Just had a look at the map around Doha (Qatar). Strangely, each district name seems to be followed by a number in parenthesis. Out of curiosity, I’m wondering if anyone knows their meaning?

Out of consistency… I’d guess that these numbers should not be there. Unless that’s really how local people call these places, the “name” tag should not bear the numbers. The numbers probably belong to another tag. Even better would be to have the name tag being written in Arabic as it’s the local language… I’d do it if I was able to write in Arabic ;-)

Recently there has been several implementations of 3D and 2.5D (isometric) rendering of OSM. Honestly, I haven’t been enthusiastic by any of them. One of the reason is that apparently no one is trying to actually represent streets (the S of OSM) better than flat spaghettis.

I’ve just seen this map, and I got faith again that 2.5D representation can be useful and beautiful: http://gz.o.cn/

This is the map of Guangzhou (China). Several other big Chinese cities are also available. There are so many amazing things in this map: * multiple level streets are (almost) readable. * building shapes and texture are so precise that each remarkable building is distinguishable on the map. * POI are active: they are not just a big stamp on top of the map, they can be shown or hidden, and react to mouse hover. * It’s so amazing complete (fair enough, the quality of London in OSM is probably almost on par) * It makes any city look like a city from SimCity 2000 ;-)

Hopefully eventually it will be possible to see OSM data rendered as such 2.5D quality map!

There are quite a few ways in the database which are passing by several times the same point. Such an example: osm.org/browse/way/191420773

There are lot of those in this area, but I’ve such seen a ways a bit everywhere in the map. It seems like it’s pretty easy to do with Potlatch, and really hard to fix :-/

Anyway, is there a tool to fix such a way? Or maybe someone has a tip on how to fix them easily?

The french OSM team has been playing with improved rendering in mapnik. Recently, they’ve introduced the idea of rendering sport tags for known sports by displaying the lines of the field. I like it a lot, it gives a much nicer display than having an icon of the sport :-)

You can see an example here, with tennis, football (soccer) and rugby fields: http://tile.openstreetmap.fr/?lon=2.44176&lat=48.83262&zoom=17&layers=B00000

They’ve also improved the rendering of golf: http://tile.openstreetmap.fr/?zoom=16&lat=48.72648&lon=2.60806&layers=B00000

I hope it’ll be picked up by other tile renderers :-)

One of the power of OpenStreetMap is that every one can do whatever they like with the data. There are actually lots of services provided by websites other than the main official one. Some consider this also a weakness because at first sight it seems OSM provides much less than other map services like Google, even if there are already some many functionalities available. Here is my list of the services I like most. Maybe it can point to some services that you didn’t know :-)

… See full entry

Apparently, this night, the first object ID in the database which do not fit in a 32 bit signed int has been created. Now let’s wait and see which software parts break…

Otherwise it’s a good news, it means the content of OSM is growing fast!

After the redaction boat passed by, I’ve been playing at remapping a bit everywhere in the world. Especially, I’ve added back a few roads in Kristiansand (Norway), and then quite a bit more in Cyprus. With just the Bing imagery and GPS traces, it’s amazing how much you can do! There is still plenty to be done but now that Cyprus is in a state good enough to have routing working, I’ve decided to move on.

So to celebrate the fact that now OSM is under the ODbL, I’ve started to map around Xian (China). Not so much to remap, but a loooot to map! My first goal is to get all the road interchanges around the city well mapped. So far, I’ve finished two: * osm.org/?lat=34.18637&lon=108.84273&zoom=17&layers=M * osm.org/?lat=34.203892&lon=108.841754&zoom=18&layers=M

It’s amazing how it seems that every interchange in the world is different, although most of them are just about connecting two or three roads together… :-D

As some other persons have mentioned, the Bing imagery has been updated recently. It’s especially a big update for me because several of the areas where I’ve mapped got a better view.

Most particularly, Guadix, a lovely and picturesque Spanish town has now a satellite view. It’s a great feeling to see all the street that I’ve entered using GPS traces suddenly appearing (almost perfectly) aligned over the satellite view. Completing the town should be much easier now! I recommend any one visiting the area to stop by this city and visit the troglodyte district… and write down the name of the streets at the same time ;-) .

