Should be about 50 more since yesterday evening...

Concerning the GNS data: This data is sometimes way off, and you cannot even be sure what you are tagging- is it a village, town, old derelict military base, hilltop, wadi, lake, river and whatnot. So I think an automatic import is not an option. Best would be to get some Nigrens with local knowledge involved. They can also help with road conditions etc.

BTW: Are you sure your script is right? I know that there are at least half a dozen of airports in Niger ATM and they are in OSM as well.

Another BTW: Finisched the National Highway Nr. 1 all the way to Diffa. Wicked deciphering of the aerial map and vmap0 data. I was able to get at least some info on road conditions from several travel reports... will ad those soon.

Niamey, Dakar and Conakry shall not be a problem as there is high resolution satellite imagery from Yahoo available. Bamako ans St. Louis are a different matter. You would need geodata from another source - out of copyright map, gps traces etc.

Welcome to the club.
Christian

Welcome aboard. And happy mapping. BTW, almost al here are amateurs... :).

Happy mapping,

Christian

Hi Datalogg, thanks for your fantastic contribution.
Before the whole Niger "buisness" I knew virtually nothing about the country. Like you I read a lot about it- very cool country.
Having looked at it from above for a couple of hours now, I really wanna go there and look at the places with my own eyes. Its allmost like planning a holiday, you read up on things, look at maps for hours, discuss the best routes etc.- the anticipation grows.
Its interesting how the internet allows you to create a map of an area you have never been to and you know allmost nothing about - LOL.

Sorry, double post.

Not really, according to wikipedia and wikitravel the least thing the Nigrens worry about is open source maps. It seems that the posession of a computer, let alone internet access is prety uncommon. GPSes too. Of course it would be great to have a local community in every village or so but I think this won't happen in the forseeable future. Of course my estimate could be way off (and I sincerely hope so!) and be not at all that pessimistic.
So far I haven't tried to contact anyone from the country itself. If anybody knows someone from Niger that could be of help- please come forward. I myself will have a look around. Also there is a long tradition of touristic 4x4 drivers that pass through Niger while crossing the Sahara. A lot of GPS tracks should exist on various harddrives since these guys where early adopters of the GPS technology.
I'll have a look in some of their forums and spread the word when I can find the time.

Not really, according to wikipedia and wikitravel the least thing the Nigrens worry about is open source maps. It seems that the posession of a computer, let alone internet access is prety uncommon. GPSes too. Of course it would be great to have a local community in every village or so but I think this won't happen in the forseeable future. Of course my estimate could be way off (and I sincerely hope so!) and be not at all that pessimistic. I

Assuming you use potlach, I'd suggest you try JOSM for high precision tasks, as you can zoom in to centimeters if you wish.
Having said that, I prefer potlach for general mapping, since I never was able to setup the yahoo imagery in JOSM reliably.
My two cents,
Christian

A sexy Navigation App for my cellphone? Are you kiddin'? Of course this would be well apreciated. Open source?

Since the Google maps are copyrighted and we have no permisson by the copyright holders to use them for mapmaking you mustn't copy them. If Yahoo imagery is all you have then you have to rely on classic tracing the streets yourself with a GPS etc. You can also help the project by editing in areas where the yahoo imagery is better, or you can import other free datasources (see the wiki)
Happy mapping, Christian

Na dann Willkommen in Salzburg. Bis aus Freilassing. Habe mich also vor allem auf der deutschen Seite und nördlich von Salzburg rumgetrieben. Die Plan.at Daten sind zum ko... und nerven gewaltig, aber ab und an wenn mir wirklich nichts besseres einfällt dann mache ich immer Mal ein Paar Strässchen. Peu a peu wirds dann schon...
Nen Mappertreffen im Salzburger Raum fände ich Mal toll- wir werden sehen.

@ 3ld:
Thanks for the pic.
In my book, the roundabout in High Wycombe needs you :-).
Just map it, if you got it right, nobody can complain- right?

Cheers, Christian

Beeing from germany, we don't have many roundabouts here, the concept of double roundabouts seems wickedly complicated. Why would anybody come up with something like this? Or is there something I don't get? Just curious...

Christian

Bugger with the missing SRTM data. Another possibillity might be the GTOPO30 elevation model- although it isn't nearly as detailed as the SRTM data. http://maps-for-free.com/ has a nice relief map, presumably made with the GTOPO30 data mentioned above- I'll have to look into it.
Somewhere I found a WMS server for SRTM data- but can't find it ATM. I'll look it up later this evening. Could be a cool overlay for JOSM.
Concerning the highway= path I'm with you randomjunk, but IMHO we can't overlook the fact that the tag is- well- used.

Ich war im Oktober auf Rügen. Zur Verwendung der Karte in meinem Garmin war das alles schon sehr brauchbar. Danke also von meiner Seite für eure Mühen da oben. Gerade von Rügen war ich sehr erstaunt wie komplett das da oben in doch recht dünn besiedeltem Gebiet schon war.
Merci aus dem Süden, Christian

"Da gibt es eine Deutschlandkarte mit Installer von schlappen 147 MB. Von ca. 7 Downloadversuchen brach der längste erst bei 125 MB ab." Ein ordentlicher Downloadmanager der nach Abbruch reconnectet ist sehr zu empfehlen. Bei Firefox ist z. b. das Add- on Downthemall! eine Möglichkeit. Damit können dann die unterbrochenen Downloads fortgesetzt werden.
Unter Linux macht das IMHO wget- sollte eigentlich in so ziemlich jeder Distri vorhanden sein. Linux hat auch mit .tar Archiven kein Problem.

Hier, emexes.powweb.com/osm/ , gibts auch routingfähige Karten für dein GPS.

Entweder nimmst du die .exe Datei und überspielst die Karten mit Mapsource, oder du benutzt Sendmap um aus den einzelnen .img- files ein gpsmapsupp.img zu erzeugen welches dann aufs GPS übertragen wird.

Nur Mut, wenn du es einmal geschafft hast dann ists die darauffolgenden Male kein Problem mehr.

Greetings from Freilassing.
Thanks for contributing, this area still looks a lot like a black hole ;-).
If you have any questions that might come up, feel free to ask...

Cheers, zenfunk

It gets worse during 17.00 and 22.00 GMT when all the Germans start mapping- ggg.