Today, I (accidentally) found out that the Bing imagery layer in OSM editors has seen an update — the last ever update for my local area, IIRC, is from 2013-ish. Many, many years ago, when some areas (even my state capital) were still stuck with Landsat imagery. There are limited high res imageries too, but it’s quite outdated (some are from 2005, for example), for the rest of my country (Malaysia).

Mapbox decided to share their imagery too, roughly mid-2014; and last year DigitalGlobe and Esri chipped in as well. With the availability of more recent and higher resolution imageries, usually DG layers has become my staple for editing, since their debut from May last year.

Bing imagery - in the editors: iD and JOSM - is more or less, DigitalGlobe (DG) Premium layer, but with overzoom. The advantage is that new users might find that it is more bearable to edit in higher zoom levels. DG Premium would only display white tiles, when an editor is trying to go beyond zoom level 19.

Pretty thrilled to be honest, at least new editors will be able to benefit from this, as Bing imagery is the default imagery in the iD editor. Previously, I reckon these new editors (in my country) might find editing OSM so off-putting; seeing outdated imagery, or Landsat imagery where higher resolution imagery is not available.

So I checked Bing Maps, expecting changes. Who knows… Apparently, the satellite layer in their own website is not updated yet. Which baffled me a bit. Probably that will take some time?

P.S. Anyway thank you very much Microsoft for your imagery refresh.

Kali ni EX-Raid pulak dah.

Niantic guna data lama kot (tahun lepas ke bila entah). Ha, kalau korang update, tak keluar-keluar lagi, ha, tau sendiri tau-lah. Boleh pulak bising, “tolonglah update, tolonglah update“… macamlah orang Niantic tak tau ;-)

Tak naklah jamu cili ke apa ke, yang buat elok-elok tu, tahniah dan semoga anda sememangnya orang yang bersifat jujur, depan skrin mahupun belakang skrin.

“Amboi, serius benor.” Yelah, seserius korang main permainan korang tu.

Jangan sampai seluruh Malaysia tu jadi sekolah sudah (boleh je nak buat ;-) sebenarnya).

Nak minta tolong, boleh. Tak ada masalah. PM tepi je. Cuma jangan guna benda yang Copyright reserved / hak cipta terpelihara. Rilek, tak makan orang pun. Tak kena bayar sesen pun… sebab nak jaga kualiti data peta ni. Ingat, bukan permainan tu je yang guna peta ni. Ingat orang lain sikit…

P.S. nak jaga taman dalam hati. Camner eh nak letak dalam peta ni.

pokemon=yes and all that. Good time to propose them, I guess ;-)

… apparently my own memory has failed me.

Last September, I have jotted down places to be added into OSM during a (long) bus trip using the Favourite feature in the OsmAnd app. On top of that, OSMTracker for Android was also recording tracks, and I have also taken some photos.

Places near the destination of the bus trip is quite undermapped in OSM. When I reached back home, I found out that neither Bing nor Mapbox layers that has high resolution imagery. Sentinel 2 imagery can be said to be helpful, but to a certain extent. So, I have kept a backup of the Favourite GPX file, who knows, it could be reused in the future.

As DigitalGlobe (DG) has released two layers of imageries recently, I have decided to do remapping again, based on these Favourite GPX files. Many thanks to DG, apparently places across the mentioned bus journey could be (re-)mapped using the Premium (but not the Standard) layer.

However, it seems that I didn’t include adequate contexts while jotting things down… oh no, not a good news. I was not able to exactly recall some of these things. Shame.

---

P.S. cannot thank DigitalGlobe enough for sharing their imagery layers.

OK, a week of Easter special.

More new Pokémon mappers, [edited] and more map data which is quite, err, not that quite above par. Well…

Looks like a small bridge for pedestrians to cross a drain - that’s what I perceived from Bing imagery. Nope! It’s an advert sign for an automobile shop.

… which stands for True Colour Imagery.

It’s really wonderful! I used to download all separate three visible bands and took significant time to make them into RGB ones. Because I lack the hardware and skills to georeference them properly using suitable applications, I had to rely on Mapwarper(‘s precious bandwidth and storage). Very pleased with that: now I could use it, like, almost in an instant.

