath?) under the name of Spendlingerweg. It is shown on all maps I could find, but in the real world there is only a meadow, with a fence. Therefore I think that it could be an easteregg. Or it is hopelessly outdated information.

Although I never managed to get GPS tracks when I was living in Скопје, someone else has uploaded some tracks, and the Yahoo satellite imagery is much better now than it used to be. So I spent a couple of hours tracing out a lot of the main roads, and the streets around where I lived. If I can find the map I made for my own use whilst I was there (and some of the photos I took of the street name signs) I'll fill in names tomorrow.

mapped first streets in Hornau using Yahoo Aereal Photos.

Endlich wieder Wochenende. Weil ich heute irgendwie keine Lust mehr hatte, bis weit in die Dunkelheit zu arbeiten, um 15:00 Uhr Schluß gemacht und zu Fuß den Tankumsee umrundet, damit dieser auch endlich mal korrekt geformt ist. Danach in Isenbüttel mit dem Auto ein paar kleine Straßen gemacht und schließlich in Wasbüttel einen kleinen Umweg eingelegt.

Tuli sitten suhattua osa Voutilan teistä ja jälleen kerran rikottua muutamaa lisäkilvellistä ajoneuvolla ajo kielletty -merkkiä. Olen oikein yllättynyt, kuinka pirusti niitä Hämeenlinnan asuma-alueilta löytyykään.

Lisäksi tuli "pyöristettyä" tie nro 53 eli Lammi-Padasjoki. Joissain kohdissa tie oli aivan liian kulmikas. Liekö polkua otettu 500m välein, tms?

Huomasin sellaisen asian POI:ta lisätessäni, että seuraavat tagit ei oikein toimi

amenity=cafe symboli tulee, muttei kahvilan nimeä
ameniry=fast_food ei symbolia, eikä nimeä
amenity=museum (ei symbolia, eikä nimeä

Jos piirtäisi seuraavaksi puuttuvat Hattelmalan kylän tiet ja osan Miemalaa.

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Well, it's been a couple of months and time has zipped by. Toronto is starting to fill out nicely, and not just downtown.

Got to go to the 2nd Toronto Mapping party - that was good, as I got to meet some fellow mappers. I didn't do any mapping until Sunday though, and it's still in a backlog I'm working through.

On the upside, I figured out one way streets (yay!), I'm feeling ever so slightly more confident in JOSM and Potlatch is now looking almost like the main map.
That, and I have a huge stack of sheets with maps drawn all over them. And now, a bunch of NMEA files that I have to convert to GPX and upload.

All in all, not a bad few months.

As a map fan, and pedant, it's natural for me to poke my nose into this project.
It's made me think about getting a GPS (though to be honest I have too many gadgets as it is) to add data for the places I go that aren't mapped.

In the mean time I've played about with the editor and added a couple of streets near my home. Can't wait to see them online!

I need to find out more about the schema for road names, places of interest etc. Also plotting an area is a tricky one, not managed that.

After my first two weeks or so of intensive mapping and editing my hometown (Helsinki, Finland), I have some observations.
1. Here's plenty of unconnected ways, mostly cycleways. Not that much but something to check when editing areas.
2. Oneway attributions are quite often missing (in Eira all of them).
3. Some streets have been mapped from aerial images, which have had distortions; for example, Aleksanterinkatu is a straight line but was not such on the map.
4. I have also corrected several cycleways/pedestrian roads which were tagged as residential; routing would be a disaster if these are not fixed as many of them even have bollards to stop motorized vehicles.
5. If trams are tagged on the same ways as the underlaying highway, the tracks don't get rendered in the Mapnik layer, unlike Osmarender.
6. Yet to find a maxspeed-tag anywhere on the map. It would be possible to deduct these from country specific rules, if it weren't for the fact that Helsinki has lowered most speed limits from the 50 km/h in urban regions to 40 and 30. I, too, haven't started tagging them if I don't have any other changes to make.

The first two notions are in my opinion the most important ones: incomplete data leads to inefficient routing, which I believe to be the first major use for this map data.

I just today tried to improve the Länsi-Pasila region - tracked the roads navigable by car and marked the others as service/pedestrian/cycleway, whichever seemed most appropriate. Last edits to those ways had been made with "potlatch alpha" and no tracks existed before so I guess they were quite old.

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Just bought a new datalogger/GPS mouse. It's a nifty little thing which has 44 channels. It's very precise. I can use the IPAQ to connect to it over bluethooth, but it can also log on its own. 330000 points.

So from now on I'll have two independent gpx tracks to work with. If only I could find a way to set its clock. All the rest, I already achieved. BT access from the IPAQ and from the portable, translating the log output with GPSbabel and uploading it with josm.

no niin eka keikka autolla takana. ajelin reilun tunnin aamupäivällä edestakaisin MÄntsälän keskustaa. MIttariin taisi tulla noin 40km matkaa. no nyt sitten laittelin teitä paikalleen Mäntsälään, toivottavasti en ole tehnyt mitään kauhean väärin.

Appelweg Amersfoort

Last few days have been tracing along and adding from memory the streets of Tabubil and the roads in the surrounding areas (PNG). Currenly these do not exist online ANYWHERE else, looking forward to seeing it rendered.