The new history tab is very interesting, however, I've spotted something that makes it a lot less useful: Changesets that cover huge geographical areas. I'm not sure how these come about, but I have seen a changeset with one point POI in Germany and one in the USA. Perhaps these are the work of bots.

The problem is that such a changeset is listed under the history of all locations within the box defined by these two points. For an area where few recent changes have been made, the history is totally swamped by just a few of these wide area changesets.

Perhaps the system needs to filter out changesets with a very large areas.

update: I noticed this has been added to: osm.wiki/OSM_Protocol_Version_0.6/Known_problems

Lets hope this gets worked out somehow soon.

Added some hiking paths on a circular route around Causey Pike, and a few roads in the area. Improved the accuracy of other roads.

Some of the paths, though public footpaths, were pretty tricky climbing, so I tagged with appropriate sac_scale. I'm still not totally happy with choosing whether to use highway=footpath, footway or path for such paths. I'm not sure whether the current recommendations for tagging hiking paths work well with representing public rights of way, but I'm not sure I have any better ideas. Perhaps the rendering needs to be thought about a little more.

Looks like there are many other footpaths and bridleways in the area yet to be mapped.

I have uploaded a bunch of GPX tracks from Madeira, and edited what I think some of them are. However, they are from a relative who couldn't be persuaded to do more than just give me the tracks, so it is possible I have misinterpreted some of them. Please feel free to check them if you know the area.

Added a few more miles of bridleway on Saturday between the SDW and the A27, along the A27 over Ditchling Road to Stanmer and also to the North of Stanmer. Also added the Chattri War Memorial - just in time for Remembrance Sunday! Doesn't seem to show up on Osmarender though.

It seems there are still many rights of way to add in this area, so if you know anyone with who walks/cycle/rides regularly in the area, lend them a GPS! :)

I have been up in Cumbria for a few days recently, and have added a few hiking paths, minor roads, and a lot of footpath/bridleway/track/road stubs which I hope will encourage further mapping. It looks like a lot of streams and roads could perhaps be added from NPE in this area, so I'll have a go at that soon.

After a few too many hours of Yahoo tracing, I think I've completed Porto Santo island. (As much as I can from tracing, anyway!)

If anyone has some local knowledge, I'm sure there are plenty of improvements to be made, particularly distinguishing surfaced from unsurfaced tracks/roads away from the towns.

I was surprised that an island with such good Yahoo coverage was completely blank last week.

The golf course is a bit of an estimate as it was only under construction when the aerial photos were taken. I suspect the photos are probably outdated in a number of other areas too.

I noticed this morning that Openstreetmap got a mention on the BBC website:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7586789.stm

I wonder if this will accelerate the growth in interest, traffic and contributors from the UK?

This weekend I have added a number of roads (some just named stubs) and footpaths to Irby, West Kirby, Greasby and a number of named road stubs in Heswall, Gayton and Thingwall. There's more lot more work to be done here, but I am unlikely to be in the areas again any time soon. I may continue with some Yahoo tracing. However, I think there's a bit of an offset on the hi-res images, and it seems to be inconsistent :(

Did a bit of walking around Cuckmere Haven, Seven Sisters and Alfriston on the weekend. Have now done the editing, and found that lots of the area is well covered by Yahoo aerial, so I added some of the cliffs and water areas. I was surprised that the South Downs Way (footpath version) doesn't seem to have been mapped yet. I only added it as a name to paths, I think a relation will need doing sometime to link it all up.

I've just returned from Switzerland and uploaded a bunch of new roads and a few railways in Vaud and Valais, especially around Villars. I may have messed up the conflict resolution bit before upload, so my apologies if I've broken anyone else's work :-s

Added most of Bishops Wood in Staffordshire, and some bridleways etc around it. Also tertiary road down to Codsall.

Still more work needed in Bishops Wood if anyone is passing through!

Did a 7 mile walk on the South Downs on Saturday, managed to add quite a lot of bridleway, a bit of footpath, and a pub.

It got me wondering, how should you tag a public bridleway that is metalled, that also seems to be a service road up to a farm. Should it be

highway=bridleway; surfaced=paved; foot=yes; bicycle=yes; horse=yes
or
highway=service; foot=yes; bicycle=yes; horse=yes

I went for the former, but not really sure...

Added a few more roads in Horsham, West Sussex, UK, over the last week or so. Making slow and steady progress.

Did some work yesterday in Horsham, it's taking ages to get this town mapped, despite occasional contributions from a number of mappers. Anyone else live near the area?

For anyone else mapping in the area, I've added a lot of stub roads with names that I went past but didn't have time to map fully.

Cycled NCN_20 over the weekend. The GPS is still playing up and I missed some big chunks, but fortunately they were all on bits already mapped. I think the route is now complete except for through Brighton and through Crawley, where the signs are very poor and non-existent, respectively! :(

I made some progress on NCN 20 yesterday in Crawley, but it seems that the signage is not yet complete. The section through Tilgate golf course is fully signed, and I but once the edge of the residential area is reached, the signs dissapear. Nevertheless, I mapped the cycle path that I believe NCN 20 will run along up to Three Bridges Road.

Does anyone know about the status of NCN 20, regarding how complete it is?

Just back from a week in Cumbria, there's so much mapping needs doing up there! The road network, the cities, towns, villages, footpath/hiking trail network, NCN routes (71&72) all need a great deal of work.

I mapped the village of Thornhill pretty thoroughly as I had a bit of time available there. (See map link)

Otherwise i've been improving the road network and adding some details to towns where I visited.

I think that Keswick, Whitehaven, Carlisle and many others are strong candidates for mapping parties. Unfortunately I live too far away to organise one. (besides the time issues!)

I think Japan nearly has a complete error free coastline... the coastline error checker is only doing very sporadic updates though, so it's hard to be sure.

Spent some time this morning doing some improvement on the coastline in HK using the higher res Yahoo imagery available there. Some of what was there was very roughly traced.

Just saw this today about a new camera that GE will be selling soon.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0802/08020101gee1050.asp#specs

What looks interesting from an OSM point of view is that it includes a GPS unit that records where images where taken. It also sounds like it should have a reasonable zoom range and shouldn't be too expensive. No idea what the image quality or shutter lag will be like though. Shutter lag is bad for trying to catch road signs from moving cars! ;-)

For me, a camera that automatically geotags images would be great for mapping areas where roads have been drawn from aerial imagery, but not tagged with names and references. It would save having to carry round a GPS and a camera, and also removes the need for synching times.

Just thought i'd flad it up as others might be interested too.

Just got back from Japan, and have been doing some mapping on the Tokyo area, as well as some railway lines further afield, including Kakunodate, Matsumoto, Nagano and Mito. (the joys of tourist rail passes!)

I think Tokyo is going to be extremely difficult to map without better aerial photos - my GPS was not a happy bunny with all those tall buildings around.

The other thing is that with so many multi-layered roads, it's really difficult to see how a 2D map is going to present enough information about what's going on! Perhaps we need some partial transparency rendering hint tags?!

Those Japanese characters are hard work too! I have a massive stash of photos of signs that I need to go through, filling out the tags with kanji and hiragana, at the moment many are just English! :(