Now I can’t wait for the launch of the second Sentinel 2 satellite l̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶, and I’m hoping it will be a̶ successful l̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶.

EDIT: OMG, my English; or what Malaysians would say, “oh my English”

(Later edit)

It’s a good thing that MAPS.ME somehow increases the number of new OSM users in Malaysia (though I suspect most of them did not realise that OSM is a thing). At least they could add missing places into the map database easily, and at a faster rate. Thank goodness.

Personally, I find that it is easily one of the best OSM viewer / editor app (on Android) - on top of that, I am able to download a “daily update” from its official source. Still, OsmAnd is the best to quickly jot down places (creating favourites) not in the database yet.

… See full entry

Ah, seronoknya perang tag. Hari ni tag begini, esok lusa tag begitu. Tak apalah, tunggu sekejap. Kalau pengguna ni dah mula tak sunting apa-apa, senyap-senyap kita balikkan keadaan asal (revert).

Didn’t realise earlier that I made it. Wahey!

And so I believed that I had put everything (that I managed to jot down) from the places I have been, across last year. Took two months to do so… whew. Feels like patting my own back!

I also spent considerably lots of time fiddling the wiki so that it would be helpful (hmm…) to Malaysian mappers.

So, here’s hoping 2016 would be fantastic, if not better than 2015.

Just checking the notes recently, to look for something useful to be added into the map.

Suddenly…

Quite a lot of notes… Let’s check it out!

Someone apparently put these on last week. Seeing this…

… See full entry

English: Personal OSM lulz 2014

Di luar / Outdoors mapping survey

Satu jalan tiga nama! Memandangkan OSM ada tag yang sesuai maka letak jelah kesemuanya.

One single stretch of road but three different names! A good example where the different tags in OSM can be useful.

Rujukan / reference: Way 319918394

Di dalam / Indoors armchair mapping

Kan senang nak letak nama kalau semua macam ni…

Adding details is a piece of cake if and only if things are more like this…

Rujukan / reference: Way 319665300

… See full entry

Sebab apa?

Memang skema tagging yang sungguh skema tapi yang penting tak buat tag main redah je.

Sekian bebel-bebel OSM hari ini.

So this week, there are suddenly a lot of notes popping up across the Malaysian North - South Expressway and also some other Malaysian expressways.

I usually consider anonymous note (sometimes) are good because the number of OSM mappers from Malaysia is not that big.

However, recently, I have came across a navigation application that posts a note (anonymously) where OSM database seems to contain incomplete or wrong information - most of the time it is just because OSM data is incomplete here, but also there is something wrong with the app itself e.g. speed limit in x5 km/h (the Malaysian speed limit do not use a speed limit in fives i.e. 35 km/h; usually an increment of tens i.e. 40 km/h, 70 km/h, 90 km/h, 110 km/h is in enforcement). Well, the developer already has took an action and hopefully this would improve the OSM database in a more convenient way.

Fast forward to this week, now, that weird notes. Probably in this coming few weeks, I would have to “resolve” that comments. They are really strange, because it appears that the anonymous note contributor(s?) is totally new to OSM, or, is using the OSM database on a third-party device or some unknown navigation (or map viewer) apps. I could handle probably few notes but there are, like, hundreds of them!

Why?

Some of the inputs are good (but they are not properly attributed - signs of someone new to OSM but this takes time and learning curve); furthermore, some of them is stating what is already obvious on the map. This makes me feel furious, as if, that user is copying from somewhere else (hopefully not from a proprietary, non-free database) - which leads to the assumption that the user itself is not familiar with OpenStreetMap at all! Worse, that user probably do not know about OSM - sigh.

Hopefully that user is not copying from the crowd-sourced Malfreemaps (or Malsingmaps) database as it contains proprietary data.

Mula-mula ingat bolehlah luangkan masa habis-habisan, terutamanya nak lengkapkan jalan-jalan pekan Alor Setar dan mungkin setakat apa-apa yang boleh ‘trace’ dari Mapbox dengan Strava.

Tapi ada perkara lain yang tak dijangka… nampaknya ‘sekatan jalan’lah.

