Project of the Week: Department Store

A department store sells a wide variety of durable goods for the home.
Large and small appliances, furniture and kitchenware may each have
large sections or departments of the store. Clothing
departments may be further divided by customer and use, such as Infant
and Toddler or Outdoor clothing. The departments will continue,
perhaps with jewelry and cosmetics or sporting goods.

The Project of the Week is to add local Department Stores to the map.

This is your Project of the Week. Make suggestions. Inspire other
mappers. What is it about contributing to OpenStreetMap that
interests you? Postboxes? Bowing alleys? Share your OpenStreetMap interests by contributing a Project of the Week.

Department store exterior photo by Aaron is
licensed CC-By.

Image of the Week: Tube Time Travel

Media_httpwikiopenstr_eovcf

Tom Carden’s Travel Time Tube Map creates isochronic maps of the London Underground.

This is a Featured image, which means that it has been identified as
one of the best examples of OpenStreetMap mapping, or that it provides
a useful illustration related to the OpenStreetMap project.

If you know another image of similar quality, you can nominate it at

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_image_proposals

Weekly OSM Summary #13

March 9th, 2011 – March 20th, 2011
A summary of all the things happening in the OpenStreetMap world:

  • After the terrible earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the OSM community started efforts to provide up-to-date maps of the affected region for search-and-rescue teams and other relief organizations. Information on how to get involved can be found in the wiki here; the main discussion platform is the HOT mailing list and the IRC. HOT was able to get access to post-earthquake imagery to map flooding, damaged roads and buildings. As you can see on the wiki page, the community also created special Garmin maps for download and maps highlighting things like the road status (passable/impassable).
  • Kate Chapman has created some stats on the activity in Japan and Christopher Osborne did some visualizations.
  • Even the Haitian OpenStreetMap mappers are contributing to the crisismapping efforts for Japan and Libya. You can do it too!
  • Leigh Hunt has made an animation (gif) of the editing activity of the OSM community in Christchurch, NZ after the earthquake.
  • The deadline for the Call for Papers for this years SOTM conference in Denver has been extended.
  • The OpenStreetMap-Foundation blog gives you a summary of all the different Working Groups that are available for February 2011.
  • A new script osm2postgresql imports OSM data into a PostGIS db. For example, it improves the rendering in QGIS.
  • A new version of the WordPress OSM Plugin (German article) is available. It improves some bugfixes and is campatilbe with WP 3.1.
  • Pascal wrote a blog post about the “Growing agreement of the new Contributor Terms and about relicensing OpenStreetMap data (-Update-)”.
  • Osm2xp is a scenery generator for the X-Plane simulator. Using OSM data, it will generate 3D buildings into X-Plane, each one with its real location and real shape.
  • “MapQuest is providing several address files that contain user-provided latitude and longitude locations across the world. Our users provided these exact locations to us so that they could be mapped correctly on our MapQuest maps.”
  • Skidea is offering special Garmin maps for ski resorts.
  • Matt Williams built a postcode finder based on OSM data.
  • ITO has launched ITO Map – “A new map overlay service for OpenStreetMap”. The different overlays do a great job in highlighting the diversity and richness of OSM data.
  • OpenStreetMap was accepted for the Google Summer of Code. All the ideas are collected in the wiki here.
  • A blog post about the security and ethics of live mapping in repressive regimes and hostile environments.

Authors: Pascal, Jonas & Dennis
Did we miss something? Do you want to help us collecting the news for next week’s issue?
You can contact us via mail or Twitter.

Deadline extended for State of the Map call for papers

The State of the Map call for papers deadline has been extended through June 15, 2011, giving more time for great papers to be presented to the selection committee. There has been a great response for topics from several countries and we want to make sure the opportunity to be apart of this years conference is open to those who are still formulating talks.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation invite contributions from mappers, academics, geo-hackers and open geodata supporters around the world. If you are involved in OpenStreetMap mapping, coding or community organisation – or if you want the chance to present your ideas or opinions to the OpenStreetMap community, you should submit a paper to the State of the Map 2011!

