OSM says I've been registered over 3 years. Wow, hard to believe it's been that long! Number of users seems to be picking up, lots of work getting done.

I've probably done about quarter to a third of Shrewsbury, the town I'm living in. I've been slacking since winter 2008. Hoping to pick up again this year as the weather gets warmer. Unlikely to happen this week with cold and wet forecast.

OTOH, others have taken up the challenge and mapped all but a small part of the town, even some places nearby, so there won't be much for me to do. There's a few local villages nearby so I may end up planning a few days mapping these.

It looks, therefore, like the challenge for this year won't be mapping much new ground. Rather, it'll be getting people to use the maps and map data and also improving on the data we have available.

Anyway, enough said for now. Time to charge the GPS.

Following a sharp decline in the amount of new stuff I've mapping this year I've noticed most of my edits are now adding postcodes and addresses to existing POIs.

I was wondering if there are any mobile apps that will let me do this 'in the field'? Currently using a S40 based phone but have a S60 available to me if needed.

Otherwise a mobile site may be on my list of future projects.

As one of my current projects is starting to use this data I'd like to encourage others to start collecting addresses and postcodes for places they visit... :)

Ta, all.

I got bored while walking home the other day and decided to map lamp posts on my street. Didn't know how to tag them as it's not in map features.

Some digging (grepping UK planet extract for 'lamp') exposed use of lamp=yes.

Has anyone else mapped any? What tags have you used?

Finally, is it worth doing?

TIA.

Follow-up to my last entry, which was asking about bikes. I bought a Giant CRS 3.0 after a couple of recommendations.

It's a nice bike. Very easy to ride compared with my last one, Unfortunately I've only had to use it for commuting a total of 4 times as I've been laid-off from work (company was/is not making money, so basically cost cutting).

I do have a bit more time to go out mapping now so once the summer season starts to calm down I should be out finishing Shrewsbury coverage. It'll be nice to get out on the bike a bit.

In other news I've just passed my driving test but having no income means I'm not able to purchase a vehicle. Never mind, eh...

I've had a bit of a break from any serious mapping but now hopefully going to start at it again. Looking at new bikes for the purpose.

I've around £400 to spend total, so about £350 for bike itself + various accessories. Want a hybrid, main purpose will be commuting (3.5 miles each way).

Local bike shop has Giant CRS range. Looking at CRS 3.0 City (basically CRS 3.0 with mud guards, rack and kick stand).

Any other makes/models I might consider?

TIA.

My BGT-31 (new SIRF-III NaviGPS with Bluetooth) arrived yesterday from StorageDepot.

It look exactly like the BGT-11 but is far more able to get, on hold, signal. My tracks look pretty good and without, even when heading down narrow alleys and under dense tree cover.

Setting up was simply a case of inserting the SD card, turning it on and turning on logging (which I actually forgot to do).

Like the 'beta' firmware I have on my BGT-11, it is able to dump tracks from internal memory to SD card.

Thanks to 'pope' TomH the latest release of GPSBabel (1.3.5) includes support for the NaviGPS, both directly and from the dumped files. Simply use 'navilink' as the input format - but don't forget the -t flag to get the tracks off.

Getting the latest GPSBabel into Ubuntu Hardy was easy once I knew what I was doing; use 'alien' to convert the .rpm package to .deb. I also had to make a symbolic link in /usr/lib pointing libexpat.so.0 to libexpat.so.1 - presumably there's a better solution but it seems to work, which building from source didn't.

So my tracks were salvaged. Unfortunately my mapping was cut short when the point of a drawing pin (thumb tack for you Americans) pierced my front inner tube - the third puncture I've had to repair on that, second within a month.

So, I finishes work and starts cycling home. I actually didn't intend to do a lot of mapping, but I saw one of the cul-de-sacs roads I know has some sort of foot/cycleway at the other end. I was only interested in it today as a potential shortcut, so didn't map the maze.

So I eventually finds me way out and heads on towards home. Then some girl I can't remember ever meeting says "Hi, Tom." Seriously, no clue.

Anyhow, then I decides to follow the road to the Shrewsbury School boathouse and path beyond intending to cross the Kingsland Toll bridge and head across town. On reaching the path up to the bridge I changed my mind, intending to take the English Bridge to get across the river and follow the NCN81, my usual route.

Reached the end of the path, here's some roads. I follow said roads in Belle Vue area doing ~3 miles up and down hills and various paths.

Now back home to tag it all up. Apparently I took the route as described until I reached the boathouse, where I flew across the river, over Frankwell and the town centre several times before heading over the houses towards home.

I can't wait for my BGT-31 to arrive...