Tunda lagi nampaknya nak hantar ‘request’ JUPEM. Harapnya bulan 9 nanti la kot. Projek masjid pun sama. Tapi ‘tracing’ pun dah tergendala. Banyak hari dah tak buat.

Oh ya. Sesiapa yang berminat untuk melengkapkan liputan sungai, Jabatan Pengairan & Saliran Kedah (akhirnya) letak senarai sungai bagi daerah Kota Setar dan Pendang (harapnya yang rasmi).

Bulan ke-11 dalam usaha giat memperelok data OpenStreetMap.

Baru kelmarin, Mapbox dengan baik hatinya, membawakan imej satelit Digital Globe dalam OSM. Takdelah imej terkini sangat tapi alhamdulillah, sekurang-kurangnya kawasan Malaysia yang tidak diliputi imej satelit Bing (ya, macam Alor Setar) kini dapat dipetakan dengan lebih terperinci.

Yeeeeeeeeyyyy!

Tapi macam mana pun, kena guna GPS dulu, mana tahu, ada tempat yang lari sikit kan.

Sebagai pemeta tak profesional yang hanya berharap dengan jejak GPS, sekurang-kurangnya lepas ni kurang sikit bebanan (hehehe) dan dengan gerek (basikal) buruk tu dapatlah pergi tempat lain sama kan.

Insya Allah, cuti sekejap. Rasanya bulan Jun aktif balik insya Allah.

Harapnya lepas bulan Jun nanti boleh hantar surat cinta kepada JUPEM.

Alhamdulillah, dapat juga tambah data dalam kawasan Alor Setar dan tempat-tempat sekeliling.

Setakat ini sudah muat naik beberapa jejak GPS. Kalau ikutkan nak saja muat naik kesemuanya tapi memandangkan pekan Alor Setar ni… boleh tahanlah banyak bangunannya. Memang ada sahaja signal yang kurang baik, terpesong sana-sini. Tak best, tak best. Jadi buat masa ni, cuba himpun banyak-banyak GPX dan baru buat trace (tekap).

Kalau nak ikut hati nak saja minta data sempadan negeri dengan daerah dari JUPEM. Tapi tengok dulu. Brader Kucai dah cuba (terima kasih!), tapi kalau tak berjaya, cuba tengok la pakai jabatan lain. Buat masa ni ikut hati nak sempadan Kedah dan daerah-daerah Kedah dulu, tapi kalau JUPEM baik hati sangat nak bagi semua, oh, terima kasih! Terima kasih! (LOL) “Fingers crossed”.

Nama jalan pun jadi masalah. Kadang-kadang tak ada papan tanda. Kena cabut jadi ‘besi buruk’ agaknya. Ish ish ish…

Jadi nak senang cerita, buat masa ni apa yang termampu, buat carian balikan (reverse lookup). Ingat titik pandang utama (POI), apa lagi, buat carian laman web yang berkaitan dengan POI tadi. Cari alamat penuh. Senang dan selamat (tak payah tiru-tiru peta lain) hehehe. Tapi masih kena letak sumbernya dari mana (tak ada masalah kot, bukannya tiru peta).

Musim monsun datang lagi. Mungkin lepas ni boleh tolong betulkan setakat yang mampu. Lebuhraya PLUS tu melingkar entah apa-apa. Tengoklah. Kalau pelan internet ni tanpa had, hehehe.

Edit 7.05pm: Eh, rekabentuk OSM baru? Tadi masuk macam biasa je?

Alhamdulillah. Bosan-bosan tu, sambil-sambil tu, ada la juga benda yang boleh dibuat: menambah baik data OpenStreetMap (OSM) kawasan sekeliling rumah.

Mula-mula guna app My Tracks. Macam okey je. Baca-baca forum, GPSLogger “lebih digemari” penyumbang-penyumbang OSM. Tapi belum lagi guna GPSLogger. Mungkin kalau pergi jauh sikit rasanya baru cuba tengok kot.

Apa-apapun dah guna data GPS dalam seminggu ni, kemas kini OSM kawasan Alor Setar dan dekat-dekat Alor Setar la. Cuma buat masa ni ingat kalau boleh nak kumpul banyak-banyak dulu data jejak GPS. Senang sikit. Lagi yakin.

Hehe.

InsyaAllah.