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15.09.2015-21.09.2015

Mapping

• Ahmed explains the aim and  status of the Grass&Green project.
• Using Taginfo you can find a lot of nonsense, for example: yes=no, as shown by Simon Poole.
• Badita Florin looked up how many POIs have more than 100 (!) tags for one object, which mainly turned out to be lighthouses.
• Martijn van Exel has equipped his challenge “Fix U.S. railway crossings” with new tasks and calls for repairing. (via @mvexel, @maproulette)
• You would like to create a new challenge for MapRoulette and you know bit of Python? You can do it now easily with Martijn’s guidance for MapRoulette API Wrapper. (via @maproulette)
• Thomas Hills describes his experiences and problems in teaching new mappers and tries to simplify the process with his own guidance.

Community

• GaiaGPS wrote a tutorial on how to upload GPS traces and use them to improve the data. In a previous blog post they explained how and why you should create an account.
• Elliott Plack reports about some vandalism (deletions and fictional data from a TV series) in Baltimore, USA. The user got blocked by the DWG, but returned under another login and continued vandalising (twice).
• Daniel Koć proposes a totally different idea to distinguish between the different types of “footways” in order to make  better rendering possible.
• Python Argentina “Argentina en Python” collected so much data with OSMTracker for Android, that they cannot process all data by themselves. They set up a website and Dropbox account and are asking the community to help  map the data from the GPS tracks, audio notes and videos they collected.

Imports

• Imre Samu presents his findings to recognise strange imports with the help of taginfo .

Events

• OpenStreetMap France will participate in the International Geography Festival in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges from October 02 until 04. There? Why? That’s why. The program can be downloaded here.
• Rafael Avila Coya holds a lecture at the regional government of Galicia in particular on the topic HOT.

Humanitarian OSM

• Drishtie Patel and Dan Joseph from the US Red Cross report on their work in a township near Cape Town.
• Mapping roads and structures in California because of the Valley Fire in California.
• HOT calls  JOSM Mappers to help with the completion of the road network in Tanzania.

Maps

• [1] Lisa Stolz designed a map specifically for nightlife as part of her bachelor thesis at Hochschule Karlsruhe in collaboration with Geofabrik. Geofabrik provides a temporary map of the new style, but is looking for someone who wants to operate and maintain the new style in the long term.
• Wikimedia Maps, a tile service of the Wikimedia Foundation has arrived in beta status. It is a basic map style for the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation (eg Wikipedia, Commons, …). Technically it is the vector and raster-tile server of Karthotherian, various Mapbox-components and Mapnik3.

switch2OSM

• Strava switched from  Google Maps (incl. Street View) to Mapbox. Some premium subscribers “remain frustrated“. Many of the complaints, however, have little to do with OSM itself. Often poorer satellite images and the lack of Street View is the problem. We would like to remind you that this was similar to the change of Geocaching.com from Google Maps to OSM.

Open-Data

• Timo Thalmann hopes to start a discussion about the definition of public tasks in the field of state GIS data. (automatic translation)

Software

• OSM Buildings speaks WebGL. (Demo)
• The new Mapbox Studio, currently still in the closed beta, is designed for experts and beginners as well. The map elements can now be easily changed via point and click.
• Basecamp for Windows  4.5.2 is released.
• OSRM  version 4.8.0 released – Bugfix release 4.8.1 on September 20.
• Proj4Leaflet which provides support for projections not contained within Leaflet itself, now has its own project page.(via @liedman)

Did you know …

• … osmservices, the slightly different link collection of Mathis Rinke? Bet you also find something new from the OSM world. 😉
• … [map] BBCode to create some simple BBCode annotated maps?  The JavaScript library can be integrated into popular form. You can test [map] BBCode here and see an example here.

other “geo” things

• It seems that Apple continues to invest in map technologies.
• Google Home View was yesterday – today the vacuum cleaner robot Roomba 980 is mapping the apartment “passing by“.
• Steve Coast starts a project to collect machine readable spatial data. I would be nice to read something about the license of the collected data.
• The earth’s surface is increasingly under surveillance. More and more start-ups rush into space with their own photo-satellites. Geoawsomeness talks about it.
• You have a city trip in mind? You should always take along a weather dependent map.
• Mashable reports about the effects of climate change. The melting of the continental ice and the resulting rise of the oceans.

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