Geocaching.com, the biggest and most 'official; geocaching website has just announced that they will switch to OSM maps.

They state that they have been contacted by Google and would have to pay for their map usage in the future. Probably they didn't like that idea very much.

As a geocacher myself, I'm quite happy about the move. Their premium account already costs some money, and I wouldn't want that price to increase because of google.

Until now, OSM maps were an option on their main map display. lately they switched their static map thumbnails to OSM, now they moved the main map too.
They say they are using leaflet, user report that for know the tile source is MapQuest. But future plans seem to point to an own server, as they already talk about the new features they can implement with OSM, that weren't possible before.

Just do yourself a favor and don't dive into the comment section of that original blog post. A particular 'unhappy' customer is flaming heavily against OSM.

http://blog.geocaching.com/2012/02/new-geocaching-com-maps/

Hi,

I'm in the aftermath of preparing some talk slides and I'm going nuts over it!

Please: when you share images (like group photos, screenshots, cake) on the wiki,
don't just put them under CC-Attribution-ShareAlike License (or state that they are, if you are not the creator), but also NAME THAT ATTRIBUTION!

It's not enough to write CC-BY-SA under each picture. Put a name (or an acronym, nickname, website name, company name etc.) beside it. If you are the creator, you are free to choose how the attribution has to be done, but you have to actually do it!
If you just uploaded an image from someone else, then try to find out how the original creator wanted to be attributed.

For a group of people who care a lot about licensing map data, we care surprisingly less about the stuff we share on the wiki. Wikipedia does that a lot better, but they actually learned through very expensive mistakes.

(Yes, I know I could just attribute everything to openstreetmap.org if no one other is named. I would be out of harms way, but that is not how the license is meant and it's hardly fair to the original creator.)

Hi,
I'm giving a talk about OSM in the next days and I'm trying to find mobile apps to recommend to general OSM users (not (yet) mappers).

I'm personally using an Android phone and my pick is Locus, but even this one might not be the best. Unfortunately I can't go with 'most popular' app, as those will get / are getting blocked now due to heavy tile server usage.

So I would really like to know what YOU think is the best app for Android/iOS/WinMobile. Do you know of any apps that behave better, like using an own tile server or do local rendering? But beginner friendly usage is a must! (And Geocaching features a big plus.)

Knock yourself out in the comments. That's a very pretty 'please' here.
Thanks in advance!

Chaos

PS: Yes, I know of the excellent lists of apps in the wiki. They just don't do recommendations.

Im Moment folge ich gespannt der Diskussion hier: http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=13207&p=7

Nachdem AeroWest OSM Luftbilder gesponsert hat (osm.wiki/DE:WissensWert/Luftbilder), mit denen auch in meiner Stadt endlich ordentlich die Bebauung erkennbar ist, wollte ich mich natürlich sofort aufs Mappen stürzen.

Leider ist die ganze Sache technisch noch nicht so weit wie rechtlich (he, wann hat man das schon mal so herum). Es existiert noch kein WMS Server, der die Bilder JOSM-konform ausliefert. Das (mühselige) Importieren einzelner Bilder sollte zwar eigentlich mittels einem Plugin klappen, auch dieses verweigert aber noch den Dienst.

Im Forum wird wild probiert: verschiedene Pluginversionen, JOSM-Versionen, Betriebssysteme, Bildvorverarbeitung mit anderen Tools, Projektionskorrekturen usw. Alles noch Frickelkram und für den unbedarften Mapper nicht nachzuvollziehen.

Sehr schade, denn die Bereitstellung der Luftbilder ist zeitlich begrenzt.

Sobald sich im Forum eine Lösung abzeichnet, die auch für den Laien praktikabel erscheint, melde ich mich wieder. Hoffentlich stirbt der Thread nicht vorher ab.

Danke schon mal vorneweg an alle Bastler und Entwickler.

Gerade hab ich entdeckt, dass das Thueringer Forstamt eine Karte mit allen Erholungswegen (Wander-, Rad-, Reit- und Skiwanderwege) online gestellt hat.

