Ordnance Survey have recently released their November 2014 version of OS Locator, the comprehensive gazetteer for GB. According to my calculations there are 12,201 new or changed entries and 10,203 removed entries since the last release in May.

I’ve updated my comparison tool Musical Chairs with the new data. New entries tend to show up prominently in the “recent relevant updates” view mode for a week or so after an update, so this is a good way of taking a look at what’s changed in your area.

I’d suggest GB mappers take a look at their area, even if not for the purpose of mapping - new releases of Locator often reveal some interesting things about new building projects and developments.

Additionally, I’ve recently added RSS feeds to musical chairs to make it even easier to monitor your area for possibly problematic changes.

I can’t help thinking the SotM 2014 Argentina logo could be improved with a minor addition.

Next weekend is OpenStreetMap’s 10th anniversary and people around the globe are celebrating.

If you’ve been around OSM for a while I’ll bet you have a pile or two of these old flyers which have now been superseded by these ones, generously produced by Andy Allan. These old ones are therefore kind of useless. However, not being one to want to throw things away I’ve been searching for a use for my old ones for a while.

You will need:

• Scissors
• Tape
• Two old OSM flyers

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Ordnance Survey have just released their May 2014 version of OS Locator, the comprehensive gazetteer for GB. According to my calculations there are 17,925 new entries and 13,847 removed entries since the last release in November.

I’ve updated my comparison tool Musical Chairs with the new data. New entries tend to show up prominently in the “recent relevant updates” view mode for a few days after an update, so this is a good way of taking a look at what’s changed in your area.

I’d suggest GB mappers take a look at their area, even if not for the purpose of mapping - new releases of Locator often reveal some interesting things about new building projects and developments.

Ordnance Survey have just released their November 2013 version of OS Locator, the comprehensive gazetteer for GB. According to my calculations there are 10,151 new entries and 7,730 removed entries since the last release in November.

I’ve updated my comparison tool Musical Chairs with the new data. New entries tend to show up prominently in the “recent relevant updates” view mode for a few days after an update, so this is a good way of taking a look at what’s changed in your area.

I’d suggest GB mappers take a look at their area, even if not for the purpose of mapping - new releases of Locator often reveal some interesting things about new building projects and developments.

So I was rubbing shoulders with the traditi-gis crowd on Tuesday & Wednesday last week for the FOSS4G GeoHack event in Nottingham University. The team that I gravitated towards was being run by DEFRA folks eagerly clutching copies of their Open Government Licensed air quality data and providing the task of creating an air-quality-aware router for cyclists, walkers or other health conscious individuals.

The data is fairly interesting as it’s a mix of measured and modelled data, and the most high-resolution data provided was that which was modelled specifically along a patchy network of major (OS-Meridian-derived from what I could tell) roads - so not necessarily the easiest thing to work with.

The plan from the table involved using postgis & pgRouting to route along the provided linestrings & build a web interface on openlayers for users. Now, OS Meridian isn’t known for being particularly routable at the best of times, and the patchy nature of the provided linestrings was making this look like a daunting problem. On top of that I personally was worried about the ambition of building from scratch a from-to routing interface on top of openlayers in the remaining time (I’ve spent two day stints just working on single fiddly javascript bugs on web maps before). The stumbling hurdle seemed to be that everyone was running a windows on their laptops and so needed to negotiate use of a “server” with the requisite software installed for their purposes.

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Ordnance Survey have just released their May 2013 version of OS Locator, the comprehensive gazetteer for GB. According to my calculations there are 5247 new entries and 3694 removed entries since the last release in November.

I’ve updated my comparison tool Musical Chairs with the new data. New entries tend to show up prominently in the “recent relevant updates” view mode for a few days after an update, so this is a good way of taking a look at what’s changed in your area.

I’d suggest GB mappers take a look at their area, even if not for the purpose of mapping - new releases of Locator often reveal some interesting things about new building projects and developments.

Ordnance Survey have just released their November 2012 version of OS Locator, the comprehensive gazetteer for GB. According to my calculations there are 7609 new entries and 5077 removed entries since the last release in May.

I’ve updated my comparison tool Musical Chairs with the new data. New entries tend to show up prominently in the “recent relevant updates” view mode for a few days after an update, so this is a good way of taking a look at what’s changed in your area.

I’d suggest GB mappers take a look at their area, even if not for the purpose of mapping - new releases of Locator often reveal some interesting things about new building projects and developments.