Who knew there would be so many ways to park a car? The renderers are finally catching up. We have the basic amenity=parking and the exciting additional key parking=multi_storey for parking garages. Osmrenderer is also adding a special icon when you tag with fee=yes.

I'm not totally sure how to map a mixed use structure, for example, one that has storefronts on ground level and parking up above. Maybe buildings aren't the best for simple tags.

OK, I know we're not supposed to tag just for a renderer, but Mapnik is now rendering traffic lights and water towers. So now you have a reason to add those tags, if you've been holding back. Go nuts. :)

OSM has also added different viewing options for traces.

It would be nice to see a notification of changes in advance (without having to read through mail lists).

I'm really curious as to how anyone has found my diary entries. In my brief experience, the only way to view them is a RSS feed for the entire OSM world...in everyone's native language. How do you find interesting entries?

I wonder whether it would be possible to do a bulk update of man_made=lighthouse based on locations in Wikipedia....

From an email:

I've typically been trying to mark paved paths has highway=footway, unpaved walking paths as highway=path and signed bike lanes as highway=cycleway. If I'm feeling extra energetic, I'll also tag with bicycle=yes/no, and so on. My inspiration is the pictures on the OSM wiki, osm.wiki/Map_Features#Highway, particularly osm.wiki/Tag:highway%3Dpath and osm.wiki/Tag:highway%3Dfootway.

Any others in Oregon agree with me?

I see Mapnik now renders highway=unsurfaced and highway=raceway. (Update 1-aug-2009: corrected tags.)

The former works out pretty well since I often want to know whether I can ride my road bike on it. I think of highway=track as a dirt road.

The latter isn't really all that important, but it helped me with Portland International Raceway. Initially, I took a look at either Hockenheim or the Nurbringring. They had the track labelled access=permissive and oneway=yes. It kind of made sense, although it seemed like it could also be access=private. That said, a separate tag for a racetrack just feels like a better solution.

My initial edits to OSM were to tag highway=tertiary for the roads in Portland, Oregon, USA. I've used a pretty simple formula: if the road has a dividing stripe and it is tagged as highway=residential, change it to highway=tertiary.

This works pretty well in the city. However, it starts to fail out of town, since country roads typically are either gravel or have a center line. Aesthetically, I'm not sure I like seeing remote areas where every road is tertiary. Maybe I'll do some tagging in a rural area and see how it looks.