Das ist ein mehr als lohnendes Ziel fuer einen Datenimport oder halt erst einmal eine Nutzungsanfrage. Insbesondere Wald- und Forstwege sind in Thueringen zwar zahlreich, aber leider noch unterrepraesentiert in OSM.

Da ich nicht weiss, ob ich dazu komme eine Anfrage aufzusetzen, habe ich das Angebot erstmal unter
osm.wiki/DE:Permissions
dokumentiert. Wer Zeit und Muse hat, kann gerne schon mal Kontakt aufnehmen.

Der Link zum Angebot des Forstamtes ist:
http://www.thueringenforst.de/Thueringen_HK/Thueringen_HK.html

Hi,

does anybody know a way of retrieving the state for a given coordinate via some kind of API?

Like getting 'Bavaria'(Germany) or 'Wales'(GB) or 'Lublin'(Poland).

There seem to be such services, as some geotagging tools for pictures use them. But I don't know which services or APIs they use and if it's OSM based.

Any help (even if it is just on nomenclature; is this a reverse-geo-db?) is much appreciated.

Thanks

Chaos

Ok, I found no way of making that title sound NOT like spam. Sorry for that.
But let me explain:

You may or may not have heard of the micro-payment-slash-donation service called flattr (https://flattr.com).
It works worldwide, but for now is somehow a bit european if not german-centric.

I have to give a little explanation, bear with me as this turns to OSM soon. In short words its a system where you commit yourself to spend a self chosen but fixed amount of cash per month to support otherwise free online services, blogs, creatives and so on.
Supporting someone is just one click of a button and you can give to as many people as you like per month. Your fixed monthly amount just gets divided into smaller chunks. The psychological trick is that you just have to decide once how much you want to give and than click away without much concern about the money at all.

Now you can only give to those who are also participating. So a lot of things you want to support can't be 'flattered', which is a shame.
Flattr itself hosts a user generated list (https://flattr.com/wishlist) of websites people want to flatter, but can't because they are not able to.

Combining both entries OSM ranks place 6 on this list with currently 164 people willing to donate money to the organization, the website or the service.

That's not an awful lot of people, but considering that most flattr users tend to support sites on a regular basis, there is some money in for OSM.
Also it is a very nice gesture to receive even small donations for a otherwise free service. Unfortunately there is a catch to it, as you are required to 'give to get' at the moment. You have to spend at least the minimal amount of 2 Euro per month on others to be able to receive for yourself.

So, to the OSM team, please take a look into this and think about it. It would be nice if people (like me) could support and thank you for your work by using this service.

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Almost every day I'm out and about roaming my surrounding with a GPS device collecting track data.
I've found a ton of roads and ways not already in the map. As I use OSM data for in-car routing, I also find a lot of missing or
erroneous turn restrictions.

Thats cool right?

No, it isn't.

'Cause all this data ends up in a big pile of files either on my GPS or on my computer, never to be uploaded and integrated to OSM.
My memory fading away with time on where those turn restrictions were and what type of way it was I wandered.
I'm quiet sad about this myself. So I wondered, why don't I find the time to incorporate all the data into OSM?
Well I'm actually doing a lot of data uploading, writing descriptions, posting photos, vote on things and so on.
It's just that it is geocaching.com that I'm on, and not openstreetmap.org. So I still wonder why. What makes geocaching so much more
motivating than OSM? (Follow this Wikipedia link if you don know what geocaching is.)

Well I can only speak for myself. But I'm pretty sure this extrapolates to quite a lot other people too.
The basic activities on OSM and geocaching are quite similar. You go out and carry a GPS with you. Either finding things according to coordinates or finding things to record its coordinates.
Then you return home and record what you have done. Either by writing a log description on geocaching.com, or by tracing your GPS track in JOSM.
I admit that using JOSM is slightly more complicated and time consuming than writing some text into a website form. But that's not the point. I'm a geek, I love complicated things. I do them for fun.

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