It seems that Lima also got new views, with a much better alignment than previously. I’ve also noticed that around Xi’an the high-resolution area has grown a lot, which should permit to map countryside roads.

Overall, a very useful update of Bing :-)

Hello, I’m planning to go on holiday to Norway next month. I’ve checked, and although a lot is already mapped, there are quite a few towns or villages through which I’m planning to pass which are not mapped. With the latest Bing imagery, it seems possible to map the roads and streets of quite a few.

Here is the list:

• Selje osm.org/?lon=5.3472&lat=62.04218&zoom=15

• Søvik osm.org/?lon=6.28471&lat=62.54684&zoom=16

• Masfjordnes osm.org/?lon=5.30026&lat=60.79742&zoom=16

• osm.org/?lat=62.11931&lon=5.32926&zoom=15

• Ervik osm.org/?lat=62.16383&lon=5.12609&zoom=15

• Betna osm.org/?lon=8.34168&lat=63.08818&zoom=15

So if you happen to feel like doing a bit of chair mapping, give me a hand :-) Of course, once I’ll be in Norway, I’ll take the opportunity to review the streets, and add information where ever I can!

Cheers,

Éric

PS: the high-res imagery seems pretty well aligned (better than the coastline) but it’s still worthy to check the alignment with some GPS traces around.

Apparently the last step of license change, the redaction period, has just started. I’m really looking forward to have it over. Finally we’ll be able to map simply again. No more thinking of whether the street I want to add the name is going to be completely removed or will just lose a bit its shape. No more thinking whether I should realign a building or just fully redraw it from scratch because it’s tainted by non-ODbL edits.

As soon as the redaction period is over we’ll be back mapping just thinking “If there is something that I can improve, I improve it”, plain and simple! So looking forward to it. Good luck to the guys in charge of performing the database changes :-)

Looking at Lima's map, I noticed many roads were just lots of unconnected ways. It seems they come from a huge import from "Telcom IP". Comparing it to the Bing imagery is even more scary as at some places it seems it's completely unrelated (although the imagery seems correctly aligned other where). At these places it seems it'd better to delete all of it!

Quite a few streets are named but it's all uppercase. And the streets without (known) name got named "S/N", probably standing for "without name". This could probably be fixed by a script. Moreover, many streets are cut into very small ways with the same name. Sometimes they are also duplicated.

The imagery is precise enough to permit to fix a lot. In some places, like Piura, there has been some clean up already going on. A lot more love could go on. So, to everyone looking to do some armchair mapping during a rainy day, keep Peru in mind :-)

Situated on the highest mountain of the Netherlands (300m high), is the labyrinth of the drielandenpunt (point of the three countries). I was there yesterday, and can recommend it. It was actually the first labyrinth I've ever been which was a bit difficult. It features bridges, and fountains block your way if you come from the wrong side. So it was pretty fun.

As openstreepmap had a very poor version of its map, I've updated it using Bing imagery and my memory. It should be pretty complete. But of course the whole fun is to complete the labyrinth without looking at the map!

I've just finished mapping my first town in OpenStreetMap, and coincidently it's also the first town where I lived: Crépy-en-Valois. Completed it using mainly the "cadastre" from the French authorities, and the Bing imagery, and the memories I have from spending 15 years there (turned out to be extremely useful).

Of course a place is never fully mapped, but here is can be found:
* all the streets
* all the streets names
* the shape of every building

I finished by naming the streets, and to ensure the quality, I compared the list of street names found on internet (from the phone directory) to the list in OpenStreetMap. I converted the directory data into a text file with one name per street alphabetically sorted.

To get the list of streets in OSM, the nominatim service seemed the most appropriate but I seemed not to answer this type of query. So eventually I settled with a very basic command:

curl -g "http://api.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6/map?bbox=2.8634295463562,49.2131958007812,2.93606853485107,49.2601203918457"

| grep =\"name | sort -u | sed -re "s/.*v=\"(.*)\".*/\1/;s/'/'/" > names-osm.txt

As long as there aren't many amenities, it works fine. Then using a diff tool (I used Meld), you can see which street is still missing, or where there are spelling mistakes. It turned out to be really useful. In addition to knowing there are 212 streets in such a small town, it even allowed me to notice small streets I had forgotten to map, and some streets whose name are not on the cadastre!