OpenStreetMap
I just found out about OpenStreetMap about 3 weeks ago, and the whole project has me completely psyched. I'd love to get a GPS that can upload data so I can map some trails in my home state of Maine, but that's a project for the summer.
In the meantime, I'm taking it upon myself to map all of the buildings, shops, and POIs in Andover, Massachusetts and nearby Phillips Academy (where I am a student) by the end of this school year. I'll do this mostly through Potlatch tracing Yahoo Imagery combined with my knowledge of the area, as I don't have a GPS, and JOSM won't work with the WMS plugin on Ubuntu. (If anyone has that working, could they please update the HowTo on the wiki? Thanks.) I'll also see if the school will let me use some real maps of the campus, but that is yet to be determined. Work is going pretty steadily - I have a fairly complete map of the campus and its buildings, and have just started on the town itself. I also cleaned up a nasty mess just to the northeast of Andover of ~25,000 duplicate nodes. (A big thank you to the author of the Validator plugin in JOSM!) So here's hoping for good luck and a successful 2009.
Discussion
Comment from Notaris on 12 January 2009 at 08:55
For JOSM in Ubuntu:
Option 1 (not recommended):
if you have an "old" josm version installed along with wmsplugin and ywmsplugin: install firefox2 along firefox (you will find hints and explanations in mailing list archives)
Option 2 (my current setup that I am running on Ubuntu Hardy):
a) make sure you have a recent version of josm installed; the josm package
that comes along with Ubuntu will inevitably be outdated within shortest
time due to the progress in josm development. Anyhow, installing it first
is of no harm and provides you with an icon in the programes menu. You
will then have an josm executable (a script) residing in /usr/bin that
is calling in the end /usr/share/josm/josm.jar
Download the latest josm-latest.jar from http://josm.openstreetmap.de/
and save it for example in /tmp
Move it with root privileges to /usr/share/josm
(sudo mv /tmp/josm-latest.jar /usr/share/josm/josm-latest.jar)
Make a symlink (cd /usr/share/josm; ln -sf josm-latest.jar josm.jar)
b) install gnome-web-photo (sudo aptitude install gnome-web-photo)
c) if you have josm installed, but no configuration settings that you want
to maintain, I recommend a clean start by deleting the .josm-Directory
in your home directory (cd; rm -r .josm)
d) start josm, press F12, choose the plugins-pane. Press "Load List".
Choose the wmsplugin (it is the plugin, that was during some time
referred to as ewmsplugin), which is substituting the old wmsplugin
and ywmsplugin. Press OK, restart josm and you should have WMS up
and running.
I am having a German install, so in d) I translate back to Englisch - which might lead to slight deviations from what you have.
I wrote as I recall what I have done some time ago. It should be mostly correct. Please update the wiki if you have success following my steps.