(English) weekly 254 – 26.05.–01.06.2015

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26.05.–01.06.2015

About us

This version in English was not proofread by a “second pair of eyes”. If you find any errors on the site or want to join the team to support and further improve this service please get in touch.  We are proud to announce the version in Bahasa Indonesia, supervised by Adityo Dwijananto. 

Mapping

• OpenAerialMap now available as beta version.
• An army of bots innacurately entered  thousands of POIs on  Thursday evening (May 28). The Data Working Group (DWG) has intervened.
• Frederik Ramm started a long lasting discussion about whether the rampant use of name:xx tags could be prevented by placing them in Wikidata instead of OpenStreetMap.
• Simon Poole provides a “sneak preview” of the next release of Vespucci.

Community

• User althio reported on the progress of learnosm.org.
• On the SotM-US this weekend Richard Fairhurst will give a lecture on why people contribute to OSM. To support this he would like to hear your story.  To contribute please add a comment to this blog entry.
• Following a crash, a landing in water and a lecture (must see!) on the FOSSGIS 2015, Alex has again lost his drone. But a sociable barbecue evening can sometimes work wonders (try to read it with an automatic translation – and have a lot of fun)
• Konrad Lischka writes in his blog about how OSM differs from commercial map providers. He also gives tips for a first entry (automatic translation).

Imports

• User bdiscoe has looked at the largest imports in OSM history. In his Diary he provides the Import accounts and estimations about the cleanup. For the TIGER import his estimatate is 32 years.

OpenStreetMap Foundation

• Peda wants public OSMF board meetings.
• Frederik Ramm, in his position as treasurer, has published  the preliminary income statement and balance sheets of the OSMF.

Events

• [1] From May 29 – 31, the State of the Map France 2015 was held in Brest.
• This weekend (June 06 – 08) the SotM US takes place at the premises of the United Nations. You can access the programme here. Videos only after the conference (as previously reported on weeklyOSM).
• Mappingbeer, Mapathon and Mappingparty is history now. Try GeoPaella in Valencia on July 04.
• The first SotM Latam will be held in Santiago de Chile from 04 to 06 September. Running the conference  before the two major Latin American Open Data conferences AbreLatam and ConDatos is a good idea.

Humanitarian OSM

• On May 20, a landslide in Colombia devastated the city of Salgar. HOT asks the community for help to map the region.

Maps

• User lalonde has calculated how bendy or straight roads are across the world and has produced a map of it. (via @zehnpunktebarron)

#switch2OSM

• The Czech Internet portal mapy.cz uses OSM data with its own map style outside Czech Republic and Slovakia. According to user xkomczax maps errors that are reported to mapy.cz are repaired  in OSM.
• The first navigation app for Ubuntu Phone is now available. However, this is only possible with an Internet connection and only is solely for use in vehicles.

Open-Data

• Good Mapillary pictures (all Mapillary images are CC-BY-SA-licensed), can now be converted quite easily into Wikimedia Commons.

Software

• For Android Wear OsmAnd is an alternative to Google Maps. It is called Smart Navi Watch and comes from Geometalab the Hochschule Rapperswil. (Youtube-Video)
• Sven Geggus is not impressed by the “MapBox Directions bicycle option” because unlike other services no height data is included.
• You have a cottage in the middle of nowhere and no address, but want someone to guide you? Three words above might suffice. Like: schickten.bremse.arzt or poetic.knee.eventor even muddy.tigers.brain.
• Vladimir Agafonkin, founder of Leaflet, narrates the story of Leaflet in a YouTube video.  Leaflet has replaced OpenLayers in recent years as the leading web mapping API beyond Google
• The first programming phase of Google Summer of Code has been running for a week. Students have worked diligently though this, but it has not been documented by all participants yet.

Did you know …

• … the Overpass API/status page in OSM Wiki, maintained by the Overpass maintainer Roland Olbricht, with references to downtime data defects or the like.

Other “geo” things

• DigitalGlobe and Saab create a 3D model for the entire world. 1 / 2
• Mapillary use in this new viewer with vector maps that are rendered with OpenGL.
• In OSMBuildings a product designer now provides high quality 3D building.
• MapBox is looking for a Sales Engineer.
• “Why Is Apple Inc. still Investing in Apple Maps?” asks The Motley Fool.