More information on the Call for Papers

 

Project of the Week: instrument shop

What I really need, right now, is an ukulele. I could order one,
overnight from the on-line ukulele store, but I need it now, and
prefer to shop locally. Let’s just have a quick look at the map.

What’s that you say? Steve’s Ukulele Kwikee Mart, is right round the
corner? How convenient.

The Project of the Week is to add your local musical instrument shop.

This is your Project of the Week. Make suggestions. Inspire other
mappers. What is it about contributing to OpenStreetMap that
interests you? Postboxes? Bowing alleys? Share your OpenStreetMap interests by contributing a Project of the Week.

Guitar Lineup photo by Orin Zebest is
licensed CC-By

Image of the Week: Saransk Mapping Party

Media_httpwikiopenstr_fxhpa

OpenStreetMap contributor osmisto has
organized the first Russian online mapping party: it’s still cold
outside, so almost everyone attended. Find out more and see a larger animation from the Саранск (Saransk) mapping party.

This is a Featured image, which means that it has been identified as
one of the best examples of OpenStreetMap mapping, or that it provides
a useful illustration of the OpenStreetMap project.

If you know another image of similar quality, you can nominate it on
Featured image proposals.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_image_proposals

Project of the Week: Music Shop

They aren’t as common as they used to be, or perhaps they have merely
changed form. Some of us have a music store on our phones. Others
might have to travel to the next town to find a Bricks and
Mortar music shop. The used to be called Record Stores;
ask your grand-parents about them.

The Project of the Week is to add your local music shop to the map.

This is your Project of the Week. Make suggestions. Inspire other
mappers. What is it about contributing to OpenStreetMap that
interests you? Postboxes? Bowing alleys? Share your OpenStreetMap interests by contributing a Project of the Week.

Photo of phonograph cylinder player by Jalal Gerald Aro
is licensed CC-By-SA

OpenStreetMap at Where 2.0 and Wherecamp

OpenStreetMap will be at Where 2.0 this April 19-21 with a booth in the exhibition hall. Following Where 2.0 is WherecampSF and several OSMers helping plan a mapping party on Friday during the geogames! Learn more about each event below. 

 

The Business of Location: Where 2.0 April 19-21, 2011

Where is business: where people live, where they go, and where, when, and how they spend their money are now key factors in business success. From product development to distribution, marketing, and sales, location technologies help companies identify, understand, and serve their markets far more effectively than ever before.

The O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference explores the intersection of location technologies and trends in software development, business strategies, and marketing. The source for all things location-aware, Where 2.0 brings together CTOs, marketers, developers, technologists, researchers, geographers, startups, business developers, and entrepreneurs, to shed light on the issues surrounding:

Development- Mobile, Development- Location, Business and Strategy, Marketing, HTML5, Data Collection, the future of mapping and much more.

Zero in on the business of location at Where 2.0. Join us April 19-21, 2011 at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara in Santa Clara, California.

extracted from the where 2.0 website

Wherecamp SF: April 22-23, 2011

WhereCamp is an unconference for people fascinated by place. We are an eclectic crowd ranging from urban cartographers, environmentalists, locative media artists, augmented reality developers, simulations and modeling theorists.

Often people wanting to simply understand more about the space or fund in the space also are drawn into the fold. The San Francisco version ends up being an (unofficial) Where2.0 after-party with intense conversation, presentations and dialogue. Many people say it is the highlight of their year. We’re fully sponsored and the event is free to attend but participation is mandatory – you are expected to present your projects or at least give your voice to other peoples presentations.

Join us! All you have to do is participate, educate, learn, contribute and share. We all want to hear each others voices – yours too. Sessions are organized in a bottom up way where any participant can propose a talk, topic or discussion which are held in multiple streams in multiple rooms simultaneously.