OpenStreetMap Mapping Party

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

The OpenStreetMap project is having a Mapping Party, hosted in Somerville, MA on February 14th and 15th.

From the OpenStreetMap website: "OpenStreetMap is a free editable map of the whole world. It is made by people like you. OpenStreetMap allows you to view, edit and use geographical data in a collaborative way from anywhere on Earth." In Boston, it includes roads, buildings, and more: you can see the map for an example.

Streets aren't the only thing that OpenStreetMap does -- whether your interest is green space, walkways, or bike paths, OpenStreetMap may be the project for you. Help put your house on the map -- or make sure that road that's closed for construction is marked, long before Google Maps finds out about it.

OpenStreetMap data is licensed under a Creative Commons license -- meaning that you can re-use the data for whatever you like, something that other mapping providers don't do. That means that if you've got an idea for a map, you can create it. Whether it's the local Davis Square hotspots, putting together a map of neighborhood house forclosures, or simply creating a map of a nice walking path you take on the way to work, with OpenStreetMap, if you can imagine the map, you can make it happen.

If you're interested in learning more about OpenStreetMap, and getting involved in helping to keep a free map of the world available, starting with your neighborhood, join us at the Bloc 11 Cafe in Somerville on Feb 14th and 15th. More information is available on the OpenStreetMap Boston wiki page.

Comments

[makoshark.livejournal.com]

Awesome. I'll try to come!

[jimmyfergus.livejournal.com]

My goodness... last time I looked it had a short stretch of I93 & 95 and the odd random main route. Now they're better maps than Google.

Excellent work... Obviously it needs some server power and/or bandwidth, and a directions engine (non trivial!)...

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about your comment re: Server Power -- what is that motivated by? Did some part of the site seem slow? (Other than the 'Search' function, which everyone is aware of being slow.)

Note that OSM, the project, is not about creating a replacement for maps.google.com -- it's about replacing the data underneath it with an open alternative. The benefit of this is that anyone who wants to can make their own routing engine out of it -- and several people have done so, though the Boston area is dense enough that it tends to be somewhat problematic.

[jimmyfergus.livejournal.com]

I misjudged. I noticed the search was slow, and the map loading seemed slow, but now I remember I was on my ssh tunnel to home, so only had my upstream bandwidth available. So the problem was my end.

Interesting about the routing etc... I'll have to check it out.

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the search is definitely dog slow :) But the tiles are generally fast: there's been a lot of development time/effort put into the particular way those tiles are served, which works pretty well at serving recent tiles fast.